Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Accommodations, Part 10: Sabai Hotel, Lopburi

Part of the grounds at the Sabai Hotel. I stayed in this wing, overlooking the open space.

While many of you reading this might not ever venture outside of the regular areas (Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pattaya and Phuket) there are probably some of you who will become enamored enough with the country to return more than once or twice and want to explore a little more. This post is for you.

Lopburi was the second capitol (after Ayutthaya) and boasts quite a number of sites of both Thai and Khmer history, but it's known also for the fields of sunflowers that seem to stretch out forever in December and January - and the enormous population of macaques monkeys, who truly overrun parts of the city.

If you want to you can book hotels that are enclosed in a cage to make it safe to open your windows, but that sounds a little too "backwards zoo" for me... might be fun, though. From the Mo Chit bus station in Bangkok you can catch an air-conditioned bus for a few dollars and be there in three hours, give or take.

In the Pho Talat Kaew area, two or three kilometers outside of the busy downtown area of "Old Town" of Lopburi is the Sabai Hotel and Plaza complex. I call it a complex because there appeared to be two or three wings on both sides of Highway 311. They didn't understand the question and I didn't understand the answer, but I'm going to say I heard them tell me they have over 200 rooms altogether. When we passed through on our trip room rates were 350 to 450 baht per night, including LAN internet access.

I was on a week-long road trip into Isaan (that series starts here) and booked two rooms; one for myself and one for my guide, and the total charge of 900 bath ($30USD today) was certainly more than reasonable.

As you can see above, the rooms were simple but had a private balcony with a nice view, air conditioning, internet, cable TV, good water pressure from the water heater in the shower, a wardrobe and a refrigerator. There was no room safe.

The view from my balcony, which faced East
...and a panorama taken from a different angle

For those of you who count a pool as important, here's the large pool area:

The food was what you should expect in a country setting: basic, cooked to order and closer to home made. I had no stomach problems after my meals there, and the prices were good.

One last photo today, just because I liked the way the golden early morning light illuminated this spot in my room.

The Sabai hotel doesn't have an active web site that I could find, but I did find an email address (sa-bai-hotel@hotmail.com) and their phone number is listed as +66-2664-5200. Their address is 83 Mu 6 Lopburi-Singburi, Tambon Pho Talat Kaeo, Aphoe Tha Wung, Lopburi, Thailand, 15150.

4 comments:

krobbie said...

Bao-Bao, how many others were staying at the Sabai Hotel while you were there? I was just wondering why they have so many rooms (200?) and no web site. There must be something more than the sunflowers once a year to fill the place, but I can't imagine what.

Cheers,
Keith

Shameless Mack said...

Could you say something about language difficulties, if any, at these provincial hotels? You
have provided the phone number, for example, but the question that immediately comes to mind is whether anyone at the reception desk answering the phone might speak any English.

khunbaobao said...

Mack, the folks at reception spoke enough English to do business, but Pot did most of the talking for me. I could understand what was going on, but couldn't make myself understood when I was asking how many rooms total they had. I was curious, but it wasn't that important to me at the time to press the issue. They were quite pleasant people, though.

LLamaRama said...

I am there now. Rooms basic but ok, food decent, swimming pool great. Took 7 minutes on a motorbike from the shrine. Has a kind of resort feel to it. Seems quite ok to me.