It’s Elite season at the moment so our hotel stays are coming hard and fast to retain Sachi’s platinum status. In the early months of the year, each nights’ stay counts for two and it greatly helps Mrs Sachi’s goal of 50 nights for the year, which gets us lounge access, free breakfasts and room upgrades.
For once I am turning up in stately fashion. Normally I’m late on a shabby moto-taxi but today I took the train and am entering fresh and not-sweaty. Sachie arrived a little earlier. The good news is that we got upgraded to a corner-room. The bad news is that there is no lounge. Never fear though, there’s a generous free-flow at the bar for two hours… Monday to Thursday.
Now, the Four Points is a tidy but not luxury hotel and I wasn’t expecting the normal barrage of cocktails and fancy hooch, but, come on! Today is Friday and I’m thirsty!. Also, the corner room only has one window, the other wall supporting a TV, which I think is a bit of an own-goal. No bath either.
But we are adapting to changing times. Marriott/Bonvoy, in their wisdom, has changed the rules for Elite this year. You only get counted for two nights of stay for the first night. And only once for each ‘brand’. This is a bit of an outrage and clearly designed to shake out chancers like Mrs Sachi and I who try to game the system and keep our hard-won privileges. We wouldn’t stay at the Four Points by Sheraton usually, but here we are on a Friday night, ticking a box.
The room is fairly spacious for the price and there’s lots of melamine everywhere but it’s new and clean. Down to the bar we go. Facing lower-lower Sukhumvit it’s not a terrible place to have a beer, but it’s bloody noisy. I seem to recall that we got two drinks on the house, draft Asahi, but they’re not pints. Ah! But Mrs Sachi gets a 20% staff discount… on everything but booze. Oh well, there’s an happy-hour that sells these little glasses of beer two-for-one and at Bt150 that’s not too bad, apparently endorsed by some of the old duffers at the bar who are clearly locals, not guests. They have come to watch the families roll their enormous suitcases in the door while Sukhumvit gets slowly gridlocked. It’s not a bad life and I reckon I’ll be there myself in about five years. I’m already working on my bald-patch.
Since we were in the neighbourhood we went around the corner to Hanoi Kitchen, a Vietnamese restaurant with wonderful food and terrible service. Looks like times have caught up with them because the restaurant is gone. Oh well, Bamboo is a hop, skip and stumble away and is reliably good Mid-East food at mid-prices. I remember coming here when it was just folding tables under a carport but it’s become progressively more enclosed until we find ourselves up the back in the almost empty aircon section, away from the packed tables in the shisha section outside. Good food but.
I bought some beers on the way back and Mrs Sachi expired on the bed. Slumber looked good on her but I couldn’t sleep a wink. Too quiet, too hot or too cold and every time I was about to drop off I’d be shaken by explosive farts (mine), the hummus from dinner at work.
So it was a confused and bleary Dan that turned up for a surprisingly good breakfast the next morning. Smoked salmon present and accounted for, ice-cream, but no brie. Can’t have everything.
If you landed on this piece looking for information about the hotel, I’m sorry but thanks for reading this far. It’s a decent place, the location isn’t bad. There is a bit of nightlife and good food in the neighbourhood but I think you’ll be staying here for the cheap rates rather than the ambiance. I assume the breakfast is included or cheap because it was hella-busy but quite decent.
Not a bad stay, the location is great for shopping, which we did Saturday. Will we be back? Maybe on a weekday, but two-for-one very decent Asahis at Bt150 in the early evening are pretty attractive so it may be for a beer after shopping rather than a stay. I’ll keep working on that bald-spot.