Shanghai Mansion, Best Value Hotel in Asia - Bangkok

This hotel was amazing value. It has a live band playing each night in the most welcoming bars in Asia. It is a sea of tranquility in the somewhat seedy Chinatown of Bangkok

Shanghai Mansion, billed as "the best value hotel in Asia", is a boutique hotel, with rooms furnished and decorated in Chinoiserie style. The first one I had was just €42 per night, including breakfast! And that's a lot more than croissants and coffee. You can have dim sum, or bacon and eggs, plus all the rest. I moved to a better class of room, but even that's just €57 per night, again including breakfast. It had a free-standing bath, separate shower and toilet, Chinese-style screens, and a bed that must have been three metres wide! Cost only a third of quite a similar room I had in the Pudi Boutique Hotel in Shanghai last October. The only downside is that many of the rooms have no windows. Instead, there are "windows" with opaque glass (either plain white or in crinkly coloured panels), which sounds awful, but they're all air-conditioned and apart from missing views of the busy street, it's ok. The Cotton restaurant/bar on the 3rd floor has a good menu and live jazz between 8pm and 10pm.

It was the nicest hotel in tailand we stayed. It is in chinatown, far away to the tourist hotel area but with lot of charm and very close to the night market. I will definetely recommend this hotel, specially to people that wants to live bangkok in real life.

We liked the hotel very much, the staff was friendly and competent (e.g. we needed a printout from a mail, worked via USB-stick). Very nice jazz bar for a night cap - although the quality of the band topped the cocktails :-) WiFi for free, a welcome drink and a free supper was included in our booking. Not suitabel for elder wheelchair user, as there are moving stairs before you enter the lobby.

The poorer ratings come from the fact that there were major reconstruction works ongoing in the hotel and this was neither noted in the booking process nor reflected in the price. When we arrived, we saw a sign indicating a much lower price for the rooms. Overall a very nice hotel with adorable room decoration which will be even nicer when the construction works will be finished.