The Sofitel was perhaps one of my least favourite locations offering slightly less comfortable facilities than the Chaophya Park Hotel that I stayed in immediately after it for half the price. Being the hotel it is, it offers everything at a price, and this is what is missing in the rating of the hotel. Being a four (or was it five) star hotel, it offers all of the things that those sorts of people seem to want (over expensive facilities, people to wait on you far too much, rather token services) but it doesn’t offer some of the more reasonable style features like decent affordable internet. To be honest the internet wasn’t that flash and costed far too much money. Comparably less than what I’ve paid in Australia, but compared to the price in Thailand its a bit much. The place is also getting on a bit age wise, and it shows in places. The hotel needs a full refurbishment in some places to make it look neater and more modern. Perhaps I have my own idea of standards but the Hotel Sofitel Centara Grand in Bangkok just doesn’t offer me enough to go back there. It is nice enough to stay in but for that price, there are better places.

The Nasa Vegas Hotel in Bangkok is a budget hotel that I stayed in a few years back. To be honest I found the rooms to be quite good. It certainly shows its age, but the hotel is a pleasant place to stay. Whilst it wasn’t built when I was there (late 2005) and its still not done yet (late 2007) the new train that will go all the way out to the airport will have a station near this hotel which will make it even easier to utilise. At the time the one down side was the lack of internet facilities though this might have changed.

Hotel 81 is perhaps almost my perfect style of accommodation. Its simple, I’m not sure if it rates any stars and it definitely doesn’t have features and limited services (the check in area is the size of the bathroom I have in my Sunworld Dynasty room at the moment) however its ISO9001:2000 accredited, which I’m sure means something but I doubt it has any impact. I’ve used it once and it was nice and cheap, I needed somewhere to stay in Singapore overnight to grab some stuff and all I was using my room for was sleeping and showering so that was it. Of course for this price there are downsides, such as the fact the room I was in didn’t actually have a window (its like a basement room) and nor does it have internet. That said its location meant that acquiring internet wasn’t that bad (wireless access point at the Starbucks up the road did the job at a comparable rate to most 4/5 star hotels) and for what I’m doing, I don’t need any of those features. So if you’re really only after somewhere to sleep and clean the place is fine, albeit small. Technology wise its walking distance from Sim Lim Square and has a nice enough general shopping location as well as being close enough to transportation.