I have just landed. When should I book for?

Book from the train rather than the terminal, and give yourself an hour from when you expect to be in the room. Immigration and baggage are the unpredictable parts, not the journey, and check-in always takes longer than planned.

Should I book the morning of my flight or the night before?

The night before, almost always. A treatment two hours before a train to the airport is a rushed hour spent watching the clock. If it has to be the day itself, take the sixty rather than the ninety and tell us your train time.

What phone number should I give you?

One that works in Thailand and receives calls, not just messages over hotel wifi. It is the single most common problem with bookings made by people who arrived today, and it is the difference between a therapist finding you and a therapist standing in a lobby.

I land after midnight. Is a treatment that night a good idea?

Usually not. The airport train stops running, so a late arrival means a taxi and a considerably longer journey than expected. Book the following morning instead. It will be a much better hour than one taken at two in the morning after a queue at the taxi rank.

Is the room by the station big enough for traditional Thai?

Worth checking. The hotels immediately around the interchange are mid-range and functional rather than generous, and the floor stretch needs roughly two metres by one of clear space. Give us the hotel name and we will tell you before you commit.

I am staying on Soi Rang Nam. Any difference?

It is one of the easier pockets here. The hotels along that soi have relaxed front desks and most will not stop a visitor at all. The soi itself is narrow and permanently busy, so she will usually walk the last hundred metres, and it stays lively later than the main road which makes a midnight booking straightforward.

I have a long flight ahead. What should I ask for?

Work on the legs and lower back rather than the shoulders. You are about to sit still for twelve hours, and that is where it will be felt. Most people ask for shoulders by default, which is the right answer after a flight and the wrong one before it.

Massage Phaya Thai | Outcall Therapist, Airport Rail Link and Phaya Thai Road

Where the airport train ends. The first address in the city for a lot of people.

Phaya Thai is the junction where Phaya Thai Road crosses Phetchaburi, and its defining feature is transport. The Airport Rail Link from Suvarnabhumi terminates here, the BTS runs through, and the two interchange directly, which makes it the main overland gateway into the city from the eastern airport.

Cold-pressed coconut oil rather than the standard blend. Lighter on the skin, absorbs rather than sitting on top, and it is what most Thai therapists use on themselves.

Details

That gives the district a population unlike its neighbours. People arriving with luggage, people leaving for a flight, and a cluster of hotels and serviced apartments that exist precisely because this is where the train stops.

The second feature is medical. Several substantial private hospitals sit in and around this district, and with them come the clinics, pharmacies and patient accommodation that follow a hospital anywhere. A meaningful share of the people staying here are doing so for treatment rather than for tourism.

Beyond those two things it is an ordinary and rather old part of Bangkok. Commercial frontage on the main roads, older apartment blocks behind, universities nearby, and a long-standing residential population in buildings that predate the rail lines by decades.

For us it is a straightforward district with one distinctive booking pattern: the arrival treatment and the departure treatment, at hours that follow flight schedules rather than office ones, which is why this page spends most of its length on timing.

The arrival booking, and getting the timing right

A large share of what we do here is somebody who landed at Suvarnabhumi a couple of hours ago, took the train to the end of the line, checked into a hotel by the station and wants the flight worked out of their back. It is a good instinct and there is a right way to time it.

Book from the train rather than from the terminal. The unpredictable part of an arrival is immigration and baggage, not the journey, and by the time you are actually on the Airport Rail Link the remaining timing is reliable.

Give yourself an hour from when you expect to be in the room. Check-in queues, a shower, and finding your way around a new hotel all take longer than anyone plans for, and a therapist waiting in a lobby while you are still at reception suits nobody.

For a long-haul arrival, the treatment that helps most is a straightforward oil massage rather than anything deep. Twelve hours in a seat produces stiffness and swelling rather than knots, and heavy pressure on a body that has just been immobile for half a day is not what it needs.

Book from the train, not from the airport. Immigration is the part that runs late.

The departure booking, and the day of the flight

The other half of the pattern is people leaving, and this one is more often got wrong than the arrival.

The evening before is almost always better than the morning of. A treatment two hours before a train to the airport is a rushed hour with one eye on the clock, and the benefit of it is largely gone by the time you have carried a bag through two terminals.

If it has to be the day itself, take the sixty rather than the ninety and book it early enough that you are not watching the time. Tell us your train and we will make sure the treatment ends with room to spare rather than running to the full hour.

Late checkout changes this usefully. If your room is yours until four and your flight is at nine, the middle of the afternoon is an excellent slot and one of the quietest of the day in this district.

For a long flight ahead, ask for work on the legs and lower back rather than the shoulders. Sitting still for twelve hours is what is coming, and that is where it will be felt.

The hospitals, and booking around treatment

Several private hospitals sit in this district and a share of the people staying here are patients or the families who came with them. That is a different booking and it deserves handling as one.

Tell us what happened

Tell us the procedure and the date. Recent surgery, a healing wound, a cannula site, chemotherapy, blood-thinning medication or blood pressure that is not under control all change what a therapist should do, and none of them are visible to her.

Usually it is fine

In most cases the treatment goes ahead with the affected area avoided and the pressure well down. That is an ordinary adjustment and nobody will find the request awkward.

Sometimes it is not

In some cases the right answer is to wait, and we will say so rather than take the booking. If your doctor has given you a date after which soft tissue work is fine, book from that date rather than before it.

For relatives

For accompanying relatives none of that applies. Weeks in a hospital chair produces exactly the neck and upper back complaint that office syndrome was designed for, even though no office was involved.

What Phaya Thai books

Oil massage, for arrivals

Straight oil massage leads here and the arrival pattern is why. Somebody off a long flight wants even, unhurried work rather than deep pressure, and this is the district where that request is most common.

Deep tissue and office syndrome from residents

Deep tissue and office syndrome come from the resident and student population rather than the travellers, and they follow the ordinary weekday evening pattern of any residential area.

Aromatherapy before an early flight

Aromatherapy is the night-before-a-flight treatment. An early departure means an early alarm, and the scented blends are what we recommend for getting to sleep in a hotel room when you have to be up at four.

Traditional Thai, and the room question

Traditional Thai needs no checking on before booking. The hotels immediately around the station are mid-range and the rooms are functional, and it makes no difference at all: the stretching is worked on the bed, so a functional room takes it exactly as a generous one would.

North and south of the junction

The district changes character quite sharply depending on which side of the junction you are, and it affects both the buildings and the arrival time.

By the station

Immediately around the station is the transport pocket: hotels, serviced apartments and the buildings that serve people with luggage. Quickest to reach and most of our work here.

South toward Ratchathewi

Southward along Phaya Thai Road it becomes older and more commercial, heading toward Ratchathewi and eventually the Siam area. Mixed buildings, some quite old, and a longer walk in from the station.

North toward Ari

Meet all 40 therapists

Booking with luggage and no fixed address yet

People book from this district before they have properly arrived more than anywhere else, so it is worth setting out how to do that without it going wrong.

Send the hotel name rather than the address. You may not have the address, we can look it up, and the hotel name is unambiguous.
Give a time rather than asking for the soonest. The soonest is rarely what you want when you have not checked in yet.
Send a phone number that works in Thailand. This is the one that catches people out. A number that only receives messages over hotel wifi is not much use to a therapist standing in a lobby.
If your plans change on the train, tell us then rather than on arrival. Moving a booking later is easy and costs nothing; moving it earlier is harder.
If you have not booked accommodation yet, wait until you have. We need a room to come to, and a decision made in a station concourse is not one to hurry.

The Airport Rail Link, and what it means for us

The line from Suvarnabhumi terminates here and it is the reason this district exists in its current form. For a booking it matters in two ways that are worth knowing.

The first is that it makes this a genuinely fast address to reach at unusual hours. The interchange means a therapist has several routes in, and the district is well served late in a way that most places this far from the centre are not.

The second is that the line does not run all night. Once it stops, the airport connection goes with it, which affects you rather than us: an arriving passenger after the last train is taking a taxi and will get here considerably later than they expect.

If you are landing after midnight, book for the following morning rather than for the small hours. It will be a better treatment than one taken at two in the morning after an hour in an airport taxi queue.

Soi Rang Nam, and the pocket behind the monument

Soi Rang Nam runs off the main road between Phaya Thai and Victory Monument, and it is a distinct pocket worth describing separately because a good number of our bookings here come from it.

The soi itself

It is a short, busy soi lined with restaurants, small hotels and apartment blocks, and it has a long-standing Middle Eastern and South Asian community with the food and grocers that go with it.

The hotels on it

Several mid-range hotels sit along it and they are among the most relaxed front desks in this part of the city. A visitor is generally not stopped at all, and the ones that do ask want nothing more than a signature.

Getting in

The soi is narrow and permanently busy with parked cars and delivery bikes, so a vehicle moves slowly along it. The last hundred metres are quicker on foot and that is usually how she will arrive.

After dark

It stays lively late, later than the main road does, which makes a midnight booking here more straightforward than the surrounding district would suggest.

Where Phaya Thai ends

Southward along the road it becomes Ratchathewi within a few hundred metres and then runs down toward Siam, and those pages cover the older commercial stretch better than this one.

Eastward along Phetchaburi it heads toward Makkasan and Rama 9, past the expressway, and the character turns to larger roads and newer development.

Westward it reaches toward the Victory Monument circle, which is a short distance and a completely different sort of place, busy with buses and minivans and covered on its own page.

Northward the road runs up through Sanam Pao to Ari, and the low-rise residential character starts almost immediately once you are past the hospital cluster and the last of the tall buildings.

Everywhere we go in Phaya Thai

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 Phaya Thai
Airport Rail Link Phaya Thai
BTS Victory Monument
BTS Ratchathewi
MRT Phetchaburi
BTS Sanam Pao

Streets and sois

Phaya Thai Road
Phetchaburi Road
Soi Rang Nam
Soi Phaya Thai 2
Ratchawithi Road
Sri Ayutthaya Road
Phahonyothin Road

Landmarks

Airport Rail Link terminus
Phyathai 1 Hospital
Rajavithi Hospital
Victory Monument
King Power Rangnam
Suan Pakkad Palace
Ramathibodi 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

Pullman Bangkok King Power
Eastin Hotel Makkasan
Asia Hotel Bangkok
Bangkok City Hotel
Golden Tulip Sovereign Hotel
Century Park Hotel

Condominiums and residences

Ideo Q Victory
Ideo Q Ratchathewi
Lumpini Suite Petchaburi
The Line Phahonyothin Park
Baan Klang Krung Siam Pathumwan

Who books in Phaya Thai

Arrivals from Suvarnabhumi: Off a long flight, checked into a hotel by the station, and wanting even unhurried work rather than deep pressure.
Departing passengers: The night before a flight rather than the morning of, and aromatherapy chosen for an early alarm.
Hospital patients and families: Several private hospitals nearby. Detailed bookings, gentle treatments, and occasionally an honest no.
Long-standing residents: Older apartment blocks behind the main roads. Weekday evenings and the ordinary residential pattern.
Students and university staff: The western side of the district. Tighter budgets, later hours, and the sixty minute treatment almost every time.

Questions about Phaya Thai

I have just landed. When should I book for?: Book from the train rather than the terminal, and give yourself an hour from when you expect to be in the room. Immigration and baggage are the unpredictable parts, not the journey, and check-in always takes longer than planned.
What treatment is best straight off a long flight?: A straightforward oil massage rather than anything deep. Twelve hours in a seat produces stiffness and swelling rather than knots, and heavy pressure on a body that has just been immobile for half a day is not what it needs.
Should I book the morning of my flight or the night before?: The night before, almost always. A treatment two hours before a train to the airport is a rushed hour spent watching the clock. If it has to be the day itself, take the sixty rather than the ninety and tell us your train time.
I am here for hospital treatment. Can I book?: Often, and it depends on what was done and when. Tell us the procedure and the date. Usually the treatment goes ahead with the affected area avoided and the pressure right down. Occasionally the honest answer is to wait, and we will say so rather than take the booking.
What phone number should I give you?: One that works in Thailand and receives calls, not just messages over hotel wifi. It is the single most common problem with bookings made by people who arrived today, and it is the difference between a therapist finding you and a therapist standing in a lobby.
I land after midnight. Is a treatment that night a good idea?: Usually not. The airport train stops running, so a late arrival means a taxi and a considerably longer journey than expected. Book the following morning instead. It will be a much better hour than one taken at two in the morning after a queue at the taxi rank.
Is the room by the station big enough for traditional Thai?: Worth checking. The hotels immediately around the interchange are mid-range and functional rather than generous, and the floor stretch needs roughly two metres by one of clear space. Give us the hotel name and we will tell you before you commit.
I am staying on Soi Rang Nam. Any difference?: It is one of the easier pockets here. The hotels along that soi have relaxed front desks and most will not stop a visitor at all. The soi itself is narrow and permanently busy, so she will usually walk the last hundred metres, and it stays lively later than the main road which makes a midnight booking straightforward.
I have a long flight ahead. What should I ask for?: Work on the legs and lower back rather than the shoulders. You are about to sit still for twelve hours, and that is where it will be felt. Most people ask for shoulders by default, which is the right answer after a flight and the wrong one before it.

A therapist to your door in Phaya Thai

Message us with the building name and a time. Nothing is taken up front, and you pay the therapist when she has finished.

WhatsApp LINE

What Phaya Thai books most

Relaxing oil massage

Aromatherapy massage

Deep tissue massage

Office syndrome massage

Traditional Thai massage

Coconut oil massage