Are there many guest friendly hotels in Chiang Mai? It depends what you mean by many. There are certainly a lot of hotels in Chiang Mai. Most of them do not mind if a customer brings someone back to a room. But there are also some places that believe it is their job to keep foreigners away from locals for whatever reason.
I am of the opinion that consenting adults should be left alone to do whatever they feel. But I don’t make the rules. Nor do I own or operate a hotel.
What I do is travel is often. In my many stays in Chiang Mai I have found some hotels that allow me to come and go freely. These are some of those hotels.
Hotel M
Hotel M is a three star guest friendly hotel in the middle of Chiang Mai. The hotel is surprisingly overlooked by a lot of travelers considering its central location. It around the corner from the big walking street night market is directly across the street from the Tha Phae Gate, which is the biggest attraction in the entire city.
Hotel M is also located within most of the nightlife the city has to offer including the Zoe In Yellow, Loi Kroh where all the beer bars in the city are located, the Chiang Mai Entertainment Complex and the Spotlight A-go-go.
There are also a lot of places to eat and drink immediately surrounding the hotel including a Burger King next door, a Starbucks across the plaza, a lot of Thai restaurants, a pizza shop and a courtyard where drinks and food are served up by good looking ladies while a live band tries its best and singing English music.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with Hotel M. The rooms are nothing special but they are spacious and clean. Each room has a nice big bed and plenty of soaps and shampoos. The air conditioning works well and so does the WiFi. As a bonus, a lot of the rooms have good views of the surrounding mountains.
This hotel is in a main area that pretty much anyone could find. So it also serves as a good meeting place for a get together or night on the town. It’s easy to say “meet me at the gate”. It’s known throughout the city.
Hotel M is totally guest friendly. The hotel staff has no problem with customers bringing guests back to their rooms. They normally don’t even bother people who enter with their guests. So customers just walk directly to the elevator on the left side of the lobby and head to their rooms without any interaction with the staff whatsoever.
In spite of its convenient and central location, the Hotel M has incredibly reasonable rates. It is a testament to the low cost of living in Chiang Mai that a hotel like this rents out rooms for so little money.
Paradise Lodge
The Paradise Lodge and Spa Hotel is a slightly run down hotel located down a windy road in Chiang Mai. It seems that the builders had hopes for the place but they may not have panned out as planned. The hotel has a large shell complete with an indoor pool in the middle of the ground level though it looks as if a lot more was in the works at least early on.
The Paradise seems to be pretty empty at most times. There are usually some people hanging around out front and at least a couple of Chinese families staying in the rooms or enjoying the pool but there is still a sort of deserted or unfinished feel to the place even in the middle of the day.
Perhaps one reason for that is that the Paradise Lodge is very lightly staffed. At any time there may only be one or two people around. Those who are on the grounds have a tendency to wander around which is probably a result of there being a whole lot to do. The English language is not spoken by most people at the hotel. Chinese is probably a lot more common.
The small staff and open floor plan mean that people can and do wander in and out of the hotel at all times. There isn’t any mad rush of strangers but a person or two walking through the hotel lobby and even up the stairs doesn’t draw as much as a curious look from anyone around.
The rooms at the Paradise Lodge are nothing to write home about but they are not terrible either. There are much worse places around. Some local hotels and hostels have truly terrible quarters on offer. The Paradise offers rooms of decent size with clean beds and functioning showers with hot water. That’s a step up from some of the competition.
Nights at the lodge and hotel are very inexpensive.
