This small hotel located just off the main street in the Old Town area is a true gem. The rooms are large and while they don’t have great views, they have fantastic space and are always clean with nothing looking old or faded. The staff is lovely and though the swimming pool is small it offers a great place to cool off. In terms of value for money, this hotel is the best in Chiang Mai!
Upside: Large clean rooms that still have Thai charm. A great deal!
Premier Deluxe Room
Downside: The pool is smaller and some of our guests have said that breakfast was a little sparse, though I found it just fine.
Insiders tip: They have an on-site bakery so all the bread is made fresh daily as is the yogurt and jams! Try their Young Coconut Jam, a unique and local flavor.
There’s nothing wrong with this hotel at all, but it just didn’t excite me. The best part of the rooms are their great views of Doi Suthep and their swimming pool also overlooks the mountain which makes it stunning. Other than that the rooms are a good size and the spa and pool are lovely, but I felt that this hotel could have been in any city and I missed the charm that is available at so many of the boutique hotels in town. I also heard from my guides that the staff just don’t go above and beyond and the customer service isn’t to the usual Northern Thai standard. So while I haven’t stayed here and just visited I can’t really comment, I do think it’s worth mentioning.
Again, nothing wrong with it, but in a city with so many options, maybe not enough right with it either.
exterior of Le MeridianDeluxe king roomJunior Suite bedroom
Insiders tip: Go to the second floor and look down on the lobby…the carpet is actually a map of Chiang Mai.
We just finished a week of guide training in Thailand and it was a great week! Guide training is important because the guide is the heart of the tour as they are the person who shows the country to the guest. The guide must be knowledgeable, informative and service minded, which is why we need to have guide training: to keep the guides fresh and to let them know how important they are and we couldn’t do a good tour for the guest if we don’t have them.
My week was absolutely fantastic as Andrea and I did many things such as hotel inspections, survey for new tours, and guide training when we spent the day with all the guides.
The guides also had a blast! They like that Journeys Within thinks that they are important. They like that they have a chance to meet with the owner and they get to know each other more and more as Andrea does guide training every year. They love to hear that the company is growing and the success in of all our community projects.
The Chiang Mai guide team
As Andrea has been doing guide training since she started the company that means she knows all the guides that work for us in SEA, so she know which character of guide would best match the guest’s needs. Also she gets a good deal with the hotels management that she meets to get the special rate for the guests.
The guides love to meet Andrea and I love to spend time with her too. Oh, there are many reasons, but I will just say some of them that happened to the guides and me during training.
– She is easy going and always smiles 🙂
– She loves adventure & is brave enough to do everything!
– She always listens to other people’s opinions & is respectful.
– She is modest, honest and loves to make the people happy and helpful.
– She is creative and tries to offer new tours for the client.
And YES, she is the team builder for me!
I am so glad that we got to do Guide Training 2011 together; I know this will make everyone feel good and it makes us an even stronger team!
When the Tourism Authority of Thailand calls and says they will pay for your flight, plus accommodation, food and touring for you to attend their conference in Bangkok and represent Journeys Within Tour Company, you say YES! So this Monday I’m heading on my all expense paid trip to Thailand to attend the Thailand Travel Mart Plus 2011.
The Travel Mart is a bit different from a typical conference in that buyers and sellers are introduced via email ahead of time, and we have scheduled appointments during the conference days. I’ll be taking advantage of the conference times to have face-to-face time with the managers of our current partner hotels, in addition to looking for new properties that would be a great fit for our guests.
Now, this wouldn’t be Thailand without some great adventures mixed in with the conference, now would it? I’m squeezing in as much as I can in the short seven days I’ll be there. Ill be touring Ayyuthaya, watching a Muay Thai match, heading out for drinks and dancing with our Bangkok guides, and I’m also hoping to find the time to get a maid of honor dress made for my sister’s upcoming wedding. And that’s just the extra activities in Bangkok!
After the conference I’ll be heading to Northern Thailand on tour. I had quite a few options of tours (one of which was basically lazing at the beach and trying out a bunch of spas!) but I chose to head to Northern Thailand. One, because I love Northern Thailand’s beauty and two, because there were places in the tour I think JW guests will love. I’m really excited to check these new locations out to see if they are as incredible as they sound. I’ll be staying in a home stay outside of Chiang Mai city in a nature reserve, then off to a jungle retreat and then the elephant nature park!
It will be a whirlwind trip with things planned every minute, and it will be amazing. Can you expect anything less from Amazing Thailand??
Everyone in the office is gearing up to take June 22nd off for Arienne’s wedding. Arienne has worked as the nanny for the kiddos and has now taken the leap into working in the Journeys Within US office. We had the pleasure of planning her honeymoon to Thailand and Cambodia and I have asked her to write a blog about what she’s most excited about for her upcoming trip.
Enjoy…
In less than TWO weeks we will be married!!! We’re running around like crazy making sure every little detail is done! We have an amazing wedding planned for the start of our new lives together. For our honeymoon we wanted to have an UNFORGETTABLE trip that we would always remember. Andrea had mentioned Thailand for a honeymoon and it sounded amazing I talked it over with Ben My fiancé and the more we thought about it the more it just fit. Once we had seen our rough draft Itinerary we definitely decided we had to go! It’s just something we knew we wanted and wouldn’t be able to get here in the states. The fact that we also love Thai food and could have a fabulous trip planned for us was just a bonus.
We are unbelievably excited to go on our honeymoon! The beginning of our trip is going to be a bit crazy after our reception we drive down to San Francisco about 3 hours and park our car at my brother’s house and ride the train to the airport another hour. From the airport we will catch the shuttle to our hotel for the night. Cars, Trains and buses, than set off for the 11 hour plane ride! We fly into Tokyo Japan where we plan on eating real sushi! One more shorter plane ride (6 hours) and After all of that we will FINALLY be there.
There are 3 tours that we can’t wait to go do. Were so excited to see the Kanchanaburi Tiger Temple, Where else could you walk a tiger on a leash and pet his belly? It’s something you could never do in the states and is sure to be amazing! I am defiantly an animal lover and having the chance to touch a tiger will be like the coolest thing ever. I can’t believe even half way across the world I can pet a Tiger! How EXCITING!
In Chiang Mai we are doing the Flight of Gibbon I absolutely love high ropes courses I did them as a kid in summer camp. This one looks huge! I can’t wait to see the jungle from the canopy of the rainforest. My fiancée hates rollercoaster’s and he is even willing to try this, just for the amazing view! He has never done anything like this so it’ll be fun to see what he thinks about it too.
The thing we are looking forward to most is in Phuket, The hongs by Starlight tour. My fiancée loves kayaking and spends much of his free time in Tahoe doing it. So Kayaking in the ocean through caves is sure to be an unforgettable moment of our trip. It sounds incredibly sweet and romantic to send our krathong to float for luck in the starlight. It was great to have a Southeast Asia expert plan our trip too so we could make sure we got what we wanted without hours of research, especially since we have a whole wedding to plan. We have never done anything like this together and are excited to experience it for the first time as husband and wife.
