If sleaze is the disease in Bangkok, then the Atlanta is
the hotel with the cure. A sign out front states “Sex
Tourists Not Welcome,” and postings inside remind guests
of “ZERO TOLERANCE for sex tourists, trouble-makers,
possessors and users of drugs, and for all illegal and nefarious
activities.” Next door is Bangkok’s Calvary Baptist
Church with Sunday services in English, Thai, Nepali, and
Burmese, and a Korean Bible Study on Saturday nights.
Roger Le Phoque, long-time resident of the Atlanta and unofficial
spokesperson, says the hotel has no relation to the church,
although the impression is of an enclave of prim decency just
a short distance from the less wholesome activities at Nana
Plaza. “This is the place you are looking for –
if you know it. If you don’t, you’ll never find
it,” says a second sign out front. That may have some
esoteric meaning, or it may just mean few Bangkok visitors
ever unintentionally stumble on the Atlanta, way at the end
of Soi 2 off Sukhumvit Road.
The hotel was opened in 1952 by German chemical engineer Max
Henn and his then wife, the daughter of an aristocratic Thai
family. The hotel’s Web site at http://theatlantahotel.bizland.com/
says the interior is based on European theatre set designs
of the 1920s and 1930s – and the lobby does have the
art deco hotel decor of the great age of travel between the
two world wars. The building was first intended, though, as
the premises of the Atlanta Chemical Co. Henn only reluctantly
accepted hospitality as the better business. Travelers to
Bangkok kept requesting bed space on the top floor of his
factory, and finally the American ambassador requested accommodations
for American military cartographers mapping Thailand. Dutch
colonial administrators leaving Indonesia followed and the
Atlanta was born.
The Atlanta claims the first hotel swimming pool in Thailand,
constructed in 1954, as well as the first children’s
swimming pool, constructed in 1957. In those days it was considered
a luxurious hotel, and during the early stages of the Vietnam
War it was the R&R hotel choice of top American brass,
including Gen. Westmoreland. Later, other facilities were
in built in Bangkok for the officers, and the hotel became
an R&R stop for ordinary GIs. Then a long decline began
in the late 1960s that finally left it a den of hippies and
drug addicts and their Thai girlfriends.
A stricter regime was installed when Charles Henn, son of
the founders, returned from university in the UK in the early
1980s to be dismayed at the squalor. He kicked out the drug
users, cleaned up the hotel, and if not returning the hotel
to its former glory, turned it into a quirky family hotel
that meets the approval even of pre-teen daughters, according
to a Canadian father who overheard me talking with Le Phoque.
After an initial stay at the hotel and then a tour of Thailand,
the Canadian family’s return to the Atlanta had “felt
like coming home,” he said, and the daughter’s
remark was that she felt “instantly comfortable”
at the Atlanta, most likely due to the cats in the lobby and
turtles in the garden.
Strangely, the hotel does have a familiar, homey air, and
reminds me of some of the former military hostels that served
as inexpensive hotels in the 1960s and 1970s in Taiwan. None
of them resembled the Atlanta in architecture or décor,
but some shared quality called those hostels in Taiwan to
mind. Call it R&R chic. Call it mid-20th-century CIA safe-house
charm. Whatever it is, it’s different, and the Atlanta
has done a good job of preserving it.
The Atlanta is at 78 Soi 2 Sukhumvit Road. Single rooms start
at 450 THB a night, family rooms at 1,300 THB. Reservations
should be made one to two weeks in advance by fax, according
to Le Phoque. The telephone number is 66 2 252 6069; the fax
number is 66 2 656 8123.
