Outcall massage at Asok
Asok is where the two rail lines cross, which makes it the best connected corner of Bangkok and the quickest address in the city for us to reach.
- Arrival
- 15 to 30 minutes
- Hours
- 24 hours, every day
- Therapists
- Licensed, named first
- From
- THB 900, pay after
Two rail lines cross here. Nowhere else in Bangkok is quicker for us to reach.
Asok is a junction rather than a neighbourhood. Sukhumvit Road runs east to west through it and Asoke Montri Road, which is Sukhumvit Soi 21, runs north from the same crossing. BTS Asok sits above the intersection and MRT Sukhumvit sits underneath it, and that combination is the only place on the Sukhumvit line where the elevated and underground networks meet.
What Asok books most
Ordered by what people here actually choose, rather than by our menu. Every one is worked on your own bed with sheets and oil the therapist brings with her.
Deep tissue massage
Slower and heavier than an oil massage, aimed at the knots underneath rather than the surface. Say the word at any point and she eases off.
DetailsOffice syndrome massage
Targeted work on the neck, shoulders and upper back for people who sit at a desk all day. The one to book if your pain has a laptop-shaped cause.
DetailsAromatherapy massage
The same slow work as an oil massage, with a scented blend chosen for what you need. Lemongrass to wake up, lavender to sleep. Most people book this one at night.
DetailsRelaxing oil massage
Long, even strokes with warm unscented oil. The most straightforward thing on the menu, and the one to pick if you simply want the tension gone.
DetailsTraditional Thai massage
Stretching and acupressure along the body's energy lines, worked through clothing without oil. Firm, and on tight muscles it can smart. Worked on your bed, so there is nothing to clear.
DetailsFour hands massage
Two therapists working on you at once, in time with each other. Strange for about a minute, then very hard to think about anything at all.
DetailsThe practical result is a square kilometre with more hotel rooms, serviced apartment units and office desks packed into it than anywhere else along the road. Terminal 21 occupies one corner, office towers occupy the others, and the buildings behind them on Soi 19, Soi 21 and Soi 23 are almost all accommodation of one kind or another.
For an outcall service this is the easiest place in Bangkok to work. Everything is a known building with a staffed lobby, the therapist can reach it on either rail line, and we quote a shorter arrival window here than for any other district we cover. Fifteen to thirty minutes is normal and it holds most of the day, which is unusual anywhere on Sukhumvit.
What Asok is not is a place people live in for years. The bookings here are overwhelmingly short stays, and the page below is written for someone who has checked in this week rather than someone who has been in the building since 2019. If you do live here, the Sukhumvit page covers the residential side of the road in more depth and will be the more useful read.
Why arrival is quicker here than anywhere else
Two reasons, and neither is distance. The first is that a therapist coming to Asok has a choice of routes. Almost every other district on our list is reachable on one line, so a delay on that line is a delay on your booking. Here the Sukhumvit and Blue lines both stop at the crossing, and if one is disrupted the other is not.
The second is that the buildings are close to the stations. A tower on Soi 19 or Soi 23 is a three minute walk from the concourse. Compare that with Thong Lo, where the station is at the mouth of the soi and the condominium can be twenty minutes further on foot.
The exception is the intersection itself between four and seven on a weekday, which is one of the worst pieces of road in Bangkok. That matters if a therapist is arriving by car, and it is precisely why she usually is not. For central Asok addresses the rail route is faster and we use it, which is also why a downpour changes our estimate here far less than it changes anyone driving through the same junction.
Fifteen to thirty minutes, and it holds through the day rather than only when the roads are quiet.
The towers, and what the lobby will do
Asok accommodation splits into three types and each has a different front desk. International chain hotels around the intersection run a written visitor procedure, which usually means identification left at reception and a call up to the room. It is consistent and it is quick.
Chain hotels
Serviced apartments and aparthotels, of which there are a great many on Soi 21 and the sois behind it, are the most relaxed. They exist for people staying weeks or months and having visitors is simply normal.
Serviced apartments
Residential condominiums here run a lobby desk with a visitor book. That is the type most likely to want you to answer the intercom before anyone goes up, so it helps if we have a phone number that is actually switched on. What none of these buildings will do is ask what the appointment is for, and if you would rather skip the exchange altogether, meeting her in the lobby is completely ordinary.
Booking around a working day
Asok runs on a business rhythm and the demand curve here is sharper than in any residential district. Very little happens between nine in the morning and five in the afternoon, because the guests are in meetings. From six the phone starts, and between nine at night and one in the morning it is the busiest stretch of our week.
If you are here for two or three nights and you know you want a treatment, the useful move is to book the slot when you land rather than when you finish work. Evening slots on Thursday and Friday do run out, and an hour of notice is worth more here than anywhere else on the line.
Early mornings are quiet and available, which surprises people. A seven o clock booking before a nine o clock meeting is entirely possible and the therapist will be there. The same is true of the gap between checkout and an afternoon flight, and a great many Asok bookings happen in exactly that window.
What Asok books, and why it skews the way it does
Deep tissue and office syndrome lead here
Deep tissue and office syndrome sell better here than anywhere else we cover, and they sell to people who have been sitting in an aeroplane seat and then a meeting room for three days running. Neck, shoulders and the upper back are what gets asked for, by name, more often than not.
Aromatherapy, booked late
Aromatherapy is the other half of the pattern and it is a late booking almost every time. The guest has finished dinner, has an early start, and wants to be asleep by midnight. That is what the scented blend is for and it is what we recommend when someone cannot decide.
Why traditional Thai underperforms
Traditional Thai underperforms here relative to the rest of the road, for a straightforward reason. Business hotel rooms are efficient rather than large, and the floor stretch needs about two metres by one of clear carpet. Plenty of rooms at this end have it, but plenty do not, and the treatment gets swapped at the door more often than we would like. Ask us first and we will tell you honestly.
Therapists who cover Asok
Every one of them trained in Thailand and holds a Ministry of Public Health licence. You get told who is coming before they knock.
Where Asok stops and somewhere else starts
The name gets stretched, so it is worth saying where we draw it. Going west, Asok runs to about Soi 15, after which the hotels start belonging to Nana. Going east it reaches Soi 24, and beyond that the malls make it Phrom Phong. Northward along Asoke Montri it runs as far as the Petchaburi junction, where it becomes Makkasan and then Rama 9.
West and east
None of that changes your price or whether we come. It changes which page is written for you, and if you are north of Petchaburi the Rama 9 and Huai Khwang pages will tell you more about your building type than this one will.
What it changes
The one boundary worth getting right is the Queen Sirikit side. The MRT continues one stop south to the convention centre and the buildings around it are a different proposition, quieter and more residential. We cover them, and a booking there behaves more like Khlong Toei than like Asok.
Soi 11, and why it does not behave like the rest of Asok
Soi 11 runs north off Sukhumvit between Nana and Asok, and although it sits inside what everyone calls Asok it works on a completely different clock from the towers around the intersection. It is worth its own section because a booking there behaves unlike one four hundred metres east.
The buildings
The soi is packed with mid-size hotels and design-led properties rather than the big chain blocks. Rooms tend to be smaller, ceilings lower and lifts slower, and a good number of the buildings sit behind a narrow frontage with no drop-off, so the last fifty metres are always walked. None of that affects the treatment, but it does affect the estimate.
The hours
Demand here peaks later than anywhere else we cover. The rest of Asok goes quiet around one in the morning; Soi 11 keeps booking until three and sometimes past it. If you are on this soi at two and wondering whether anyone is still working, the answer is yes and the wait is usually shorter than it would be at nine.
Getting in
Reception on Soi 11 is the most relaxed in the district by some distance. These are properties used to guests coming and going at odd hours, and in most of them a visitor walks through the lobby without being stopped at all. Where a desk does ask, it is a signature and nothing more.
Conference weeks, and the one time to book early
Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre is one MRT stop from the crossing, and when it runs a large event every hotel from Soi 12 to Soi 24 fills at once. Those weeks are the only time our Asok availability is genuinely tight, and they are worth knowing about because they do not follow the normal calendar.
The pattern is consistent. Delegates arrive on the Sunday or Monday, and the bookings cluster between nine and eleven at night for the three or four nights that follow. It is the same treatment mix as usual, weighted even harder toward neck and shoulder work, because a conference is a day spent sitting on a chair that was not designed for it.
If your stay overlaps one of those weeks, book the slot the day before rather than the hour before. Any other week in the year an hour of notice is plenty here, and we would rather tell you the difference than have you find out at eleven at night.
Coming straight from the airport
The Airport Rail Link ends at Phaya Thai, and the interchange most people make for Asok is at Makkasan onto the Blue line, which puts you at Sukhumvit station one stop later. If that is your route, the useful thing to know is that a booking made when you board at Suvarnabhumi is usually ready by the time you have checked in.
Taxis from the airport reach Asok on the expressway in about forty minutes outside the peak and considerably longer inside it. Book on the basis of when you expect to be in the room with your shoes off, not when the taxi expects to arrive, and add twenty minutes for the check-in queue at the larger hotels.
Everywhere we go in Asok
Find yours below. If it is not here we almost certainly still come, so send the building name and we will confirm in a minute.
Stations
- BTS Asok
- MRT Sukhumvit
- MRT Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre
- BTS Nana
- BTS Phrom Phong
- MRT Phetchaburi
- Airport Rail Link Makkasan
Streets and sois
- Sukhumvit Soi 21 (Asoke Montri)
- Soi 15
- Soi 16
- Soi 18
- Soi 19
- Soi 20
- Soi 22
- Soi 23
- Soi 12
- Ratchadaphisek Road
- Petchaburi Road
Landmarks
- Terminal 21
- Asok intersection
- Exchange Tower
- Interchange 21
- Sermmit Tower
- Robinson Sukhumvit
- Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre
- Benjakitti Park
- Srinakharinwirot University
Buildings we travel to
Listed as places we deliver to. We have no arrangement with any of them and nothing here should be read as one.
Hotels
- Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit
- Grande Centre Point Terminal 21
- Westin Grande Sukhumvit
- Radisson Blu Plaza Bangkok
- Holiday Inn Bangkok Sukhumvit
- Somerset Sukhumvit Thonglor
- Aloft Bangkok Sukhumvit 11
- Column Bangkok
Condominiums and residences
- Circle 11 Sukhumvit
- Ashton Asoke
- Edge Sukhumvit 23
- Noble Recole Sukhumvit 19
- The Room Sukhumvit 21
- Wind Sukhumvit 23
Who books in Asok
- Business travellers
- Two or three nights, in for meetings, booking after nine at night with an early start ahead.
- Conference delegates
- Queen Sirikit events fill the hotels here, and the bookings arrive in clusters when one finishes.
- Serviced apartment residents
- Relocations and month-long projects on Soi 21. The most straightforward buildings we visit.
- Layover guests
- One night between flights. Usually the shortest notice we get and usually the easiest to fill.
- Soi 11 late bookers
- The only pocket in the district still booking at three in the morning, and rarely waiting long for it.
- Couples on a short break
- Weekend arrivals in the larger rooms behind Soi 19 and Soi 23, almost always booking two therapists together.
Questions about Asok
- How quickly can someone actually be at my hotel in Asok?
- Fifteen to thirty minutes from confirmation is the normal range, and it holds for most of the day rather than only at quiet times. It is the shortest window we quote anywhere in Bangkok, and the reason is that two rail lines serve the crossing so a therapist is rarely far from one of them.
- Will a Sukhumvit business hotel let a therapist come up?
- The chain hotels around the intersection all have a written visitor policy and follow it. In practice that means identification at the desk and a call to your room to check you are expecting someone. Confirm it and she comes up. Nobody will ask what the appointment is for.
- Is the Asok traffic going to delay my booking?
- Rarely, because the therapist is usually not in it. The intersection is genuinely one of the worst in the city between four and seven, but central Asok addresses are quicker to reach by rail and that is how we route them.
- Can I book before a meeting rather than after one?
- Yes, and mornings here are wide open. Seven and eight o clock slots are almost always available at short notice, which is the opposite of the evening. The same goes for the gap between checking out and leaving for the airport.
- Is my room big enough for traditional Thai?
- It needs nothing from the room at all. We work the stretching on your bed like the rest of the menu, so the efficient business hotel rooms at this end take it exactly as the generous ones do. Tell us the hotel anyway, because at this end of Sukhumvit it is the lifts and the lobby that decide the arrival window.
- I am staying near Queen Sirikit rather than the crossing. Same thing?
- We cover it on identical terms, but it behaves differently. That pocket is quieter and more residential, arrival runs a little longer, and the buildings are more likely to be condominiums with a visitor book than hotels with a front desk.
- How late can I book on Soi 11?
- Later than anywhere else in the district. The towers around the intersection tail off around one in the morning, while Soi 11 keeps going until three and occasionally beyond. The properties on that soi are used to guests at odd hours and reception rarely stops anyone, so a two in the morning booking there is routine rather than exceptional.
- Do I need to give a room number when I book?
- The hotel name and your own phone number are enough to start. She will ask for the room when she is in the lobby, or you can send it in the same message and skip that step. What we do need is a number you will actually answer, because a confirmation call that rings out is the single most common reason a booking runs late here.
- Is there a surcharge for a booking at three in the morning?
- No. The treatment costs the same at three as it does at three in the afternoon, and the price you are quoted when you book is the price she asks for at the end. Nothing is taken in advance and there is no deposit at any hour.
Near Asok
Sukhumvit
The road, not a district. Fifteen kilometres of it, so the soi number decides everything.
Nana
The oldest hotel stock on the road, short sois, and the hospital that keeps people here for weeks at a time.
Phrom Phong
The Emporium end. Japanese families, the deepest daytime demand on the line.
Khlong Toei
The port and the market on one side, brand new Rama 4 towers on the other.
Thong Lo
One soi, two and a half kilometres deep. How far up it you live is the whole booking.