I was so glad my old friends invited me to have lunch at the grand Hyatt Erawan hotel. I hadn’t visited this hotel since the plandemic. This was one of my favourite hotels with classic style architecture and a beautiful garden. This hotel used to be very popular for reception parties and weddings. I used to be invited to several grand wedding receptions at the grand ballroom years ago. It seemed people rarely got married nowadays or they tended to economise by having small wedding parties at their houses.
At the corner of this hotel near the famous intersection was the shrine of the Hindu god called Brahma. This shrine is called Erawan Shrine or Phra Phrom Shrine had its sixtieth birthday on the 9th November last year. This shrine is very popular among local Thai people and Chinese tourists. The Brahma god has very famous reputation for being very holy and kind in granting people’s wishes. So, we could see big crowds with yellow garlands paying respect at the shrine. Those people whose wishes were granted often came back offer elephant statues and Thai dance sessions to the holy Brahma. I should be visiting the Brahma shrine soon to ask for some New Year blessings! (How time flew by so quick, I have just realized that the New Year 2025 has just arrived, so Happy New Year to all bloggers.)
My friends invited me to a Christmas lunch to avoid the crowds around the end of the year. But it turned out that the traffic was rather heavy before Christmas Day as most people had the same idea of having their meetings with friends earlier so they could take long holidays during the official holidays. I arrived early at the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel so I walked around the hotel to observe how the place has changed over the years.
To my delight, the overall impression and atmosphere of the hotel were still very warm and easygoing without any drastic changes. It was nice to come back to my old favorite hotel with the same Thai restaurant and Danish bakery in the basement. I could walk around while reminiscing about the nostalgic past of good times with friends. The old tables and chairs reminded me of lunch time and coffee breaks with friends years ago. There was a big pot of pink and white orchids in the basement foyer.
The classic and grand design of this hotel would always calm me down. The space gave me a sense of freedom to fly high into the sky. The neatly designed garden and small fish pond on the ground floor made the hotel very warm and welcoming. The staff would let guests roam around freely though I could see security guards standing unobtrusively at various spots. Years ago, this hotel was in the middle of a fierce demonstration and clashes among different groups of protesters and troops of police force. The staff did a good job in keeping the hotel from being vandalised and attacked by angry protesters.
The Brahma Shrine had witnessed all the violent episodes around the intersections and the main road. That stretch of the intersection was turned into a camp site for leftist protesters and hired mobs for several months. That was sadly a bloody episode in Thai political and historic developments. Soldiers had to be pulled out as specially trained mobs starting to use guns and explosives. Several gas tanks were prevented from being detonated along pedestrian side walks near the famous school in the area.
That was a black day in our painful history on which several innocent bystanders were shot to inflame the tense situation. Later on, a big fire was set on a big department store opposite the hotel. That day the sky of Bangkok was filled with black smoke the whole day. It was the day Bangkok was burned down in several places as the mobs retreated towards the suburbs. I wondered how the management of this old hotel could persuade the protesters and hired mobs to leave the place untouched. My friend told me that the owners were related to those political backers of the protesters. The management even hired some protesters to look after the hotel! The burning department store’s owners were thought to be sympathetic towards the ruling conservatives!
Walking around this old hotel brought back lots of memories of my good times and the bad times of Thai political history. There were lots of superstitious stories concerning bad things which had happened around this famous intersection of Bangkok. But the new generations of youngsters wouldn’t be able to understand or see any relevance to their reality. I took photos of the Christmas decorations and garden design which gave me some ideas to improve my own garden later.
The Christmas tree was very nice and impressive with many shiny decorations. These brought back memories of good old days with my friends during cold white Christmas holidays in the countryside. How funny the mind could work back and forth mixing the past with present situation! I had to keep myself grounded in the present and got on with life. Looking at the watch and the traffic outside, I reckoned I had enough time to walk around as my friends would still be stuck in the heavy traffic.
I walked around the garden section twice to get all the interesting details of those green plants. That would be my next project to put more green pot plants in my garden (I hoped I would have the fund to buy nice big pots for my green foliage plants otherwise I had to use the plastic pots instead). The stability of this hotel gave me some hope about the future. If this hotel could survive the terrible time amidst burning and shooting spree, we should be able to sail through the impending rough time in the near future. We just had to be mindful and practical with positive thinking.
I checked out the restroom and was impressed that nothing had been change: the old tiles, antique mirrors, the brass knobs and classic interior designs. Modern buildings often had plastic looking gadgets and cheap materials which tended to chip and broken very easily. The older generations of designers and builders created work that would last and stand the test of time. Could friendships and relationships stand the test of hard times? What would it take to have a long lasting friendship? I seemed to be too reflective at the wrong time.
My old friends were very benevolent towards me as they were older and very wealthy. They seemed to like me a lot and would have lunch with me as a ritual of some sort. They were from an old world of aristocratic culture, old family with old wealth and connections. They were like a library of old knowledge and secret histories of high society. I did learn a lot from them; I reckoned they saw me as a connector of the old world with the brave new world of cryptocurrency and AI. The things I warned them often have them a minor heart ‘attack’ as I was very direct and straightforward. I told them to get some Bitcoin but the process was too complicated for them.
I checked out the price of buffet lunch at this hotel and was surprised that the price was much reduced. I used to enjoyed elaborate buffet lunch at this hotel quite often in the past. Nowadays the scale of the buffet has been scaled down a lot as fewer people seemed to go for buffet lunch. My friends told me the quality and choices had declined a lot as they weren’t making any money. So, things might change for the worse in the future; the buffet lunch might disappear altogether. But, hopefully something new would be found to satisfy customers. This old classic hotel’s location would ensure that the business could survive fierce competition from other new and super modern hotels.
Wishing you peace, good health and prosperity.
Stay strong and cheerful.
#wednesdaywalk hosted by @tattoodjay