Outcall massage at Chidlom
Chidlom is two districts sharing a station. Ploenchit Road at the front is loud and commercial; Langsuan behind it is the quietest expensive street in the city.
- Arrival
- 20 to 35 minutes
- Hours
- 24 hours, every day
- Therapists
- Licensed, named first
- From
- THB 900, pay after
Turn off Ploenchit into Langsuan and the noise stops within fifty metres.
Chidlom station sits over Ploenchit Road, roughly between Siam and Ploenchit proper, and the district around it splits cleanly in two the moment you leave the main road.
What Chidlom 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.
Aromatherapy 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.
DetailsDeep 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.
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.
DetailsCouples massage
Two therapists, same room, at the same time, both of you finishing together. Tell us what the room has and we will arrange the second place to lie.
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.
DetailsOn the road itself is Central Chidlom, one of the oldest and largest department stores in Bangkok, along with office buildings, a hospital and the commercial frontage that comes with a major thoroughfare. It is busy, it is noisy and it is well served.
Turn south into Langsuan and it changes within fifty metres. Langsuan Road runs down toward Lumphini Park between low-rise luxury condominiums, embassy residences, old houses behind walls and a small number of discreet hotels. It is leafy, it is quiet, and it is some of the most expensive residential land in Thailand.
The two halves book completely differently. Ploenchit Road is offices and shoppers; Langsuan is long-term residents with money, many of them foreign, many of them here for years rather than nights.
For us this is a district where the arrival window depends almost entirely on how far down Langsuan you are. At the top by the station it is among the quickest addresses in Bangkok. At the park end it is a genuine ten minutes further.
Langsuan, and why the far end is different
Langsuan runs roughly a kilometre from Ploenchit Road down to the northern edge of Lumphini Park, and there is no rail station at the far end. Everything below the first few hundred metres is reached on foot or on the road.
That produces the same effect as Thong Lo on a smaller scale. A building at the top of Langsuan is a two minute walk from Chidlom station. A building at the bottom is fifteen minutes further on foot, or a slow crawl by car in the evening because the road is narrow and lined with parked vehicles.
So the useful thing to tell us is the building name plus roughly how far down you are. Most of the towers here are individually named and reasonably well known, but the difference between the third building and the twentieth is real and we would rather quote it accurately.
The sois off Langsuan complicate it slightly. Several short lanes run east and west off the main road, and a building on one of those can be another few minutes in from a road that is already some way in. Mention the soi if there is one.
One road, one kilometre, and no station at the bottom of it. The house number is the estimate.
The buildings, and the security that comes with them
Langsuan has some of the most security-conscious residential buildings in Bangkok, which is entirely reasonable given who lives in them and presents no difficulty at all once it is known about.
Low-rise luxury
The older low-rise blocks are gracious, quiet buildings with a small staffed lobby and a guard who knows every resident. A visitor is registered and announced, and the whole thing takes two minutes.
The newer towers
The newer high-rises run a full system: visitor registration, identification held at the desk, card-controlled lifts, and frequently a call to the unit before anyone moves. Nothing here is unusual, it is simply thorough.
Embassy residences
Embassy and diplomatic residences are the strictest and occasionally require a name to be left in advance. If yours is one of those, tell us at the time of booking rather than when she is at the gate.
Ploenchit Road blocks
The blocks on Ploenchit Road itself are ordinary commercial buildings with ordinary reception desks and are the quickest addresses in the district.
What Chidlom books
Aromatherapy, and the resident pattern
Aromatherapy leads on Langsuan and it is a resident treatment rather than a hotel one, which is unusual. The customers are people who live here permanently, book every week or two, and have settled on the most pleasant thing on the menu rather than the most corrective.
Deep tissue from the office buildings
Deep tissue arrives from the Ploenchit Road side and behaves like any commercial district. Weekday evenings, neck and shoulders, and a customer who has been at a desk since morning.
Traditional Thai, which the apartments here take easily
Traditional Thai does well here, helped by who lives in the Langsuan flats. These are long-term households rather than short stays, and residents who have been in Thailand for years choose the stretching on preference and book it at the lengths the tradition assumes.
Four hands and couples on Langsuan
Four hands and couples are stronger in this district than almost anywhere, for the same reason. Large rooms, two people, and a resident population with the budget for an expensive hour.
Living here for years rather than nights
Langsuan has one of the highest concentrations of long-term foreign residents in the city, and a service relationship here works differently from a hotel one.
Set up a standing booking rather than asking each time. Give us the day, the hour and the therapist and we hold it. Over a multi-year posting this saves an enormous amount of messaging.
Tell us the building procedure once and it stays on file. The card lift, the guard who wants a name in advance, the side entrance that is easier after eight. None of it needs explaining twice.
Ask for the same therapist and expect to get her. In a district with this much repeat business the therapists covering it are consistent, and continuity makes a real difference by the third or fourth treatment.
Book for guests as readily as for yourself. Visitors staying with you or in a hotel nearby are straightforward, and we need a contact number for whoever will open the door rather than for you.
Say if you would prefer a particular language. Some of the team speak more than Thai and English, and in a district this international it is worth asking rather than assuming.
The park end, and the runners
Langsuan finishes at the northern edge of Lumphini Park, which puts a good number of residents within a few minutes of the biggest green space in central Bangkok and produces a small but consistent stream of sports bookings.
The pattern is the same as at Sala Daeng on the far side of the park. Runners with tight calves and hamstrings, cyclists with lower back complaints, and people using the outdoor gym who have discovered that the climate does most of the work.
The treatment is deep tissue, worked on the legs, and it is worth saying so explicitly. A therapist told only deep tissue will assume shoulders, because that is what the other ninety percent of this district asks for.
Timing is the usual advice: a few hours after exercise rather than immediately, and the evening of a morning run rather than straight afterward. Muscles that are still hot are not the best candidates for deep work.
Therapists who cover Chidlom
Every one of them trained in Thailand and holds a Ministry of Public Health licence. You get told who is coming before they knock.
Central Chidlom, and shopping as a cause of complaint
The department store on the corner is one of the largest in the country and it generates a specific and slightly comic category of booking that we see here and at Siam and nowhere much else.
A full day in a department store is several hours of walking on hard floors in air conditioning, usually carrying things, usually in shoes chosen for how they look. The result is feet, calves and lower back, and it is a real complaint even if it sounds like a soft one.
The treatment for it is a straightforward oil massage with time spent on the legs, and the mistake people make is booking sixty minutes and then asking for shoulders as well. There is not time for both, and the legs are what actually hurt.
It is also worth booking the evening rather than the middle of the day. A treatment followed by three more hours of shopping is money spent on nothing at all.
The hospital, and booking around treatment
Bumrungrad International sits a short walk north of this station, and while the Nana page covers the medical-stay pattern in depth, a share of that traffic stays on this side and books from the Ploenchit and Chidlom hotels instead.
If you are here for treatment or recovering from it, the same guidance applies. Tell us what has been done and when. Recent surgery, a healing wound, chemotherapy, blood-thinning medication or uncontrolled blood pressure all change what a therapist should do, and none of them are visible to her.
Most of the time the answer is that a treatment goes ahead with the affected area avoided and the pressure well down, which is an ordinary request rather than an awkward one. Occasionally the honest answer is to wait, and we would rather say so than take the booking.
For the relative who came with the patient there is no such restriction, and the office syndrome treatment is worth knowing about. Two weeks in a hospital chair produces exactly the neck and upper back complaint it was designed for, even though no office was involved.
Where Chidlom stops
This is a small district with four quite different neighbours, and the edges arrive quickly.
West to Siam
Westward along the road it becomes Ratchaprasong within a few hundred metres, at the point where the intersection and the big hotels begin.
East to Ploenchit
Eastward it becomes Ploenchit proper around Wireless Road, where the embassies start and the character turns formal.
South to the park
Southward, Langsuan ends at Lumphini Park. Across the park is Sala Daeng and the Silom district, which is a considerable walk rather than a short one.
North across the canal
Northward across the canal is Pratunam and the wholesale markets, which is a different world entirely and less than a kilometre away.
What this district asks about
Two questions come up here more than anywhere else, and both are about discretion rather than about the treatment.
The first is whether the building will make a fuss. It will not. Every one of these buildings deals with visitors constantly, a massage therapist arriving with a linen bag is unremarkable, and no member of staff will comment or ask what the appointment is for. The security here is thorough rather than intrusive.
The second is whether the same therapist can keep coming. Yes, and in this district it is the norm rather than the exception. Ask for her by name and with a day of notice she will almost always be the one who arrives.
On price, the answer is the same as everywhere: one list for the whole city, no premium for the address, nothing taken at the time of booking and payment at the end. Langsuan is the most expensive residential street in Bangkok and it makes no difference at all to what an hour costs.
Everywhere we go in Chidlom
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 Chit Lom
- BTS Ploen Chit
- BTS Ratchadamri
- BTS Siam
- MRT Lumphini
- MRT Silom
Streets and sois
- Ploenchit Road
- Langsuan Road
- Soi Somkid
- Soi Tonson
- Soi Langsuan 1
- Soi Langsuan 3
- Ratchadamri Road
- Sarasin Road
Landmarks
- Central Chidlom
- Lumphini Park
- Erawan Bangkok
- Bumrungrad International Hospital
- Mahatun Plaza
- Chidlom skywalk
- Police Hospital
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
- The Okura Prestige Bangkok
- Grande Centre Point Ploenchit
- Kempinski
- Hotel Indigo Bangkok Wireless Road
- The Athenee Hotel
- Novotel Bangkok Ploenchit Sukhumvit
Condominiums and residences
- The Residences at Sindhorn Kempinski
- Baan Sindhorn
- 185 Rajadamri
- The Park Chidlom
- Klass Langsuan
- Noble Ploenchit
- Life One Wireless
Who books in Chidlom
- Long-term Langsuan residents
- Multi-year postings in large apartments, held as a fixed weekly slot with one named therapist for the duration.
- Office workers on Ploenchit
- The commercial frontage. Weekday evenings, neck and shoulders, and a same-day booking.
- Lumphini runners
- The park end of Langsuan. Deep tissue worked on the legs rather than the back.
- Department store shoppers
- Feet, calves and lower back after a day on hard floors. Oil massage, and best booked for the evening.
- Couples in large apartments
- Two therapists at once, which the flats here take without anything being moved.
Questions about Chidlom
- How far down Langsuan do you come?
- The whole length of it, down to the park. Add about ten minutes to the station-end estimate if you are at the bottom. The road is narrow and lined with parked cars, so in the evening the last few hundred metres are slower than the distance suggests.
- My building has a card-controlled lift and a guard. Is that a problem?
- Not at all, and it is the norm on this street. She registers at the desk, leaves identification and somebody sends the lift or comes down. Tell us the procedure once and we keep it on file so it never has to be explained again.
- Will anybody at the building comment?
- No. These buildings handle visitors continuously and a therapist arriving with a linen bag is entirely unremarkable. The security here is thorough rather than nosy, and nobody will ask what the appointment is for.
- Can I have the same therapist every week?
- Yes, and in this district it is the norm. Set it up as a standing booking with a day, an hour and a name, and we will hold the slot rather than making you ask each week. It is also the most dependable way to keep the same person over a long posting.
- I run in Lumphini. What should I book?
- Deep tissue, and specify that you want it on the legs. Almost everybody else in this district asks for shoulders, so a therapist told only deep tissue will reasonably assume that is what you mean. Calves, hamstrings and hips are a different hour.
- I have been shopping all day and everything hurts. What is best?
- An oil massage with the time spent on your legs, and take the ninety if you can. The mistake here is booking sixty minutes and then asking for shoulders as well, because there is not time for both and it is the feet and calves that are actually complaining.
- Is there enough room for two therapists in a Langsuan apartment?
- Almost always. The flats on this street are large by any Bangkok standard, so a four hands or a couples booking works without anybody rearranging furniture. It is one of the better districts in the city for it.
- I am at Bumrungrad for treatment. Can I still book?
- Often, and it depends on the procedure and how recent it was. Tell us what was done and when. Usually the treatment goes ahead with the affected area left alone and the pressure well down. Sometimes the honest answer is to wait a while longer, and we would rather say that than take the money.
- Does an expensive address cost more?
- No. One price list covers the whole city with no premium for the building or the street. Langsuan is among the most expensive residential land in Thailand and it changes nothing at all about what an hour costs or what is taken up front, which is nothing.
Near Chidlom
Ploenchit
Embassies and Wireless Road. The most formal set of addresses in the city.
Ratchaprasong
The intersection. More hotel rooms within four hundred metres than anywhere in Thailand.
Siam
The retail interchange. Enormous footfall, almost nobody actually lives here.
Pratunam
The wholesale garment markets. Trade hours, canal boats, and traders who start at four.
Sala Daeng
The interchange at the top of Silom, and the Japanese business quarter behind it.