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‘It never rests on its laurels’: Inside The Telegraph’s best hotel in the world

As Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok comes out top in our inaugural Hotel Awards, the head Asia judge reveals just what makes it so special

The Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok puts a spring in your step and a twinkle in your eye from the moment the silk-clad doormen welcome you with their palms pressed together in a traditional “wai” greeting. Strolling in last week I was struck once again by the glamour of the place. The sunlit lobby is embellished with chandeliers – made of teak, crystal and even a two-storey floral ensemble that changes with the seasons, stitched together by the hotel’s 15-strong floristry team. A floating staircase leading to a mezzanine gallery inspires majestic entrances from beautifully coiffed and coutured women.
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As Bach’s Air on the G String emanated from the string quartet, film stars, wedding parties and politicians mingled with casually dressed creative types, linen-swathed tourists and luxury shoppers knee-deep in stiff paper bags from Gucci, Hermès and Chanel. There it was: that palpable buzz mixed with an air of unbridled romance and anything-could-happen adventure. There is simply nowhere else like it, and I was entirely unsurprised that it came out top in The Telegraph Hotel Awards, ranking the 50 world’s greatest places to stay.
The oldest surviving hotel in south-east Asia began life in 1876 as the Oriental Hotel, a high-end, 12-room hostelry with a swanky American bar, billiards saloon, dining room, nightly concerts and luxury accommodations adorned with silk curtains, Brussels weave rugs, verandas and indoor bathrooms. Set on the banks of the Chao Phraya river, between the East Asiatic Company offices and the French embassy, the hotel offered the height of luxury, attracting royalty, merchant traders, adventurers, explorers and a litany of literary luminaries, including Joseph Conrad, Noël Coward and Somerset Maugham. When the latter nearly expired from malaria, the general manager at the time was overheard to say: “I can’t have him die here!” Happily, for Madame Maire and the literary world, the author survived, returning to the hotel to celebrate his 60th birthday many years later. 
With so much fascinating history on tap, it would be easy for the hotel simply to trade off its storied past, but the Mandarin Oriental has never been one to rest on its laurels. “It’s very easy for a hotel like ours to become a museum of sorts. If you look around the world, a lot of grandes dames have allowed that to happen and struggle to remain relevant in the present. We are very conscious that we can’t become stale and have to keep reinventing ourselves,” Anthony Tyler, the general manager, told me over China cups of rare Yin Zhen vanilla and wildflower tea blended especially for the hotel by TWG. He’s right: this is a key part of what makes the hotel so special.
As the world’s greatest hotels must, the old Oriental has moved with the times, adding electric lighting before the turn of the 20th century and the 10-storey Garden Wing, topped with French fine dining restaurant La Normandie, in 1958. Two decades later came the 350-room River Wing. It was followed in 1983 by Thailand’s first cooking school and, in 1993, Bangkok’s first hotel spa, set inside an exquisite antique Thai mansion on the other side of the river. In 1985, the Oriental merged with the Mandarin Hong Kong, marrying two of Asia’s most fabled hotels into a top global luxury hotel group. The Bangkok property officially changed its name in 2008. A top-to-toe refurbishment in 2018 by British interior designer Jeffrey Wilkes made it the hotel it is today.
Across the past century of change, famous faces continued to fall over themselves to stay, from the last Russian Tsar to Eleanor Roosevelt, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor and the former Prince and Princess of Wales. “We can’t give away any names, of course, but we continue to attract heads of state, famous actors, royal families, politicians and captains of industry on a weekly basis,” said a typically discreet Tyler. A point proved there and then by the sweeping arrival of one of Thailand’s royal princesses and her enormous entourage.
Despite pretty much having my pick of places to stay, and returning to very few, I find it impossible to turn down an invitation to Bangkok’s Mandarin Oriental, and have been lucky enough to join these VIPs at least once or twice a year for the past decade. I’m drawn back time and time again not just because of the history and location that never lets you forget where you are, or the various facilities – two swimming pools, stupendous spa, tennis courts, a fleet of river boats. I don’t return just to imbibe at the hotel’s 12 brilliant bars and restaurants. Or to sleep in rooms I adore – a tasteful Thai-European fusion of powdery creams and blues, buoyed with rich woods, Thai silks and bundles of fresh flowers (nearly all have river or partial river views; the best have balconies for ogling the Chao Phraya over your morning coffee). The motive is that all of these aspects combine to make it the perfect luxury hotel, shot through with a sunny bolt of fun. It manages to be more than the sum of its parts.
The essential ingredient of any great hotel is that it should be an immensely enjoyable place to be – and that’s down to the staff. Like many a repeat guest, I’m on first-name terms with many of the people who work at the hotel, a significant number of whom have been employed for decades. Full-time service at the hotel adds up to 7,529 years. At the legendary buffet breakfast – a feast of tropical fruits, freshly made pastries, Thai noodles, dim sum and pancakes served on the waterfront – I caught up with the inimitable Khun Jimmy Keansrisook, who refers to himself in the third person while bringing you mimosas. He’s a veritable newbie, at 28 years with the company.
Later, I was escorted to the pier by the elegant Khun Mayuree Laolugsanalerd, who has been at the guest relations desk in her pink silks since 1998. Waiting for me was a Hacker-Craft speedboat, a glossy little mahogany pleasure vessel more often seen in Venice or the French Riviera. Its presence on the Chao Phraya alongside long-tail boats, teak barges, mega-malls, stilted teak mansions and towering cranes is symbolic of the city’s and the Mandarin Oriental group’s increasingly international status and continuing evolution. 
So what’s next for the world’s grandest dame? Preparations are already underway for Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok’s 150th anniversary in 2026, with dining at the forefront. Currently under tarpaulin wraps, the China House is being expanded and refurbished with a top Cantonese chef taking the helm early next year. Alain Roux’s three-year residency will also come to an end soon, leaving the door open for a reinvention of La Normandie, in partnership with another yet-to-be announced superstar chef.  
I departed with the same spring in my step and twinkle in my eye I arrived with, knowing that I’d be back for more.
The Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok (0066 2659 9000) offers doubles from £460, room only.
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