Yeoh Siew Hoon is enlightened by a gem of a place in Bangkok.
Bedroom in Ariyasom
While some people rely on the kindness of strangers in social networks to tell them where to go and where to eat, I am lucky enough to have friends in strange cities take me to interesting places.
Okay, I am being fanciful – Bangkok is not a strange city to me, although it may seem strange to many people and I hear that Cate Blanchett is winning rave reviews for her stage performance as Blanche Dubois in “A Streetcar Named Desire” (“whoever you are, I have always depended on the company of strangers”) – but recently, a good friend took me to a gem of a place in Bangkok.
It’s the kind of place you only get to know about from “local foreigners” – none of my Thai friends knew about it – or from “insider blogs”. But of course once you know it exists, you Google it and it appears on all the links on the first page …
As they say, you don’t know till you know and once you know, well, the less you know …
Ariyasom is described on its website as a “Bangkok Boutique Hotel Thailand” – you can tell it’s been written to be optimised by search engines. Unfortunately that label doesn’t do it justice and anyway, when you google “bangkok boutique hotel” it doesn’t factor at all in the first page.
Ariyasom means “Enlightened Sanctuary”. You can tell it’s been created with a lot of love, pride and a lot of money. It’s run by an Englishman, David Lees, and his Thai wife who inherited the original house from her grandfather.
The 1940s-style house was then expanded upon and today, Ariyasom has about 20 classical Thai-style houses clustered around a lush garden and swimming pool. Nestled between the “klong” and the road, in the heart of the city – and I mean literally the heart because you can see the Bumrungrad Hospital from it – it’s an oasis of calm amid the madding chaos.
In fact, sitting in the garden, by the pool, amid the greenery, you almost think you are in Penang, Singapore or Yangon – anywhere but Bangkok, except when the motorised boats go zipping by through the canal.
It opened at a bad time, right after Lehman Brothers went bust last September, and so it’s been struggling, readily confesses Paul who showed me round the property.
The rooms are huge, nicely done in an authentic Thai way. Each has a balcony and Paul shows me a room in which the balcony had to be built around a tree. He had to spend thousands of dollars just to save the tree. “A tree takes a long time to grow, you can’t just chop it down,” he says.
Paul and his wife remind me of the owners of those bed-and-breakfast places I’ve stayed in the UK – they take time to talk to the guests and tell stories. Paul loves to bake as well and that night, he brought out three desserts for us to try – apple crumble (cannot resist), lemon meringue tart (not tarty enough) and Queens Pudding (custardy and heavenly).
He tells me business is getting better as word gets around. It’s been written about in newspapers such as the UK’s Telegraph, which describes it as “calm amid the chaos. Fabulous, lush gardens surround a Forties private villa: charming, friendly, and the owners who still live upstairs wander around chatting to their guests”.
He’s trying to promote a wellness theme – there’s Sunday meditation with the monks. Located next to the hospital helps – he gets after-care customers. I can see a big market for “nip, tuck and stay” packages, for sure.
It’s the kind of place I think adds richness and depth to Asia’s hotel offerings.
In Singapore, known more for its branded chain hotels, we are also seeing new names like Nostalgia, Klapsons and Naumi emerge and, recently in the Singapore Experience Awards, a company named Betel Box, which operates backpacker hostels and heritage tours, won Best Travel Experience.
These are the places that depend on not only the kindness of strangers but also the championship of those of us who work in the industry. Go enlighten your friends.
