Baiyoke - To Eat Or Only To See?

[Grawburg]

I can't stomach paying B300 each to only go to see. However, I see there are several restaurants up there. Any of them worth paying for to get the view? I'd love to go up and eat for B500 per person if that's possible. Reccomendations?

[thecatman]

I've eaten at the Crystal Grill Restaurant at the Baiyoke Sky, (82nd floor) and while others have given it a bit of a bashing in the past on this site, I actually thought it was very good value for money. I think we paid about 650bt per person for the buffet (drinks not included). This was a couple of years ago.

The outer 'walls' of the restaurant are 5 meter window panes, giving great views while eating.

I notice from their website that at the Stella Palace Restaurant (79th floor) they offer 100bt cashback when there's no food left on your table!!

Getting paid to eat....I can dig that!!

Edited February 24, 2011 by thecatman

[mrclough]

I've also eaten there towards the end of last year and it was still only about B650. Excellent value for money in my opinion! The food is very good and there were drinks promotions as well so not too expensive really. Well worth a visit if your considering paying B300 just to look consider the buffet costing you an extra B350 and it will taste even better lol

[andyww]

Although I dont thing the buffet is very good, the thing I love about Baiyoke is that the restaurants and the hotel are very reasonably priced. In most other cities, a building of that stature would charge a fortune for the viewing deck let alone restaurant and the hotel would be top-whack.

If you are staying there and get lucky you get one of the 4 rooms which have the "glass points" which are visible from the outside of the building, which are actually glass greenhouse-type structures approx 50 floors up. Cant remember the exact room numbers.

For building nerds its a quite a unique building as its built entirely of reinforced concrete which is highly unusual for a building of that height, its like a conventional skyscraper with a concrete core but without the steel floors which normally would be built around the core so it has a tiny floor area for its height.

[DP25]

So if you eat you don't have to pay the 300 to go up to the roof? I was planning on going soon but if I can eat for a bit more it would probably be worth it.

[surayu]

The food is mediocre, you pay just about half the price if you go there with a thai national, included in the price of the buffett you can go to the rotating open roof on top of the building for free, very nice view and very windy too up there, on your way up you will notice some fine example on how foreigners are seen from a local point of view(aliens ), if you also want to stay in one of the hotel rooms, bare in mind that they will try to not to honour any discounted rate using all the possible excuses, including the ones that do not make any sense at all or make contradict theirselfs, remaining calm or being nice will take you nowhere dealing with them.

My conclusions, if you have never being there before, give it a go, it's a nice change for a time or two, get your thai national along, absolutely avoid the place if you suffer of coulrophobia or you might get a nasty surprise while you are eating at your table

[dddave]

For building nerds its a quite a unique building as its built entirely of reinforced concrete which is highly unusual for a building of that height, its like a conventional skyscraper with a concrete core but without the steel floors which normally would be built around the core so it has a tiny floor area for its height.

That's really interesting. I've often thought that taking into account elevator cores, that building looked like it had a terrible rentable floor space to building cost ratio; but of course, this is Thailand where labor is cheap.

From an engineering standpoint, would it's unique construction make it more or less vulnerable to an earthquake similar to what just hit New Zeeland?

[David Barker]

The food is mediocre, you pay just about half the price if you go there with a thai national, included in the price of the buffett you can go to the rotating open roof on top of the building for free, very nice view and very windy too up there, on your way up you will notice some fine example on how foreigners are seen from a local point of view(aliens ), if you also want to stay in one of the hotel rooms, bare in mind that they will try to not to honour any discounted rate using all the possible excuses, including the ones that do not make any sense at all or make contradict theirselfs, remaining calm or being nice will take you nowhere dealing with them.

My conclusions, if you have never being there before, give it a go, it's a nice change for a time or two, get your thai national along, absolutely avoid the place if you suffer of coulrophobia or you might get a nasty surprise while you are eating at your table

We stay there everytime we are on our way in & way out of Thailand normally for one or two nights for central location and value you cant beat it but book through Agoda you will not have a problem

[surayu]

for central location and value you cant beat it but book through Agoda you will not have a problem

Thanks for the tip David, the problem it's not the "middle-man"/agent in between, it was the Bayioke Sky hotel staff and manageress, just to tell you one thing, even if i had prepaid using my credit card and printed a voucher where everything was so clear, they insisted with excuses like they need to send an additional e-mail to reconfirm the availability (big b/s), etc, when in fact the site was very clearly stating the confirmation was immediat and they could not produce any written material pointing out the lie they were trying to trick me with, anyway, that's a past thing , i just want to make others people aware of what they might get into with the Bayioke Sky Hotel.

Actually for location and value, once you get familiar with Pratunam, you can beat it big times, but that's a secret, like the one advertised on the big advertising banner of the Bayioke

[GreenSnapper]

if you also want to stay in one of the hotel rooms, bare in mind that they will try to not to honour any discounted rate using all the possible excuses, including the ones that do not make any sense at all or make contradict theirselfs, remaining calm or being nice will take you nowhere dealing with them.

This is a general problem in Thailand with hotel booking sites like Agoda etc.

Has happened to me too, that a hotel just says "sorry, hotel is full" when you have a confirmed booking. They don't care, and the hotel booking site does not care too.

Best advice is, calling the hotel before arrival and make sure the booking is confirmed. I never had such problems in other countries, but this is Thailand....

[juehoe]

I enjoyed the dinner and the night view, but there is not the kind of restaurants where I would go often. It is the kind of things, you should do for one time, so that you know how it was - no more, no less.