Butler Oat in The Siam

As a visitor to Bangkok there are two things you will experience, no matter who you are or what time of year you’re there: traffic and heat. How much of each you endure depends on your luck and on your access to air-conditioning…

It’s June 2013: luck is against us but we have air-conditioning on our side. Curiously, they are both provided by the same dubious source – the small, green and yellow taxi that picks up my wife and my daughter and me at Don Muang airport.

“We need to go the Siam Hotel in Dusit,” I tell the driver, careful to specify which of the fifty Bangkok districts is our destination in this vast, thrumming city. He assures me that he knows the “very famous” Siam Hotel. “In Dusit,” I add and we speed off down the highway, seatbeltless.

I am middle-aged now and the best years of my life are behind me so I accept beltless travel at high speeds with a weary equanimity; but my daughter Sylvie is just four and, I hope, has many happy years ahead of her. With this in mind I wedge a suitcase directly in front of her, between the gaps in the front seats of the taxi. Her knees are now up around her throat but she is safe.

“Remember: Dusit,” I say one last time with a glance into the rear vision mirror. The driver smiles and gives me the thumbs up. I stare out the window at the gargantuan billboards that line the elevated freeway, all of them advertising air-conditioners. “My legs hurt,” says Sylvie.

There are many things named Siam in Thailand, Siam being the former name of Thailand. Many of those things with Siam in their name are hotels.

An hour later we are in the Siam Square district, home to the huge Siam Paragon Mall, outside a hotel with ‘Siam’ in its name. The Siam Hotel – the one we are booked into – is small, just 39 rooms, and in Dusit. The place we are looking up at is 30 storeys tall. And not in Dusit.

“I can’t feel my feet,” Sylvie says as the driver calls the Siam Hotel to ask for directions to you know where.

As the administrative capital of the city, Dusit is a less-travelled district – there are few bars or restaurants. However ,it is home to the vast Royal Palace, the National Assembly and the zoo. It is a little more green and tree-lined, here, but the traffic is the same as anywhere else.

Being stuck in traffic anywhere can be a serious drag but the traffic in Bangkok is like the tenth circle of hell. It can take literally half an hour to travel half a kilometre. There are 6,840,000 motor vehicles registered in the city and they all like to drive on all the roads at once. As a percentage of the population, the number of vehicles here far overshadows traffic levels in almost all other Asian metropolises: there are nearly twice as many vehicles per person here than in Tokyo or Seoul. But perhaps the most notable fact about traffic in Bangkok is how quiet it is. Despite all the rage and angst that is surely produced, almost nobody leans on their horn. It’s incredible.

“Dusit!” the driver says, happily.

As we flank the zoo on Ratchawithi I can see a traffic light that stays red for approximately four and a half minutes then changes to green for no more than five seconds; I am not exaggerating. We have by now been crammed into the very small taxi for over two hours. Sylvie has melded with the suitcase.

“I hope this place is worth it,” my wife says.

It is extremely worth it: our large, beautifully-appointed villa comes with a private swimming pool, open-air roof terrace, elevated king bed and a bath so large and beautiful it’s almost like a second (also private) pool. Each suite is individually designed with original turn-of-the-century oriental artwork and antiquities, and is catered for by a personal butler. Ours is named Oat and he has an uncanny ability to materialise even when we think about him.

Set on three acres of verdant frontage along the city side of the Chao Praya River, The Siam (the one in Dusit!) hotel is a neo-Colonial, Deco-inspired wonderland that doubles as a private museum for pop star owner Krissada Clapp’s incredible collection of… everything. Tastefully and thematically displayed throughout the property are museum-quality displays of antique wooden toys, dental equipment, stereoscopic photographs, original travel posters and much more. While it would be easy to spend hours examining these artefacts we have an array of other diversions at our disposal including a cooking school, an outdoor yoga terrace, a  spa (a perfect way to relieve the tension of a two-hour taxi ordeal) a Muay Thai boxing ring (another perfect way to relieve the tension of a two-hour taxi ordeal) and a small, private cinema furnished with two small rows of spectacularly uncomfortable antique French cinema seats.

Fortunately these seats are only for display, as I discover when Sylvie and I arrive for our screening later that day. The two rows have been replaced by two plush leather armchairs with neatly folded mohair rugs. On a table in front are two bowls of popcorn and two tall glasses of Coke to which Butler Oat adds ice-cream. Sylvie cannot believe her eyes (or her luck). This is her first time at a ‘cinema’ and I am worried that her future expectations of the experience have been set way too high and warn her that it’s not like this “in real life.” The film she chooses  – Cars – is not great but seems thematically appropriate.

While we are having breakfast the next morning Butler Oat brings us a fantastically informative and colourful map made by graphic designer Nancy Chandler, and helps us plan an itinerary. We decide to take the hotel boat down river and visit Wat Arun, and make the six kilometer trip from the hotel to the temple in twenty, glorious, scenic, and above all traffic-free, minutes.

From the river it’s impossible to tell but the five central prang (spires) of Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn) are intricately decorated with sea shells and coloured pieces of porcelain, millions upon millions of them, which had been used as ballast by Chinese boats sailing into Bangkok. At the base of the spires are rows of little demons and monkeys.  Steep, narrow steps lead up to two narrow balconies that circumnavigate the central tower, but the higher up you go, the steeper and narrower the stairs become. For some reason this doesn’t bother Sylvie who clambers up like a little monkey (or a little demon) obliging me to follow her. Soon we are high above the ground, ascending almost vertically, while directly above us on the stairs is a group of Thai schoolgirls, slowly trying to make their way down. Some are crying and some are laughing at those who are crying. As in so many other aspects of life, getting high is relatively easy; coming down is the hard part. 

When we finally reach the highest point we have a fantastic view of Bangkok; the most amazing thing – from up here, Dusit really isn’t so far away.

The Australian newspaper and The Sunday Times.