Outcall massage at Ratchaprasong
Ratchaprasong is the intersection where Bangkok concentrated its hotels, and there are more rooms within a few hundred metres of this corner than anywhere else in the country.
- Arrival
- 20 to 35 minutes
- Hours
- 24 hours, every day
- Therapists
- Licensed, named first
- From
- THB 900, pay after
More hotel rooms inside four hundred metres than anywhere else in Thailand.
Ratchaprasong is the junction where Ratchadamri Road crosses Rama 1 and Ploenchit, and it is the commercial centre of modern Bangkok. CentralWorld occupies one corner, Gaysorn and Amarin the others, and the Erawan Shrine sits at the crossing itself.
What Ratchaprasong 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
DetailsWhat matters for us is the hotels. Within a four hundred metre radius of this junction there is a density of five-star and upper-tier hotel rooms that exists nowhere else in Thailand, several of them very large properties with many hundreds of rooms apiece.
There is almost no residential accommodation. A handful of serviced apartments and a small number of older blocks tucked behind the malls, but the overwhelming majority of what we visit here is a hotel room occupied by somebody who arrived this week.
The skywalk is the other defining feature. An elevated walkway runs from Siam through this junction and on toward Chidlom, connecting the malls and several of the hotels directly, and it means the district functions at first floor level as much as at street level.
For us this is one of the most reliable addresses in Bangkok. Everything is a large named building, the desks are professional, and the arrival window barely shifts between the afternoon and the middle of the night.
The hotel density, and what it means for availability
Most districts in this city have a handful of hotels. Ratchaprasong has several very large ones stacked around a single crossroads, and the sheer volume of guests changes how availability works here.
For most of the year it makes no difference. An hour of notice gets you a therapist, the buildings are quick to reach, and the evening slots are no more contested than in any other central district.
From roughly November through February the picture changes. The hotels around this junction run close to capacity, the proportion of guests who want an in-room treatment does not fall, and the evening between eight and eleven becomes the single most contested window in the city. In those months a day of notice is genuinely worth having.
The same applies during any large event at the convention facilities nearby or a major holiday period. If the hotels are full, we are busy, and this is the one district where that is predictable enough to plan around.
Several thousand rooms inside a few hundred metres. In high season that is the one thing that affects your booking.
Finding a specific hotel among a dozen
This district is easy to reach and occasionally confusing to be precise about, purely because there is so much of everything within a short radius.
Name the hotel
The hotel name is the address and it is all we need. Every property here is large, individually named and well known, and there is no ambiguity about any of them.
Not the mall
The mall names are the thing to avoid. Behind CentralWorld or near Gaysorn covers a great deal of ground and several different buildings, and the shopping centres have multiple entrances on multiple levels.
The tower question
A few of the larger hotels have more than one tower or wing. If yours does, the wing plus the floor saves a few minutes at the lift lobby, in the same way a tower letter does out at On Nut.
Meeting downstairs
If you would rather meet in the lobby than have her come up, say so when you book. In properties this size the lobby is large enough that it is worth naming a spot, and reception will be entirely unbothered either way.
What Ratchaprasong books
Aromatherapy, the dominant treatment
Aromatherapy takes the largest share here by a comfortable margin and the reason is the guest profile. These are visitors in good rooms who are not treating an occupational injury, and the most pleasant hour on the menu is what they choose. It is booked late and it is chosen for sleep.
Traditional Thai, requested by visitors
Traditional Thai is second and is asked for by name more often than chosen from a list. People have come to Thailand and want the Thai treatment, and at this end of the market they tend to book it at ninety minutes or two hours rather than at the hour.
Oil massage after a day of shopping
Straight oil massage arrives from the shopping. Four malls within a few minutes of each other produces a great deal of walking on hard floors, and the complaint lands in the feet, calves and lower back rather than the shoulders.
Couples, and the holiday booking
Couples bookings are strong throughout the year and stronger in high season. Two therapists in one room, people here together rather than alone on business, and rooms with the space for it.
Booking around a shopping day
The commonest mistake in this district is timing, and it is the same one made at Siam a few hundred metres west.
Put the booking at the end of the day rather than the middle of it. An hour of work on your legs followed by four more in a shopping centre is money spent on very little, and this junction is built to keep you moving.
Assume you will be back later than planned. Shopping overruns, dinner overruns, and a therapist waiting in a lobby is nobody's idea of a good arrangement. Nine is a safer time than seven.
Take ninety minutes if you have been on your feet since morning. The legs alone will absorb half an hour before she reaches anything else.
Say that your feet and calves are the problem. Most of Bangkok books back and shoulder work, so a therapist will reasonably assume that unless told otherwise, and in this district she would frequently be wrong.
In high season, book a day ahead for anything between eight and eleven in the evening. That is the single most contested window in the city during those months.
The skywalk, and arriving above the traffic
The elevated walkway through this junction is one of the longest in Bangkok, running from Siam in the west through to Chidlom in the east and connecting several hotels and all four shopping centres directly.
For an arrival it removes the traffic from the equation almost entirely. The junction below is one of the busiest in the city and it makes very little difference to us, because the last part of the journey happens above it.
That is also why heavy rain barely registers here. A downpour that adds twenty minutes to a journey in most of Bangkok adds close to nothing along a covered walkway, which is worth knowing in the wet season.
The walkway is open long after the malls have closed, unlike the internal mall routes at Siam, so this advantage holds through the evening and into the night rather than disappearing at ten.
Therapists who cover Ratchaprasong
Every one of them trained in Thailand and holds a Ministry of Public Health licence. You get told who is coming before they knock.
The shrine, and the pedestrian crush
The Erawan Shrine sits at the corner of the junction and is one of the busiest religious sites in the city, visited continuously from early morning until late at night by both Thai and foreign visitors.
The practical effect is pedestrian congestion at street level around that specific corner, which at certain hours is genuinely thick. It is one more reason arrivals here use the walkway rather than the pavement.
It is worth knowing if you plan to meet someone outside rather than in a lobby. The area around the shrine is not a good meeting point simply because of the volume of people, and a hotel lobby fifty metres away is a much better one.
None of it affects the treatment or the arrival window. It affects only where you would sensibly stand if you were waiting outside, and the answer is that you should not be.
The few residents, and where they are
The residential population here is small but it is not zero, and it books quite differently from the hotels.
Serviced apartments
There are several serviced apartment buildings within a short walk, aimed at corporate stays of a month or more. They are the easiest buildings in the district and the source of nearly all our repeat bookings here.
Older blocks behind the malls
A handful of older residential blocks sit behind the shopping centres, largely invisible from the main roads. Quieter, cheaper, and reached from the smaller streets rather than the junction.
Ratchadamri side
Down Ratchadamri toward the racecourse and the park there are more residential buildings and fewer hotels, and that stretch behaves more like Chidlom than like this junction.
Long-stay guests
Long-stay hotel guests, meaning three weeks or more, are the other repeat category. For them the advice is the same as anywhere: ask for the same therapist from the second booking and space the treatments sensibly.
Where Ratchaprasong ends
This is a compact district defined by one junction, and every direction from it becomes somewhere else within a few hundred metres.
Westward along Rama 1 it becomes Siam at about the point where Gaysorn gives way to Siam Paragon. The two districts are a five minute walk apart and the walkway connects them.
Eastward along Ploenchit it becomes Chidlom, marked fairly precisely by the department store on the corner.
Southward down Ratchadamri the hotels thin and the character turns residential toward the racecourse and Lumphini Park, and the Sala Daeng and Silom pages take over once you are past the park itself.
Northward across the canal is Pratunam, which is less than a kilometre away and is an entirely different world of wholesale markets and trade hours. That page is worth reading if you are on the far side of the water.
What it costs, and the spa question
Every hotel around this junction has a spa and most of them are good, so the question of why anybody would book an outcall therapist instead is a fair one to answer directly.
On the treatment there is not much in it. A licensed Thai therapist working an hour of aromatherapy is doing the same job in either room. What the spa adds is the facility around it: the steam room, the shower, the sitting about afterwards.
On price the difference is substantial. A hotel spa in this district will generally charge several times our rate for a comparable hour, and a treatment ordered to the room through the concierge usually carries a service charge and VAT on top of the menu price.
Our figure is one price list for the whole city with no premium for the address or the hour, nothing taken at the time of booking, and payment at the end. If you want the facility, book the spa. If you want the treatment in your room without the surcharge, book us.
Everywhere we go in Ratchaprasong
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 Siam
- BTS Ratchadamri
- BTS Ploen Chit
- Airport Rail Link Phaya Thai
- MRT Lumphini
Streets and sois
- Ratchadamri Road
- Rama 1 Road
- Ploenchit Road
- Soi Somkid
- Phetchaburi Road
- Lang Suan Road
- Soi Mahatlek Luang
Landmarks
- CentralWorld
- Gaysorn Village
- Erawan Shrine
- Amarin Plaza
- Big C Ratchadamri
- Royal Bangkok Sports Club
- Platinum Fashion Mall
- Central Chidlom
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
- Grand Hyatt Erawan Bangkok
- InterContinental Bangkok
- Anantara Siam Bangkok
- Novotel Bangkok Platinum Pratunam
- Renaissance Bangkok Ratchaprasong
- Holiday Inn Bangkok
- Amari Watergate Bangkok
- Arnoma Grand Bangkok
- Centara Grand at CentralWorld
Condominiums and residences
- The Residences at Sindhorn Kempinski
- 185 Rajadamri
- Baan Rajprasong
- Grande Centre Point Ratchadamri
- All Seasons Place Residences
Who books in Ratchaprasong
- Hotel guests
- The overwhelming majority. Two or three night stays, single treatments, and a different room every time.
- Shoppers
- Four malls within a few minutes of each other. Feet, calves and lower back rather than shoulders.
- Couples on holiday
- Two therapists in one room, strong all year and stronger between November and February.
- Serviced apartment residents
- Corporate stays of a month or more, and nearly all of the repeat bookings in this district.
- High season visitors
- November to February, when eight to eleven in the evening turns into the most contested window anywhere in Bangkok.
- Long-stay hotel guests
- Three weeks or more in one property, asking for the same therapist from the second booking onward.
Questions about Ratchaprasong
- How much notice do I need at this junction?
- An hour for most of the year. From November to February the hotels here run close to full and the eight to eleven evening window becomes the busiest in the city, so a day ahead is genuinely worth it in those months.
- Does the traffic at the junction slow things down?
- Very little. The skywalk connects the station to several hotels and all four shopping centres above the road, so the last part of the journey does not touch the junction at all. The window here holds steady from the afternoon into the night.
- What about in the rainy season?
- It matters less here than almost anywhere in Bangkok. The walkway is covered for most of its length and stays open long after the malls close, so a downpour that adds twenty minutes elsewhere adds close to nothing to an arrival at this junction.
- What should I send as my address?
- The hotel name, and that is genuinely enough. Every property here is large and individually named. What does not help is a mall reference, since behind CentralWorld covers several buildings and the shopping centres have entrances on several levels.
- I have been shopping all day. What is the right treatment?
- An oil massage with the time spent on your legs, and ninety minutes rather than sixty if you have been walking since morning. Say explicitly that your feet and calves are the issue, because the default assumption everywhere else in Bangkok is back and shoulders.
- Should I book before or after the shopping?
- Afterwards, and later than you think. Shopping and dinner both run over, and a treatment followed by four more hours on your feet undoes itself. Nine in the evening is a safer booking than seven for most people staying here.
- Can two of us be treated at the same time?
- Yes, and this district books a lot of it. Two therapists work simultaneously and you finish together, and the twin rooms and suites here mean a bed each is usually the arrangement. Worth a day of notice in high season.
- I am here for three weeks in the same hotel. Anything different?
- Ask for the same therapist from the second booking onward, and space them out. Over a stay that length each treatment builds on what the last one found, which matters far more than it does for a single session, and it saves you describing the same problem to a new person every time.
- Why not just use the hotel spa?
- If you want the steam room and the facilities, do. On the treatment itself there is little difference, since a licensed therapist works the same hour in either room. On price the gap is several times over, and a concierge booking to your room usually adds a service charge and VAT on top.
Near Ratchaprasong
Chidlom
A department store on one side, and the quietest expensive street in Bangkok on the other.
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.
Ploenchit
Embassies and Wireless Road. The most formal set of addresses in the city.
Phaya Thai
The Airport Rail Link terminus. Arrivals, departures, and a considerable number of hospital beds.