Review – Hilton Millennium Bangkok Thailand

Introduction

This was the first time I’ve taken advantage of the Citi Prestige 4th night benefit.  I was going to use points, but Hilton had a sale and I double dipped with 4NF.  The per night rate came out to something like $75 or so.  Yesterday, I wrote about how I got an upgrade to the panoramic room, which really did have an awesome view.

 

Getting to hotel

The hotel is southwest of the central Bangkok area, across the river.  We could have taken the subway/train, but we had bags and I didn’t want to deal with transferring.  Thus, we took a taxi from the airport, told him to go on the tolled highway, and paid about 400 baht + 75 baht in tolls = 475 baht, which was roughly $15 USD.  The ride took about an hour due to afternoon traffic.  On the way back, we used an Uber.  Protip – tell your Uber driver to take the tolled route because ours didn’t and we went from a 30 minute ride to almost a 50 minute ride. 

 

 

Checking in

We got to the hotel and went up to the checkin desk.  The agent pulled up our reservation and then walked us over to an area reserved for Hilton Honors members.  We sat in the lounge chairs and waited for her to return to give us back our passports and credit card.  She also handed us our 2 room keys and pointed us to the elevators.

 

Room

The room was a gorgeous suite.  They had a separate bathroom off the living room area, which was pretty nice.  The bath tub was a jetted tub, which was AWESOME after a long day of walking.  They had 6 bottles of water in the room, which they refilled daily.

 

Boat Schedule

Since the hotel is on the western side of the river, to take the metro, you have to take the free boat transfer to the eastern side.  The boat usually runs about 20 minutes and is usually on schedule.

Starting at 6pm, they have a separate boat that goes down to Asiatique, which is like a fancy night market geared towards tourists.  We went there one night and thought it was worth a trip.

 

Asiatique

Asiatique is compromised of little shops, little restaurants, and big restaurants as well.  We ate dinner here one night; I paid $60 for a 700 gram mud crab cooked in yellow curry.  I’ve never had crab with yellow curry before, and it was delicious!  The mud crab is similar to a dungeoness crab; probably closer to a rock crab due to the big claws and smaller chambered body.  Goes great with a cold beer.  I also had amazing grilled squid as well.  I forgot the name of the restaurant, but it was one of the big restaurants along the waterfront.

 

Lounge Breakfast

The lounge breakfast was kind of blah.  They never changed any of the items all 4 times we were there.  At least they had an omelette station.  The hash browns were the best thing there.  It’s also unfortunate that they did NOT have passion fruit at all 4 days and the juices aren’t even fresh squeezed (the green guava juice gives it away.)

 

 

Conclusion

I picked this hotel because 1) hotel points redemption in Bangkok is terrible, 2) I had a good cash rate, and 3) the reviews on FT said it was nice being close to the temples.  Here’s the thing though – how many times are you going to the temples?  One day probably.  So why base yourself near a location you’re only going to once?  If I could do it again, I’d stay closer to central.  It was annoying to have to take the boat transfer to the metro every time we wanted to get anywhere.

The only good thing about the location is that in 2018, ICONSIAM is opening up right near the Hilton (should be walkable.)