Tower A contains the main lobby, a japanese-inspired restaraunt, a gym and more importantly, an amazing outdoor swimming pool. Tower B seems quieter in comparison. This lobby contains a tour desk where you can book any of the sightseeing tours that you might want to do in the city or in the greater bangkok area. There’s also a small restaurant, not sure what the name of it was, but the food was great. The menu had all the usual thai meals as well as some western meals. Tower B also contains a swimming pool but it’s indoors and nowhere near as nice as the pool on tower A. The gym in tower B seems bigger and better than its counterpart in tower A though, not that I actually went into any of them. It’s worth noting that even if your room is in tower A, you still have access to all the facilities in tower B and vice versa.

We were booked into a 2bdr apartment, which was an excellent decision. These rooms are much more spacious than general hotel rooms and make you feel more at home straight away. The master bedroom is ensuite, spacious and contains a decent sized tv, not a flat screen though. The room also has a balcony which gives you a great view of the spectacular milennium residence apartments. These apartments aren’t fully finished yet but they look stunning, 4 separate buildings and each one is about 50-60 stories high. If I could buy a place in Bangkok, it would be in one of these.

The living area is great, you get a kitchen complete with all modern appliances, a dining table with places for 4 and a living area with a 2 seater couch, armchair and a large screen tv, again not a flat screen though. There’s also a little desk area where you can take advantage of the free internet access if you have a laptop. If you don’t, there’s a small business center downstairs which also has free internet access. I’m not sure if the free internet was a promotion or if its free all the time, but it is a nice to have. More hotels should do this.

I only took advantage of the free breakfast buffet on one morning, i think it was the saturday when I was up at half 6 to go sightseeing out in kanchanaburi. From what I saw though, the setup was excellent and the food was great. Another plus for the Somerset Suites was that there was this small little shop right beside the corridor from tower A to tower B. It was open unitl 10pm and just sold small grocery items like drinks, sweets and cans of singha. It’s not a big thing but it saved us having to walk out into the un-airconditioned streets to get our beer and chocolate fix.

My only complaint was the walk to the hotel from the BTS at Asok was tiring after a full day shopping in Siam. Also, a taxi driver didnt know the hotel one night so I had a bit of difficulty explaining where it was to him. And the tv’s should be updated to flat screens

Overall, I loved my time at the Somerset and would gladly stay there again. I didn’t have any major issues with the place, it’s a wonderful hotel.

Everyone keeps asking if I miss Australia and it’s difficult to give an acceptable answer. I spent 3 years there so of course I miss the place. I made good friends, had some great times, and yep even the Australian winter is probably better than the irish summer. But I’m also glad to be home. It feels good to be with my family again and meeting my friends down at the local pub swapping stories about the last few years is just priceless.

I do reckon that I’ve outgrown Kerry a little bit though. I think that I need the pace of the capital to keep me going for another bit so I will be moving to Dublin as soon as I can get a job sorted out. Which is pretty exciting as even though its the capital, I haven’t a clue about the place really.

I’ve been using last.fm for about a year now but had never really gotten into it or at least spent more than 20 minutes looking around the site. But last Saturday I had a terrible hangover and was unable to get off the couch so I spent the day watching cartoons and searching for some new music. Well, last.fm is now my favourite website. From just one click on the John Mayer page i had a list of similar artists, where i found Gavin Degraw. His name rang a few bells in my head as i remembered he did the theme tune to One Tree Hill (One of my guilty tv pleasures from when i was in San Fran). So i got his album and was relatively impressed. A click on his similar artists brought me to Jason Mraz and Ryan Adams, another excellent singer songwriter. After about an hour I had a list of albums comprising of these 3 plus The Libertines, The Kooks, Matchbox Twenty and The Waterboys. That website is so EASY to use, it looks good (very web2.0), it has so much information that it just seems to be endless and its fun to use. The only drawback would be the plethora of ads for James blunt. God damn he’s annoying.

Another website i found was purevolume.com, which is made by the lovely people here at virb. A top quality website but i wasn’t as familiar with it as i was with last.fm so i struggled to really get into it. But it gets top marks for having an excellent xmas album available for free download. I haven’t heard a good xmas album in years and usually its made up of songs from Frank Sinatra, Nat King cole and Mariah carey. This album features the Walkmen (one of my faves), Paper Route, Tokyo Rose and Jesse Malin. The album is available here and is highly recommended. Again, the site had a lot of James Blunt ads, whats with this guy?? and how much money is he spending on advertising??