Top photo: The Mustang Blu
Soi Nana – the only hotbed of nightlife that doesn’t involve poles – was once a hub of traditional Chinese medicine. In recent years, it has seen a creative renaissance led by a wave of young bar, cafe and hotel owners who are building something special outside the malls of Sukhumvit and Silom.
Soi Nana is not just a hub for food and drink. Some of the once-ruined buildings that line the soi have found new life in the form of hotels and Airbnbs.
Nestled on the edge of Chinatown East Mustang Blu. Located on Maitri Chit Road, opposite Soi Nana, this lovely boutique hotel is an exciting addition to the area. The steady stream of Instagrammers it attracts every afternoon proves it.
But the cramped 900m² building that now houses the hotel wasn’t always such a popular destination. Built in the 1800s, it first housed a bank before being transformed into a seedy massage parlor six decades later. Then it fell into a state of disrepair that discouraged most developers.
“It took me about two years to discover this building,” said Ananda “Joy” Chalardcharoen, founder of The Mustang hotel chain, which includes a Phra Khanong property, The Mustang Nero.
Given the state she found the building in – weathered by the elements, littered with debris, darkened by concrete-covered windows – Joy knew she faced an uphill battle as she embarked on renovations which would take five months. But a clear purpose fueled his work.
“I was hoping my project would help improve this part of Bangkok,” Joy said.
She knocked down the partitions, the concrete covering the windows, the low ceiling boards – she repainted the columns and brought in vintage furniture or had it custom made to match the look of the original place. “We had to transport the window frames to Ayutthaya to refurbish them, and we had over 100.”
“People used to ask me why I chose this site because it’s on a T-junction (which is bad for Feng Shui) and functions as a massage parlour. But after the renovation, the questions I received were more like, “How did you manage to get this building? said Joy.
Another acclaimed boutique stay in Soi Nana is Baan Yok. Owned by Sudaporn “Pupe” Sae-ia and her Spanish husband Victor Hierro, this former Sino-Portuguese style boutique was born out of their love of interior design, as well as their familiarity with Airbnb.
“After we got married, my husband and I moved to Spain, where we had a big house with lots of vacant rooms. Airbnb was becoming more and more popular there, so we thought we should host [guests at our home]. When we came back to Thailand, we brought the concept with us,” she said.
With its mix of retro chinoiserie and cheap rent, Soi Nana turned out to be precisely the place they were looking for. “We fell in love with its unmistakably unique vibe,” she said.
Pupe’s talent for interior design helped the couple transform the century-old boutique into something bigger, as she painted the walls magenta, cream and jade and filled the space with furniture and artwork. vintage art.
“As we renovated more rooms, putting more of our aesthetic into them, it felt more like a home than a traditional hotel,” Pupe said. “[With it being like a house,] we named it after my grandfather, Yok. It’s the perfect name for it.
While most recognize Chinatown for its street food and wholesale shopping, its architecture is often overlooked. So said Karnchanit “Bua” Charoenyos, co-founder of Bahaothe bar reminiscent of Wong Kar-wai, which has two rooms on the second and third floors.
“Thai upper-middle-class air-conditioning junkies drive around town in their personal cars, usually in shopping malls, but they never drive down the street. It’s a problem. He leaves all the beautiful old architecture to rot [in obscurity],” she says. “But things are starting to change. Now more and more old buildings are being turned into cafes, bars and hotels. It’s refreshing to see.
Before Ba Hao rose to fame as a bar, with its Chinese-themed drinks and neon-lit look, Bua and his partners set out to create a contemporary Chinese inn that would allow younger generations of Thais and Chinese to experience an often ignored. It didn’t lack effort.
The building was an old rice mill and like so many others in the area had fallen into disrepair.
“Our approach to the renovation was like acupuncture: we carefully searched for the places that needed to be treated to improve the circulation of the workshop,” she said. “We fixed them while retaining the beauty of the existing structure – the ceiling, the stairs, the wooden floor.”
Elsewhere in Chinatown, there are signs that property developers can’t see past the kind of mega-projects that threaten to turn Bangkok into a replica of a Tier 1 Chinese city. But at least around Soi Nana, the preservation trend has taken hold, offering other entrepreneurs a plan to revitalize buildings that have architectural significance but lack formal heritage protection.
“Bangkok has a lot of beautiful abandoned buildings that should be preserved instead of demolished – they have so much potential,” Joy told us. “We should reduce new construction around the city and instead give new life to these old buildings.”
This story originally appeared in BK.
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