Hotel Review: Conrad Bangkok
We’re on vacation again! Please enjoy this post from our travels. We’ll be back to posting Tokyo content soon!
Bangkok is a tourist town if there ever was one, and as such, it has a LOT of lodging options, including some surprisingly cheap luxury hotels. We’re Hilton loyal around here, and since we tried the Millennium Hilton Bangkok on our last visit, we decided to check out the Conrad Bangkok on the other side of town.
Is this fancy hotel worth it? Did we enjoy our time in Thailand? Is durian delicious? Read on to find out, you stupid jerks.
Rooms at the Conrad Bangkok
One of the big reasons for this trip was that we had Hilton Diamond Status thanks to all the spending we did on our big 2022 Europe trip, and wanted to take advantage of it before it expires next month. One perk of Diamond Status is room upgrades, which were offered through the Hilton Honors app.
In the app, you’re given the ability to choose your exact room (based on the upgrade given at check-in) or pay a little more to upgrade to an even fancier room. We were upgraded to a room on the 26th floor, and I paid an extra 1,100 baht per night to get a corner room that was 53 square meters so we could say we stayed in a hotel room larger than our apartment (45 square meters, if you must know).
The app also has a digital key that you can use to activate the elevator and Executive Lounge as well as open the door to your room. I used it the entire time and it worked like a charm, sometimes activating the elevator from my pocket without my having to take my phone out. The staff in the lobby upon our arrival was incredibly nice, opening doors and offering to carry bags and bowing and saying nice things every time we showed up.
The room was spectacular. It had a little hallway, walk-in closet, terrific view, and a big ol’ bathroom. It also came with not one, but two cute friends (we only took the pink elephant home), and the bed was so soft it is inspiring us to go bed shopping next week because we’ve realized the bedding we have at home isn’t cutting it. And if the pillows aren’t to your liking, there’s a pillow menu to choose from.
Diamond Status also gave us a lot of free water and some free fruit, as well as two bags of shredded coconut. They do turndown service each night, which is nice when you’re out all day and can come home to a little mat and slippers next to the bed, but not really worth it if you have to let them in and wait while they do it.
The additional space was great for us to be able to lounge around, and the desk was helpful when I needed to use my computer. One negative was the power outlets, which were supposed to be universal outlets that could handle any plug type, but didn’t really work. They provided power, but our new phone adapters couldn’t fit in them, so we had to charge them through our Mobile Wi-Fi plug adapter instead.
The laundry was reasonably-priced, so we got some things cleaned while we were there. You have to get it to them by 10:30 a.m. for same-day service, or else you can wait until the next day (or pay for rush laundry). To me, 10:30 a.m. is plenty early, and later than they allow at the Conrad Koh Samui, so extra points for that.
The Executive Lounge at the Conrad Bangkok
Because of our status, we got access to the Executive Lounge on the 29th floor. It’s around the same size as the one at the Hilton Tokyo, and we never saw it crowded. They do afternoon tea and an evening snack, though we didn’t take part in those. However, the breakfast buffet was exceptional, and we went there every morning instead of going downstairs to the main buffet, even though Hiltons are known for having some extravagant buffets.
In addition to an egg station, fruit and salad hole, juice cooler, European cold cut corner, Chinese and Asian slab, bread and croissant cart, and cereal hutch, the staff can bring you espresso drinks and take orders from a menu of both Western and Thai breakfast dishes. We stuck with oatmeal the first few days to try and keep from overstuffing ourselves since we mainly travel to eat food and Bangkok is full of deliciousness. However, it’s hard to avoid grabbing banana bread and orange juice that’s fresher than anything we’ve ever had in Japan, so we indulged.
The final day, we decided to try something different, so Eriko went with Eggs Benedict and I went with the Isan Benedict, which had Sai Ua sausage in it. We were really disappointed in these. It’s been at least a decade since I last had an EB, so maybe I just don’t like Hollandaise sauce, but we both found it to be gross and pushed it aside for the other tasty options.
Comparing this lounge to those we’ve seen at other Hiltons around the world, I’d have to say this is one of the better lounges I’ve seen in terms of space between the tables, prompt service, and ability to avoid the loud conversations of other guests. We absolutely got some use out of our status.
The pool at the Conrad Bangkok
The Conrad Bangkok pool is on the seventh floor, same as the spa. The hot tub is GIGANTIC, but we weren’t there for that, so we just chilled in a couple lounge chairs and I ordered an iced latte (also gigantic) from the bar. You can order on your phone using a QR code and have your drink delivered straight to your deck chair.
Bangkok is scorching hot pretty much all the time, so having a nice pool is definitely a plus, especially since this hotel, located right by the U.S. embassy as well as many other embassies, definitely caters to those traveling for work who may have to leave families waiting at the hotel for extended periods of time. There were plenty of open chairs with nice big umbrellas and you don’t have to bring your own towel. If there wasn’t so much to do in Bangkok, we would have hung out here more.
The hotel also has other dining options, including a Chinese restaurant and a Japanese one, as well as a piano bar in the lobby. Curiously, there’s no Thai restaurant, so we chose not to take part in the hotel restaurants. We did, however, get back late a couple nights and needed a bite to eat.
Room service at the Conrad Bangkok
Room service at the Conrad Bangkok is technically 24 hours a day, though you have to order before 11 p.m. to select from the full menu. Eriko tried the pad Thai, which came wrapped in an egg fashioned as a netting, and I tried some pad kaprao. The pad Thai was incredible - honestly, it was every bit as good as any pad Thai we had during this trip, which is saying something because we tried quite a few stellar places. The pad kaprao was spicy as all hell, which was great both because I like spicy food and because it meant Eriko wouldn’t want to try any so all for Gregg.
A few nights later, I was feeling naughty right around the end of the night, so we split a club sandwich and fries. Perfectly adequate club sandwich and exactly the type of thing I love room service for: food from America that I don’t often see in Japan that just hits the spot. The bacon on the sandwich was better than the Executive Lounge breakfast bacon, too.
While it’s nice that the hotel has such good room service, you’re probably not visiting Bangkok to eat in a hotel. Luckily, the surrounding area has some gems.
The surrounding neighborhood
The hotel is on the east side of Bangkok, in an area with a lot of embassies and large office buildings. It’s not a very walkable area, but there are a couple great spots within walking distance: Soi Polo Fried Chicken, where we had a big grilled catfish and some of the best fried chicken i’d ever eaten in my life, and House of Smooth Curry, where we had delicious red curry with duck. The first was impossibly cheap, the second rather expensive. But they’re both very close, and there’s also a 7-11 nearby where you can get stuff you need.
Also nearby is Lumphini Park, which we walked through one morning and saw kitties and monitor lizards on our way to The Commons, a cool modern food hall that was home to a pancake sandwich that was better than the kind you can get in Japan. Neither of these places are good for walking to at night, but during the day it wasn’t too bad to find our way there.
While the hotel is close to these eateries and malls like Central Embassy and Terminal 21, what’s strange is it isn’t accessible from the street. You have to go up a drive, make a turn, and go up another long drive to get to the entrance. This makes walking and public transit very inconvenient. There’s a shuttle from the hotel to a MRT/BTS station during the day, but we didn’t want to wait for that, so we mostly used rideshare.
Cabs in Bangkok are very cheap, but the downside is that the cab drivers don’t know where anything is, so you basically have to give them turn-by-turn directions to have any hope of finding what you’re looking for. That’s why we appreciated Grab, an app similar to Uber or Lyft that was a bit more expensive than traditional cabs but allowed us to put in an exact location and pay through a card so we wouldn’t have to worry about having so much cash on us.
These issues with walkability and the hotel’s distance from the river may be a dealbreaker for some travelers, but for us, they weren’t that big of a deal, since we’d already stayed on the river and been to the westside floating markets the last time we were there, so this time we enjoyed the big fancy malls on the east side. However, be warned: if you find yourself out around 3:30 p.m., you need to make a decision. Go back to the hotel before 4:00 or stay out until after 7:00. Between 4:00 and 7:00 the traffic is brutal.
Verdict: should you stay at the Conrad Bangkok?
Even with getting some laundry done and ordering room service a couple times, we still spent less than $200 per night for a twice-upgraded room. That’s expensive for Bangkok, but not for a Conrad, and I think we got our money’s worth since this was a “relaxing” vacation rather than a “do lots of stuff” vacation.
The drawbacks to this hotel are really the configuration of the entrance and the neighborhood it’s in. Aside from the couple restaurants mentioned, there’s not much to do. If you’re a young traveler who wants to see a ton of stuff and go out at night and walk around and eat street food, this is not the place for you. Save your money and stay someplace cheap in a different neighborhood.
But if you’re minutes from death like us, don’t mind taking cars everywhere, and would like to pamper yourself in between shopping trips and eating binges, the Conrad Bangkok is a stellar choice. Not the best Hilton I’ve ever stayed at, but better than the Millennium Hilton across town, and genuine luxury treatment at a reasonable rate. Next time we go to Bangkok, I’ll be tempted to stay there again just because of its proximity to Soi Polo Fried Chicken. It was that good.
Oh, and the answer is yes, durian is delicious.
Location and info
Address: All Seasons Place 87/3 Wireless Rd. Phatumwan, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand
Phone: +66 2 690 9999
Email: Reservations@conradhotels.com
The hotel offers complimentary valet parking for those who drive, and if you’re the type to want it, there’s also a limousine rental service where you can reserve a car for for around $50 a day. Contact the hotel concierge about that one.
