Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok

Somerset Maugham arrived at the Oriental with malaria and a temperature of 105, and from his bed heard the proprietress, Maria Maire, tell the doctor: "I can't have him die here, you know." He recovered, and the hotel has since named a suite after him, which suggests no hard feelings on either side. It has been on the east bank of the Chao Phraya since 1876, and in 1888 it gave Room 1 to a merchant navy sailor come to take up a captaincy, known now as Joseph Conrad. Cardu & Rossi's building from those years is the Authors' Wing today, with two later wings added and gardens down to the water. Some of the best of the hotel is across the river. Its boat crosses to a century-old teak house holding the spa and the Thai cooking school, and Sala Rim Naam, the Thai restaurant, is over there too.

Recommended for grown-ups who want a Bangkok hotel with a past and a French dinner, and for families, who are better looked after than the age of the place suggests. Sanook Sanook, the kids' club, takes children from 3 to 14 between three in the afternoon and eleven at night, which covers the hours after a day at the temples and most of a long dinner at Le Normandie, Anne-Sophie Pic's French dining room at the top of the Garden Wing. There is babysitting too, and a wading pool as well as the lap pool. The butlers are on call around the clock. And since the cooking school shares its teak house with the spa, a morning's lesson and an afternoon's massage are on the same bank, with no exertion left but the boat home, which someone else steers.