Bangkok’s New Standard Hotel Simply Seethes With Coolness

Bangkok’s second-tallest tower looks like a disintegrating video game skyscraper, with the cubic chunks missing from its side resembling pixels that have faded away. King Power Mahanakhon, as it’s known, is pure Ole Scheeren, the German starchitect whose buildings often grab you via some spectacular twist. But upon exiting the trippy infinity mirror elevator playing an edgy soundtrack on the building’s fourth floor, what grabs you is the ’70s-meets-play-doh colors and shapes that mean you could be only one place–a Standard hotel.

Opened just a few months ago as part of a relatively rapid expansion by the hotel group, the Standard Bangkok is the latest selection for our column on exciting new hotels, Room Key.

Consistency is the currency of hotel groups, and while it may be difficult to maintain service or aesthetics or food across a portfolio, the Standard currency–coolness–would seem impossible to maintain. Here in Bangkok, at least, they’ve pulled it off.

Night after night during our stay, the elevators were jammed with Thais, local expats, and guests dressed to the nines or in hypebeast duds heading to the Standard Grill or an art fair the hotel was hosting that weekend. A huge part of that could be how much this hotel and its eye-popping design from Jaime Hayon veer away from the modern shades-of-gray serenity style of a lot of luxury Thai hotels. The public spaces are drenched in color or filled with optical treats like the Tease tea room, which is such a vertiginous frenzy of black and white patterns that after a few drinks it feels like it could swirl into a hypnosis spiral vector.

The rooms, which can start in the high $100s or $400s depending on the week, are spacious with floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the city. We had a Standard King, which came with views out over the Life building and its tree-bedecked stepbacks and the Robot Building. The room is all curves, from the kidney bean shaped side tables to the wraparound couches and orange tinted glass panels on the closet doors. A highlight of the rooms is undoubtedly the bathroom, as the shower and a massive tub are in their own chamber.

The hotel also has a sleek gym with all the equipment you’d need while traveling and an elegant leafy pool jutting out from the side of the hotel. But the coolest part about the hotel is undoubtedly its restaurant at the top of the tower. As a guest, you’ll get free entrance to Sky Beach, the rooftop bar that overlooks the city. Do it because the view of this megalopolis is stellar, but just be warned that it’s a whole rigamarole to do so (lines, passport, etc). Just below it though is Ojo Bangkok, the hotel’s restaurant from Francisco Paco Ruano of Guadalajara, which thousands of tourists pass each day on the spiral staircase up to Sky Beach and likely press their face to the glass in I-want-to-go-to-there envy because it is just that beautiful.

It’s the East Asian cousin to the Top of the Standard in NYC’s Meatpacking District–all sensuality and swankiness. Here the aesthetic is apartment of Senator Mon Mothma in Andor-meets-neo-Art Deco in pink and gold. There’s a shiny golden tunnel for an entrance, candelabras you’ll want to steal, and the food also happens to be great (the snow crab guacamole is sinfully good). Just a headsup, the portions are on the larger side–the birria was easily enough for two people. And the drinks are equally up to the task, so much so by the time you get back downstairs you might find that the Tease tea room really is a hypnotic swirl.