Things To Do In Bangkok: Three Sixty Bar, Bangkok Millennium Hilton
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The Three Sixty Bar at the Bangkok Millennium Hilton provides a genuinely spectacular in-the-round vista of Bangkok's skyline from the banks of the Chao Phraya river
Newly opened in April 2006, the Three Sixty Bar at the Bangkok Millennium Hilton has already been attracting a lot of attention. The whole hotel has been remodelled by New York designer Tony Chi to bring the Hilton chain up to date, and it's certainly fair to say that the Hilton is quite breathtaking design wise. The Three Sixty Bar itself is a real treat, providing a unique view of Bangkok in genuinely luxurious surroundings. If you're interested in staying at there, you can book rooms at the Bangkok Millennium Hilton online - we could only afford the view and the cocktails! (There's reviews of the Hilton online at R24 and TripAdvisor too).
Three Sixty Bar at Bangkok Millennium Hilton - click for larger images:
We arrived straight off a longtail boat after doing a klong canal tour, but guests can get the free boat that runs from River City and from Saphan Taksin BTS station to get to the Hilton, sitting as it does on the opposite bank of the Chao Phraya river. The outside ground floor restaurant Flow is a minimalist delight of white tables and sofas, with the soaring glass front of the restaurant's interior as a backdrop. The lobby is similarly vaulted - arriving from the river, it's at the back of the building, so you simply walk around the side. Take the lift to the top floor and you walk into Three Sixty's anteroom - you need to be wearing smart casual clothes here, so no shorts and sandals. There are toilets in the lobby on the ground floor where you change into a fresh pair of clothes, as we did.
A short walk up the staircase brings you out into the Three Sixty Bar. It's pleasingly dark in there, all the better to see the dusk sweep in over the city and enjoy the surrounding panorama. It was also pretty empty when we visited too, which was great, as we didn't have to fight for one of the very comfortable sofas set a few feet back from the windows. (One of our group suffers a touch of vertigo so we didn't sit at the tables that are right next to the window). There's meant to be live jazz, but there was just pretty dire piped music while we were there (god awful covers of jazz classics etc) - thankfully the music was quite muted so it didn't really intrude on conversation.
It's really quite hard to take your eyes off the view. The near floor to ceiling plate glass and the curvature of the window as it snakes round the circumferance of the bar is mesmerising, and a few strolls around the length of the bar occurred throughout the evening. These strolls got progressively more wobbly after sampling the cocktails on offer - the average price was around 250 Baht a pop and they were all excellently presented and mixed. Cashew nut nibbles are continually replenished of your table and the cocktail menu is pretty comprehensive with all the classics represented plus a few Hilton twists to try out too - I was a big fan of the gin and lychee liquer martini, which sounds grim, but was very delicate to taste and very potent to drink. Best of all, order a martini and the hostesses come and prepare it right at your table, complete with a suitably slinky dance at the table to shake it. It's a cheap gimmick but it worked like a charm on us. It was also great to taste cocktails that had been made with care, rather than the pretty terrible and hideously overpriced cocktails you get at somewhere like Sirocco, another skyline bar in Bangkok.
In short, then, we were really impressed. The view is spectacular, the cocktails excellent and the service friendly and attentive. The Three Sixty Bar is definitely worth the little bit of effort to get there from across the river, but the boat goes back and forth so frequently (every 10 minutes) it's hardly a big deal. I would definitely recommend it as a must see for Bangkok visitors and a place to dress up and have a few posh drinks at the start of the evening before heading back into town for dinner. And if you feel particularly decadent, you could try and do the Three Sixty Bar and Vertigo in the same evening...
See also other Things To Do In Bangkok.
Other Travelhappy posts of interest:
- The Only Prisoner To Escape From The Bangkok Hilton
- Ballardian Bangkok
- Thai Military Coup In Bangkok: A Personal View
- Hanoi Hotels: Some Suggestions
- Bangkok Guide: 55 Tips To Help You The First Time You Travel To Thailand
[...] go - it’s always cheap in the pavement bars, but if you go to the more ritzy places like the Bangkok Millennium Hilton, you can expect to pay 300 baht (£4.50) a cocktail. Budget for spending 1000 to 2000 Baht [...]