Laundry near
MRT Lumphini.

WHAT THIS STOP IS LIKE

The round around
Lumphini.

MRT Lumphini sits in Sathon–Silom–Surawong, the area we work around the Silom business district, Lumphini MRT and Patpong. The subway keeps its schedule in any weather, which is the half of the year that matters here.

Most of the collections here are on Soi Ngam Du Phli, Soi Suan Phlu 6, One Bangkok Boulevard. The mix is 23 hotels, 3 hostels, 3 condominiums, which is why the handoff differs from building to building — a hotel has a concierge, a condo has a lobby counter, and a serviced apartment usually has both.

Lumphini station sits at the corner of the park it is named after — 140 rai of lake, lawn and old banyan trees, busy from before dawn with runners, tai chi groups and the monitor lizards that made it famous.

Six of the 22 hotels on this round are star-rated, which is a high proportion for 27 addresses, and they are here for the view: a park frontage in central Bangkok is rare enough to price on. Soi Ngam Du Phli and Soi Suan Phlu run south into a quieter residential pocket that most visitors never see.

Only six addresses are inside 300 metres of the platform, so this is a spread-out round rather than a tight one. Sathon's banks and embassies begin immediately west, and Silom is a few minutes further, which is why the guests here are so often in Bangkok to work rather than to sightsee.

A few addresses near this station belong to Langsuan (4) instead. The route that reaches them is the same either way; the guide on each property page says which one it is on.