BKK Work Trip, March 2012: Arrival in BKK @ Renaissance Bangkok Hotel

Recently, Mastercard announced that Bangkok is this year's number 1 city for travel. Since I'm on BKK mood recently, here's another entry during my work trip to BKK last March, 2 weeks after I came back from LDN. Arriving at the airport, bright & early! Coincidentally, Bro-in-Law Roger was also on his way to BKK to attend a conference.

 

Window seat (again) on the usual SQ972 flight :)

 Whenever I'm at the airport, I tend to scuffle off to my usual hangout place to wait for boarding time. This time round, I took a couple of minutes to visit the fern garden & koi pond (located at T2, departure transit lounge). Landscaped with tropical tree ferns, the garden also features a wide range of unique ferns, such as Birds' Nest Ferns, Rabbit-foot Ferns etc. It was also interesting to learn that the giant Tasmanian tree ferns - Dicksonia Antarctica, which is probably a survivor dating back to dinosaur era, are known to live for more than 400 years!

 

Walking to gate E12. As much as I prefer gates that are nearer, there are times where the planes will be assigned to the last gate of the wing, which meant that passengers will have to cover a longer distance to reach the gate.

  

Looked like it will be a full flight! 

 

 Always a pleasure to fly on our national carrier. 

While waiting for take-off ;)

 

Up, up & away to BKK :) 

 

Meal on-board to curb my hunger pangs :) A pleasant surprise to find ice-cream, but no chocolate ice-cream :( #disappointed

 

Arrived @ Suvarnabhumi Airport 2.5 hours later. I always have difficulty pronouncing the name of this airport to cab drivers. Normally, I'll just hop on to the cab and says "Airport, Suva.....", then the cab drivers will go "Oh, ok!" Finally, I googled and it is pronounced as "su-wan-na-poom", which means "The Golden Land", specifically referring to the continental Indochina.

Making my way to immigrations, hopefully the queue will be short.

 

Air-Asia has now moved all their operations to Don Muang Airport, which is nearer to the city. Don't make the same mistake as us during our last trip to BKK.

Landed, lugging my suitcase to the meet up point for airport transfer. 

You will pass by 2 tolls gantries along the way (I think), total of 70THB. This will be taken care of if you're travelling on airport limo transfer. However, you will have to pay the charges if you're on public taxi.

 

Saw this en-route to the hotel. The building management actually cater a "window" for the tree branch instead of cutting it off #savetheenvironment :)

This time round, I stayed @ Renaissance that belonged to Marriott Group. Roger stayed in the same hotel too & turned out that we were on the same floor as well, lol!

 

The drive-way. Not many taxis know about this hotel - or rather, it could be the way we pronounce the name. I still remembered during my stay in Conrad, I told the cab driver "Conrad" and he gave me the confused look. So I had to direct him to Wireless street & drove into Conrad drive-way before he turned around & say "Oh, Con-lad", lol! So during my stay in this hotel, for cab drivers who don't recognise the hotel address, I'll ask them to drop me off @ BTS Chit Lom station & walk back.

  

The hotel is situated in central Bangkok, with easy access to BTS Chit Lom station & its skywalk. Gayson, Zen, Central World and Siam Paragon are only a stone's throw away.

 

Help yourselves to the welcome sweets :)    

 The lobby area was furnished with hues of gold and red, a classy welcome for the guests.

 

I stayed in the Deluxe King Guest Room, overlooking the city & Lumpini Park. 

Renaissance Bangkok Ratchaprasong Hotel

518/8 Ploenchit Road

Bangkok 10330, Thailand

Tel: 66 2 1255000

A change of outfit later, I set off for a quick lunch before heading to my client's place.

I don't usually have the luxury of time to venture out for a meal, so I'll tend to settle my lunch @ the lobby bar. Upon stepping into the R bar, I was wow-ed by the over-the-top decor (think reflective surfaces and colour-changing fiber optics). Thankfully, they managed to create a tasty outlook, with the use of plush sofas & sleek tables. 

 

Huge (plastic) diamond placed on every table ... Shine bright like a diamond, lol!

  
Lunch menu - spring rolls with orange juice. The awkward timing always hinder my decision on ordering a full meal, so I tend to head for light snacks instead. 
 
Looking through my notes again before heading down to client's place. I need to start getting a professional notebook to take down notes, but just can't resist cute items, lol!   

R Bar, Renaissance Hotel

518/8 Ploenchit Road,

Bangkok 10330, Thailand

Tel: 66 2 125 5000

Opening Hours: 9am till 1am daily