From US $185 including breakfast
– Huge supply of vintage books and magazines for guests to peruse
– Three very large terrapins kept in a completely unsuitable, small bare plant pot by the front entrance
Designed and owned by an accomplished interior designer, the Cabochon Hotel is throwback to the period of Shanghai chic in the 1920s. Although only a few years old, as soon as you glimpse the hotel’s ivory-coloured colonial facade and step across the threshold onto the exquisite mosaic-tiled floor you are transported to a different era.
The hotel has a wonderful location down a short, quiet lane off Sukhumvit Road, a busy Bangkok thoroughfare with restaurants, malls, grocery stores and clothing stores.
Check-in is done in the tiny library while sipping on coconut water straight from the fresh nut. The atmospheric room is packed with vintage magazines and books, old-style packing cases and other antiques. Soon we are being shown to our third-floor room which, like all thirteen rooms and suites, is decorated simply in muted colours and filled with vintage fixtures and fittings from light switches to doors to entire antique windows. We loved the aged wooden floor boards and the retro white tiled bathroom complete with a very modern first class raindrop shower (bring your own hair conditioner, none is supplied).
The spacious room shares a large lounge area and kitchen with three other rooms (although we had it all to ourselves whenever we used it). The fantastic kitchen has heavy wooden cupboards, huge marble sinks and a large fridge stocked with soft drinks and plenty of drinking water. There’s also a kettle, microwave, stove top and small supply of tea bags.
The highlight of the property is the long and inviting rooftop pool. Set on the 5th floor, the very comfortable sun loungers catch the breeze on oppressively hot Bangkok days and provide an ideal resting spot between daytime sightseeing and nighttime eating and drinking.
