Thailand - Peninsula

We landed without much incident or fanfare on Tuesday around 6pm(Bangkok Dangerous Time). I always found it interesting that we could leave on Monday at 9am and get there at 6pm Tuesday. To be fair it was really 6am in NY, shy of 24 hours of travel.

The bags came quickly considering it was two international flights. We exited customs and saw our Tour guide, Kaew, standing with a sign that said “Shenoy/Smith”. It should just say Shenoy, but changing one’s last name and government papers can take awhile. Next trip though, it’s Shenoy only!Kaew (pronounced “Cow”) was perhaps the nicest lady. She told us that she normally deals with much older clients and was surprised that we could be her children. We told her we were probably older than she thought. She then told us that she’s older than what we think because Asian’s age well. Fair enough.

In retrospect now, the tour company, Destinations Asia, was so professional and so classy, I’m sure most of their clientele have the names William Henry Something and his wife Buffy or someone who goes by his First Initial and his middle name (J. William Masterton).

Shelly and I packed two huge bags like American tourists. I’m sure William Henry and Buffy pack much lighter. In any case our private car was a Camry. It struggled to fit 2 gigantic bags. So we stuck one bag in the trunk and the other rode in the back with us. Still fresh with “Brokedown Palace” in our minds, we watched the bags carefully.

On the ride to the hotel, I was thinking, “If Shelly or I ever became President of the US, our Secret Service names would probably be “Bombay” and “Sapphire.” It made sense since I’m Indian and she has really blue eyes. Now I knew why we won this trip. It was to start our lives in politics.

Arriving at the Peninsula Bangkok was interesting. We pulled down a quiet dead end street. We got out of the car, and the most unassuming building said, “Peninsula”. I was a little sad. We walked through the doors and the lobby looked very Holiday Inn-ish. Oh no! The scam is on. Keep your eyes open for the Gunmen!

But the lobby was tiny. Kaew walked right out the back door and to a set of piers. There was a beautiful boat that said Peninsula and across the river you saw a gorgeous hotel with the same name. Phew! Kaew explained that the hotel was techinically on the Queens side of Bangkok. “There isn’t anything to see on this side; it’s just residential apartments.” We would have to take the ferry to get to the Manhattan side. The difference between Bangkok and NYC is that the Ferries run all the time and no wait is more than 2 minutes. Oh, and the water doesn’t smell like dead bodies.

The Ferry to the Peninsula. Sweet!

Upon check-in, we received a nice jasmine bracelet for our bed side and were escorted up to the 29th floor. Our Grand Deluxe Room was beautiful. The view of the city was amazing. Within moments of walking in at 9pm, there were fireworks that we could see parallel to us. It felt like Bangkok was celebrating our arrival.

Jasmine Bracelet

Sweet Suite #1

Sweet Suite #2

We were so tired upon arrival that we bickered about food. Should we suck up our tiredness and venture the streets of Bangkok for food? Maybe we should go to the restaurant downstairs because Kaew said she’d pick us up at the piers at 8am. She even told us to go straight to bed. We have to take showers because we have air stink on us. Is the restaurant downstairs too nice to go down without makeup?

In the end, we decided to just get room service. We normally never do this because of the heavy costs associated to it. But we were about to collapse from tiredness, our Wednesday was going to start bright and early, we really didn’t want to have to dress up after our showers, and we were hungry.

We ordered a Pad Thai and a Thai soup. In 20 minutes we had a white jacketed server with a small cart at our door. Within 5 minutes, he had expanded the cart to a nice circular table with white linens. He took our dishes out from a heated box hidden under the table. He laid them out with great care and gave us two glasses of water (which the hotel hand book said was purifed and safe to drink). He also arranged the chairs so we could eat. He gave me the bill.

I'm missing because i was signing the $23 bill!

It came out to $23 US including the 10% gratuity. At this point, I knew I loved Bangkok.

As for the rest of Peninsula amenities, it had his and her sinks in the bathroom, the required Peninsula TV at the bathtub, a shower that was always the right temperature upon turning it on, and master boxes that controlled everything in the room on Shelly and my side of the bed. So we could close the shades from our bed, turn off our lights, change the temperature, and of course, put the do not disturb sign up from the comfort of the bed. Oh, Peninsula, I miss you already.

NEXT: Starting the Tour, Catfish feeding, Golden Temple, Emerald Buddha, Tailor made clothes and, of course, dinner cruise.