Around The World in a 60s Daze...: Hotel Atlanta, Haven in Bangkok

Dear Family and Friends,

When my multi-millionaire friend Nathan Maltz goes to Bangkok he stays at the Grand Millennium Suhkumvit, one of Bangkok's newest luxury hotels. The Grand Millennium defines opulence, billing itself as 'Bangkok's newest and hippest five star hotel'. It has four restaurants featuring Thai and International cuisine and two lounges. Room rates range from $150 to $600 per night.

Often when I am in Bangkok I stay at the Hotel Atlanta. The Atlanta has only one restaurant, room rates start at just over $16, and the 'suites' top out at just over $50.

Hotel Atlanta Foyer - from hotel's website

Down at the end of quiet Soi 2, 500 meters off raucous and raunchy Suhkumvit, the Hotel Atlanta is a haven for budget travelers wanting a bit of tranquility in Thailand. It has been reviewed by every budget travel guide for Asia and is surely the most written about hotel in all Asia. (So why not me?) The Atlanta was founded by German adventurer, anti-Nazi, spy, boat builder, arms merchant, and chemical engineer, Dr. Max Henn, in 1952; and its storied history is featured and extolled, with no sense of modesty, on framed newspaper clippings and pictures throughout the hotel. According to all the promotion material posted about, Dr. Henn had emigrated to Thailand in 1947 where he started the Atlanta Chemical Co. When he lost his contract to supply the US military with snake venom in 1952, he converted his bunker style pharmaceutical facility into a hotel to accommodate US military personnel.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, the Hotel Atlanta was the place to be, and to be seen, in Bangkok; it catered to the local elite as well as welcomed visiting dignitaries. In its heyday the hotel had two restaurants, the Rheinterrassen (Thailand’s first German restaurant with Thailand’s first imported German cooks and bakers, so claims the hotel), and the Continental, a white linen/dinner jacket establishment where Queen Ramphai, widow of King Rama VII, was a regular diner every Wednesday night. The hotel regularly hosted US General William Westmoreland, then the Supreme Commander of American forces in Vietnam, along with many other US Military Brass. A picture featured in the restaurant shows a youthful King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Rama IX, jamming with Louis Armstrong while an equally young George Herbert Walker Bush grins in the background.

In the early 70’s Dr. Henn and his wife lost interest in the hotel and it more or less ran on autopilot for the next fifteen years. When Dr. Charles Henn, son of the founder and senior fellow who teaches international law at the University of Birmingham’s graduate school, returned to Bangkok in 1986 he found to his horror the hotel “…was completely wrecked. The place was so run-down, it was full of the dregs of Western humanity, the worst type of sex tourists, and many of them were junkies as well”.

Dr. Henn Jr. set out to restore the Atlanta, not to its original glory, but in a style more in keeping with his values and views, claiming to be more in sympathy with the 19^th century or prewar Europe than he is with postwar Europe, let alone the 21^st Century. He evicted the undesirables and encouraged a more refined clientele. Printed on the back of ‘Number 1 of an indefinite set’ of coasters Dr. Henn is quoted

“The staff are nice; I am not – which is why the staff are nice. Anyone who expects me to be an obliging, hand-wringing sort of innkeeper will be sorely disappointed.”

The ‘restoration’ now complete, Hotel Atlanta is unquestionably one of the quirkiest hotels in the world and now continues to attract an odd assortment of travelers. The art deco, retro foyer (described by someone as being right out of Barton Fink) with red Naugahyde chairs, house cats splayed about, ceiling and floor fans, rotary telephone switchboard, black and white tile floor, and teak roll-top writing desks distracts one from the fact that hotel remains drab on the outside, and that the rooms are best described as Spartan. Clean, but Spartan with only a bed, a table and a safety deposit vault. However, the Atlanta is certainly the cheapest hotel in Bangkok with a swimming pool. And I might say very welcoming on a stifling hot day.

Without any sense of modesty, the management claims, amongst others of a long list, the following grand and trivial firsts and superlatives:

The first hotel swimming pool in Thailand (converted from the snake pit in 1954)
The first hotel children’s swimming pool in Thailand
The swimming pool filter and computerized water quality control are from Dinotech of Germany, the finest available
The oldest unaltered foyer in Thailand
The most photographed and filmed foyer in Thailand
Luxuriant tropical garden
The largest selection of western-made films relating to or filmed in East Asia
The Atlanta’s history, inimitable style and genteel character, and reputation have turned it into a Bangkok institution
The world’s first menu with serious and learned annotations (and protected by copyright)
The world’s largest selection of Thai vegetarian dishes
…and on and on.

The Rheinterrassen is long closed and the Continental restaurant is no more. In its place is a much more modest restaurant, yet one no less interesting, if not for the food which is excellent, then for the famous ‘serious and learned annotated’ menus, only three copies of which are available. And all copies differ from each other. This, apparently because menus have regularly been liberated from the restaurant and one would have to steal all three copies to get the full menu. The menus explain all this, and stress that the hotel has new copies in reserve, ones with even more tantalizing information such that, if the current copies are stolen, the immediate release of the reserve copies will make the stolen ones ‘laughable’.

Only registered guests are allowed into the restaurant (or anywhere in the hotel for that matter) unless special permission is obtained from the famous Anong who oversees the restaurant. Anong has been at the Atlanta since 1973 and claims to remember every guest who ever stayed there during her time. She is known to be quite cool to interlopers. I last stayed at the Atlanta two years ago, and then only for one or two nights. Before I checked in this time, Anong graciously permitted me to have lunch, greeting me with a big smile saying “Oh, I remember you”. The hotel claims Anong is to the Atlanta what Sam was to Rick’s.

The menus discuss Thai cooking in general, advise on order, presentation, and the rituals around dining; and they contain detailed descriptions of each course including a discussion of the ingredients, particularly the spices used. If the extensive menu doesn’t persuade you to eat there, everywhere it is noted ‘Le Patron mange ici’ as if that statement will make all the difference. Hey, who can resist? (Of course, although meat courses are offered, the opportunity to beat up on us non-vegetarians is not missed.)

All the while, diners are treated to classical music, show tunes or jazz softly playing in the background, The Lullaby of Broadway, You Can’t Take That Away From Me, Russ Colombo, or an early Frank Sinatra, crooning ballads. At noon the restaurant features original composition by Thailand’s King Bhumibol. Absolutely no pop music.

When you arrive at the Atlanta, down at the end of Soi 2, one small sign identifies the

‘Atlanta’

A second enigmatically states

‘This is the place you are looking for – if you know it. If you don’t you’ll never find it’

And a third, much more explicit sign, reads

‘Sex Tourists Not Welcome’

Perhaps the Atlanta's 'mission statement' explains their position best.

The Atlanta is an old-fashioned place of charm and genteel character in downtown Bangkok with the secluded and secure atmosphere of a private club and the facilities of a small resort for sleaze-free and wholesome tourism.

Run on conservative principles and imperiously heedless of fashions and trends, The Atlanta is untouched by pop culture and post-modern primitivism. Its style and atmosphere hark back to gentler and more cultivated times.

The Atlanta is popular with cultured occidentals, with writers, academics, artists, cinema & theatre and other professional people, with dreamers and innocuous eccentrics, and their families, who can afford to stay at more expensive places but choose to stay at The Atlanta.

The Atlanta is against sex tourism. Sex tourism is exploitative, socially damaging and culturally demeaning: those who want to buy sex should do so in their own country.

The Atlanta has a 'zero tolerance' policy with regard to trouble-makers and all illegal activities, including the use or possession of illicit drugs. Such miscreants are reported to the police without advance warning, without hesitation and without apology. Those who object to this policy, and those who wish to spend their time in Thailand whoring, indulging in alcohol abuse, drugs or other illegal activities should stay elsewhere.

Tourism is not about going on a rampage through other people's country: those who cannot go abroad without behaving badly should stay home.

In case one misses the sign 'SEX TOURISTS ARE NOT WELCOME' which hangs over the entrance, there are constant reminders of this inflexible policy posted throughout the hotel, for example:

'The Atlanta does not welcome sex tourists, sex-pats, bar-girls, rent-boys or catamites. The Atlanta is sleaze-free. No exception. No discussion. No apology.

(Catamites!? I had to look that one up.)

If more were needed to confirm its wooky credentials, two of the Atlanta’s permanent guests are Archie and Doris, two terrapins (turtles) that until a few years ago had the run of the hotel, trundling about the lobby and restaurant at will. They now live in the ‘luxuriant tropical garden’. Archie and Doris are named after Archibald Alexander Leach and Doris Mary von Kappelhoff, or as we better know them, Cary Grant and Doris Day.

To my knowledge, the Grand Millennium has never had royalty, or future US Presidents, or British Prime Ministers (Maggie Thatcher) stay with them. Merv Isert hasn’t stayed there either. And their menus are not protected by copyright. Nor does the Grand Millennium take any responsibility for their client’s deportment and behaviour. Not so the Atlanta. In the lobby prominently available is a 16 page booklet outlining all the ways that visitors to Thailand should conduct themselves. Specific advice and counsel is given on matters of haggling, hailing taxis, showing respect for the Thai Royalty and Buddhism, proper speech and conduct, cleanliness, dress, shopping, crossing streets, and of course, the evils of prostitution and how it must be avoided.

So there you have it. I have posted a few photos of The Atlanta on flickr. I apologize for the quality of them but they will give you some idea of the hotel. The link is as follows:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12380881@N05/sets/72157604336358038/

Regards to all.

Merv.