Mandarin Oriental Bangkok — Bangkok, Thailand
About Mandarin Oriental Bangkok
In 1923, W. Somerset Maugham contracted malaria while traveling from Mandalay and took refuge at the hotel, which eventually caught wind that a fairly famous face might soon drop dead on property. As Maugham put it, “I was almost evicted from The Oriental because the manager did not want me to ruin her business by dying in one of her rooms.” Maugham recovered, and eventually, returned to the hotel to write about the experience in The Gentleman in the Parlor . The Mandarin Oriental isn't the parlor in question. It's simply one stop on a tour of southeast Asia where Maugham sheds his normal identity in favor of the ultimate identity-cracking experience: travel. The anonymous gentleman, far from being cozy and welcomed in the world's parlor, finds he's hot, sticky, scratching his mosquito bites, and eventually convalescing feverishly on the Oriental's verandas while he makes up "fairy stor…
Literary significance
Multiple suites serve as tributes to writers associated with the hotel, but extensive renovations in the original building mean original lodgings are unavailable. No original memorabilia.
Authors
- Joseph Conrad
- W. Somerset Maugham
- Noël Coward
- James Michener
- Graham Greene
- John Le Carré
- Norman Mailer
- Paul Theroux
- Ian Fleming
Location
48 Oriental Avenue, Bang Rak, Bangkok 10500, Thailand