Our stay at The Bliss in Chiang Mai

We planned to stay in Chiang Mai for about 25 days (to get some work done), so we decided to rent a serviced apartment with a small kitchen, allowing us do some cooking ourselves. We booked a “Grand Deluxe” studio at The Bliss for one month, paying ฿18,000. Water and internet connection are included in this price, electricity isn’t. We ended up paying ฿536 for our electricity usage during our 25 day stay.

We believe we were able to keep the electricity costs down by minimizing the time we turned the airco on. We always turned it off at night and when leaving the studio. During days of working from “home”, we put the windows open before noon so a cool breeze could come in. Only after lunch, when the sun would shine on our windows, we turned the airco on.

We arrived at The Bliss around 10h in the morning. When we walked over to the reception to check in, the receptionist only pointed at the sign saying “check in 14h”. After some persisting on our side, she realised we booked a room for a month and suddenly our early arrival was not a problem anymore. We could fill out the paperwork and had to wait for about 10 minutes before we were allowed to go up to our room. She told us they would come clean our room and bring fresh towels only once a week (which is not that often, really).

Our studio was called a Grand Deluxe Room, equipped with a small kitchen, a television, a sofa, a table with four chairs, an airconditioning system with remote and a bathroom. The room was quite big, situated on the sixth floor (luckily there’s an elevator!) with a view of the mountain. If we squinted our eyes, we could even see Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, the temple on top of the mountain. The bathroom looked quite nice and had a bath and shower in one. There was soap and toilet paper when we arrived, but when we needed more we had to buy it ourselves.

The small kitchen was not equipped very well. Although we were satisfied with the large fridge and its decent freezing compartment, there was only one electric cooker which didn’t seem to have a medium hot setting, only off or very hot. The microwave was decent and clean, but we hardly used it. Although we sometimes missed having a knife, the eating utensils sufficed: two tea spoons and two soup spoons, two forks, two soup bowls, two little bowls and two dinner plates.

The cooking utensils on the other hand fell short: a very small sauce pan, a rusted kitchen knife and a small cutting board. We couldn’t even cook a decent meal for one with this, let alone for two. We went and asked the reception for more pans and she showed us what they had in storage. Those pans didn’t really look all that clean and were pretty worn out, so we decided to buy some ourselves. We headed over to  Warorot Market, like you might have read in our post “What to do in Chiang Mai”. We bought a wok pan, a sauce pan and a large spoon for ฿365 in total. Only the wok pan and spoon ended up being useful though, as we hadn’t noticed it was an induction cooker. At Tops Market in the Kad Suan Kaew shopping centre, we also bought a kitchen knife as well, for ฿40. The blade broke after two weeks of daily use.

Breakfast was not included, but tea, coffee and even cookies were available at all times in the lobby. They don’t have a laundry service, but they do have a laundry room where you could do your own laundry for ฿30. In our opinion it is easier (and in the end probably not even that much more expensive) to go to the “laundry shop” right outside the hotel. We paid ฿130 for having a large part of our wardrobe washed and dried. The WiFi connection was OK, both in our room and in the lobby. Planes fly over the hotel regularly, but it didn’t bother us as long as the windows were closed.

The Bliss is situated outside of the old town, the historical centre of Chiang Mai. As it wasn’t really within walking distance, we rented a bicycle for the length of our stay. It’s a 20 to 30 minute bike trip, depending on where in the old town you need to be. The hotel is close to Nimman though, the area around Nimmanhemin Road which is rapidly increasing in popularity. The staff was friendly, although not everyone speaks (a decent amount of) English, which resulted in some communication problems at times. Printing things, like our boarding passes, was no problem and free, a service which is not to be taken for granted as we’ve noticed before.

Although the kitchen could have been equipped better, overall we were pleased with our stay at The Bliss in Chiang Mai. The WiFi connection was decent, so we’ve managed to get a lot of work done and a lot of our stories posted. We do believe there are cheaper options, that are maybe even better, out there if you plan on staying a few weeks in Chiang Mai. Many of those aren’t listed online though, so if you’re looking for the best deal it might be a good idea to just book a hostel for a few days until you find something you like.