Hotels Or Guest Houses Near Bang Sue Station And The Chatuchak Market

[jarman_ah]

For our last two days in Bangkok, we want to take a day trip to Ayutthaya, and visit the weekend market at Chatuchak. We will already have seen the main part of the city, so it makes sense to book accommodation as near as possible to Bang Sue Station (that will save us a half-hour each way on the train), and to one of the MRT stations that will get us to Chatuchak in a hurry.... just for these last two nights.

Does anyone know of any guest houses or hotels in the Bang Sue area? I have found these on google, and some opinions -- especially as to which is closer to an MRT station (these connect to Bang Sue) -- would be much appreciated:

Mangotreehomestay

Ban Sabai Hostel

LKN Inn

Karnmanee Palace Hotel

Travellers Hotel

Chao Phya Park Hotel

Mido Hotel

Pradipat Hotel

Thanks for all advice -- and alternatives welcomed!

[davidjtayler]

Check Reflections hotel which is in Ari area (corner of Soi Ari 3 and Phahonyothin soi 7) ... this is only a 5-10 min taxi ride from Bangsue and the Ari skytrain station is only a 3 minute walk from the hotel.

www.reflections-thai.com

Just around the corner on Soi Ari 1 (Off Phahonyothin 7) is another hotel called My House which is a lot cheaper (about 500Baht per night) but not as nice as Reflections.

[jarman_ah]

Thanks for that, davidjtayler! I will check both of these tonight... I think I had already heard of "My House", but I couldn't quite work out were it was from the "clues" given. Some of the location maps are fairly hopeless! And I don't think it had one at all! However, now that I know it's right near "Reflections", that might be a valuable clue. Many thhanks!

[jarman_ah]

Hi, again! I thought that now we followed the advice above, and learned a bit from doing so, it was time to write back and give an evaluation.

We eventually decided on the My House Hotel as being the best compromise, and when we hopped the Skytrain at the river and travelled out to Ari Station, we realised just what good advice this was. My House Hotel is, indeed, no more than two or three minutes' walk from Ari Skytrain Station, in an area full of eateries, and it's a nice-looking place. Only two stations from Chatuchak, and two the other way from Victory Monument, from where we planned to take the mini-bus to Ayuthaya and, finally, the public bus out to the airport. For people in our position, this is really a fine location, and one to remember.

Unfortunately for us, however, we arrived without a reservation, and they were full! So we asked them to ring our second choice -- the Super Hotel, at Chatuchak, to see if they had anything for a family. We were in luck: they had a large triple for 620 baht, and a tuk-tuk from My House Hotel to Super Hotel was only 60 baht.

Super Hotel doesn't get many mentions on this or any other travel site, but for the people looking for cheap accommodation near Chatuchak Market, this is one that should be mentioned often. It's not as near to a station as is My House Hotel..... in the case of Super, it's in a very quiet suburban street between two major roads, an area quite unlike most of the places in Bangkok where tourists frequent; around Super there are a few suburban-type restaurants and the inevitable 7-11, but apart from that it's houses. But, we found to our delight, it's only a ten-minute level walk to Chatuchak Market (and, therefore, to all the major bus routes and the subway which adjoins it... to get to it you have to go through the market). In our usual fashion, we managed to turn that ten-minute walk into a twenty-five minute walk by taking the wrong turn at the very first corner and going in exactly the opposite direction for a good ten minutes, but when we got this straightened out and retraced our steps, we were amazed at how close Super Hotel is to the Chatuchak Markets.

The Super Hotel itself is something of an oddity; only two storeys tall and making a large footprint on the land, it's more like a K-Mart than a hotel, and we were fairly sure that the building must have been designed for something else. On the one accommodation floor, the corridor is nearly as wide as any of the rooms! Our room was plain, but clean, and equipped with a fridge, TV, and our own shower and toilet, so for 620 baht for the four of us, we couldn't have been happier. The proprietress is extremely helpful and gave us very detailed instructions on how to get to the market, including a short-cut (which we never did find) which would probably have reduced the ten-minute walk even further. Nearly opposite the hotel in the same block is a small and well-kept restaurant where I had the hottest curry I tasted anywhere in Thailand (I could still feel it five hours later), even though the proprietress told me that she'd kept it gentle just for me. I guess that was my introduction to genuine "non-tourist-fiddled-with" Thai meals, as this quiet little area wouldn't see many westerners, I'd hazard a guess.

Anyway, although it's hardly a luxury establishment, it's amazing proximity to the market measns, I think, the Super Hotel has a place on this forum.

Once again, our thanks to the posters above who were so helpful in addressing the original query. We had a great time!