Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
least, the non-French) community. An indignant response in the
BangkokTimes
pointed
out the splendours of the hotel and ended with the dignified flourish: “We think M Cuch-
erousse owes us an apology for his harsh remarks.”
An even greater public relations disaster almost happened in 1923. William Somerset
Maugham, then at the height of his popularity, was travelling through Burma and Siam
and then on to Haiphong, in Vietnam. He arrived in Bangkok by train from Chiang Mai,
and took a room in he Oriental. Soon he began to feel very ill. He took his temperature.
“I was startled to see that it was a hundred and five. I could not believe it, so I took it again;
it was still a hundred and five… I went to bed and sent for a doctor.” The doctor diagnosed
malaria, and Maugham queasily recalled a night on his way down through Siam when he
had incautiously slept without a mosquito net. Quinine had no effect, and his condition
worsened. His temperature climbed higher and he lay close to death. During his deliri-
um he heard Madame Maria Maire, the manager, talking to the doctor. “I can't have him
die here, you know. You must take him to the hospital.” The doctor agreed, but suggested
waiting a day or two. “Well, don't leave it too long,” she replied. Maugham recovered to
find himself extraordinarily clear-headed, and sat in his room writing a distinctly bilious
child's fairy story about a fictitious king of Siam and his nine daughters.
During World War
II
the Japanese Army requisitioned the hotel and used it as an of-
ficers club, under the management of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. After the Japanese de-
feat, the American forces moved in and the hotel was used as a transit camp for prisoners
of war. In 1947 the hotel came back to life when a consortium led by a French photojourn-
alist, Germaine Krull, and including Jim Thompson, the future Thai Silk King, bought the
property. Once again The Oriental was back in business, and in 1967 the hotel moved
into the modern era when it was purchased by ItalThai, a construction and mercantile
company owned by Giorgio Berlingieri, an Italian engineer, and Dr Chaijudh Karnasuta,
a Thai. Their aim was to turn it into a world-class hotel, and they appointed a 30-year-
old German named Kurt Wachtveitl as general manager. Wachtveitl, who retired in 2009,
proved to be a genius amongst hoteliers, and the remainder of the story would fill a book.
The Oriental today is something of a very clever illusion. Fame and tradition help cre-
ate the impression for the visitor that he is entering the lobby of the fabled old hotel,
whereas the lobby is part of the River Wing, an outwardly conventional multi-storey block
that was built in 1976 when the land upon which the Chartered Bank had stood for almost
eighty years was acquired. The Oriental management decided that, in the absence of any
known founding date for the hotel, the opening of the River Wing should mark the cen-
tenary, and so 1876 has been the official founding year ever since. The ten-storey Garden
