Our Little Princesses: Anantara Riverside Bangkok Resort

So since today is our R.O.M. anniversary, let me post about our trip to Bangkok, just the 2 of us! It has been some time since we last took a trip together without the kids, so when we got an offer from Anantara for a 4 days 3 nights stay for just USD99 in exchange for a 2 hour presentation of their Vacation Club membership (yes, similar to Phuket earlier this year), we decided to take up the offer.

We had actually attended the preview before, 2 years ago when we went to Koh Samui so that is how they got my contact details. We did not purchase the membership at that time, so probably they were trying their luck again, to see if we would sign up this time!

The initial offer was to stay at their brand new hotel Avani Riverside Hotel Bangkok but we had then enquired about taking our kids along. They replied to say if that was to be the case, then Avani could not accommodate any extra beds and so we could stay at Anantara Riverside Bangkok Resort instead which was just adjacent to it. In the end, we did not take the kids, since this would be our anniversary trip, but we requested to remain at Anantara instead, rather than at Avani. We preferred the resort-feel type of hotel, rather than those modern, trendy ones. However, unlike Phuket, this was not a Vacation Club hotel, but a proper resort.

And we were not disappointed! The hotel arranged a limousine pick-up to and from the airport, so that saved us a lot of money already.

We arrived at the hotel at 10 am (I had informed the hotel about this earlier) and the room was ready when we arrived despite the normal 3 pm check in time. I had requested for a room set-up for our anniversary, so we were pleasantly surprised to be greeted by this!

The hotel also gave us another surprise - a super rich chocolate cake!

And another surprise - we were upgraded for free to a room with a view of the Chao Phraya river!

This hotel is very nice - apparently it's the only hotel in Bangkok which is resort-type and not like the typical city hotel. Here are some pictures of the hotel surroundings.

Same view by day and by night:

And here are some pictures of the interior. There is a Jim Thompson shop inside the hotel lobby too.

The hotel runs its own shuttle boat service (similar to most hotels situated along the river) and this is the pier leading up to it. The shuttle boat runs every 20 minutes (so it's quite frequent) to Sathorn Pier (where the Saphan Taksin BTS is located) as well to Asiatique in the evenings.

The boat service was quite a novelty for us - it was like taking a river cruise everyday! When coming back from the pier to the hotel in the evenings, the boat even prepared cold towels for us to freshen up.

Some of the views during the boat ride, by day and by night:

Another factor which made us choose this hotel was the rave reviews about their buffet breakfast, and they were not wrong! The hotel had so much variety - from Korean to Japanese to Thai to Indian to Chinese and Western selections. And everything tasted good!