Tea at the Oriental Hotel, Bangkok

On my third day in Thailand I investigate the bastion of Old Bangkok elegance known as the Oriental Hotel.

The most cost effective way to do this is by having Tea in the Authors' Lounge, connected to the hotel’s library, where the likes of Noel Coward and Somerset Maugham took their tea.

It occurs to me that this year I have been stalking Noel Coward. Through an unexpected series of filial obligations I have found myself in both Capri and Bangkok in the same year. (I know, how sad for me...)

Odder still, in both places I visited the homes of prominent expat-homos who frequently entertained Noel. (To clarify, they weren’t entertaining me; lest I give the wrong impression both expat-homos are long since dead, and their houses are now museums.)

I knew I’d be soaked in sweat by the time I walked back to my hotel to change. I bought a linen shirt from one of the vendors at Wat Arun, figuring I could change into it at the Oriental’s dock. The woman wanted 200 bhat. ($5.46 US), but when I mangled a few words in Thai she obligingly dropped the price to 150 bhat ($4.10 US.) Sold!

I arrive at the Oriental by Chao Phraya riverboat which disembarks at the public dock next to the hotel. I pass through a fetid alley full of caged live poultry and lizards, which makes for a surreal contrast to the swanky lizards staying next door. I struggle to pull the too small, button-less linen shirt over my head without staining it too much with sweat and dust.

As I pass the guardhouse to enter the hotel my heart sinks. A tasteful placard reads – “No Sandals or Bush Jackets Allowed.” What bit of weird stiff upper lip Britishness is this? No Sandals? It’s 98 degrees fer Chrissake! I gaze down at my grimy feet, and engage in a peculiarly odd bit of denial in which I convince myself that Birkenstocks aren’t really sandals. That piece of mental gymnastics complete, I forge brazenly ahead.

The Author’s Lounge is a glassed in fantasia of white wicker, potted palms and Victoriana. I think of my Mom, telling me to eschew white wicker furniture on the porch lest my home be mistaken for a nail salon. I laugh when I realize that this is the exact Victorian-tropical elegance that all those salons are aping….

I imagine that the beautiful hostess glances downward at my grimy feet, though she doesn't. She escorts me around the corner to a table well out of sight of the main room. I am verging on miffed, and perhaps more so when I realize I’ve been ghettoized; this is clearly homo – corner.

The table across from me is occupied by a pair of haughty French queens, both immaculately attired in freshly ironed polo shirts, with matching tropic-weight cotton sweaters tied around their shoulders. (Oh, puhleeze Mary!) Their shoes are obviously très cher. The blonde one gives me the once over. His lip curls when he spies my footgear. I nod hello and he ignores me, turning to his partner and shrugging distainfully, as if to say – “Americans, always under dressing for all the wrong reasons.”

Next to them is single British gentlemen, straight, but British and alone, and therefore highly suspect. He is wearing sensible brown suede track shoes, not elegant, but definitely not sandals.

I console myself with the realization that I am seated at the door of the hotel’s library, done up in Writers on safari photos. (Hemmingway, natch!) I muse that at least Noel would have been seated in homo – corner as well. (At least until he became the darling of the West End, and thus earned better billing.)



I order a pot of “The Oriental” tea, and the “Old Siam Tea Set”, which is a high tea with a distinctly “Anna and the King” flavor. Mango tarts, Sticky Rice Cakes, and delicious curried chicken salad, as well as the requisite cucumber sandwiches. The tea set is accompanied by “The Oriental Blend” – a tea created especially for the Hotel by the East India Company. It’s all too British Raj for words, which is a bit weird since Thailand is the only Southeast Asia county which was never colonized by anybody. I’m all for fantasy so I go with it.



I give one more go at being friendly with the French boys, but the taller one just prissily crosses his feet at the ankle and pointedly admires his footwear, while the short one ignores me. So much for improved Franco – American relations. While I wait for my tea a parade of Americans in Sandals passes through on their way to the pool, and I feel simultaneously vindicated and a bit embarrassed. Moments later the Gendarmes Du Fashion sign their check and leave.

Much to my amazement the hostess returns with a trio of high glam Thai ladyboys, who are ensconced where the French boys sat. The tallest one looks like a cross between Ralph Cruz and Imelda Marcos, and keeps his BIG Jackie-O dark glasses on throughout tea. They are much friendlier, and though we can only exchange a few words I do discern that they are effusively using “Ka” for each other – a Thai pronoun which in this context loosely translates as“the speaker is a lady, and expects to be treated as such.” Interspersed among their Thai banter are the words “Fabulous”, and “O La La”, no doubt in deference to the tables' previous occupants.

I don’t understand that much of their words, but I quickly realize that “dish” is a nearly universal language, and I am able to smile in all the right places, which tickles them no end.

Plus, they don’t even glance at my shoes…