The Siam has a homey, Thai-style atmosphere, with Lanna style decorations (antique handicrafts and paintings collected from northern Thailand). But in truth, it's a hit-or-miss approach, garnering more success in some parts of the building than others. The hotel’s main stairwell is decorated with wood paneling in a gorgeous shade of pale green, complete with intricate floor tiling evocative of the colonial era, but the ground-floor Siam Cuisine restaurant is bland and contemporary in design, with white and gray seating and out-of-place stained-glass light fittings. The lobby sits halfway between the two, with pleasant retro sofas and armchairs spruced up with brightly colored cushions, but still overall it feels a little dark and in need of a refresh. Cute and colorful armchairs (and rather out-of-place cartoon-character plush toys), and the use of wooden crates to display products, give the Bunfe coffee shop more design success than the hotel’s main restaurant and breakfast room, where a combination of too many clashing colors, marble-top tables, and wall cabinets of antiquities comes off as mildly garish. Outside is much more pleasant, where a covered seating area enclosed by the surrounding skyscrapers is dotted with plenty of potted plants. Guests are mainly couples, though there are some families and a small number of business travelers. 

The Siam Heritage provides something of an oasis from the bustling Surawongse Road, in Bangkok’s Silom district -- centered on business by day and its notoriously adult-oriented, often seedy entertainment venues come nightfall. Just a few minutes on foot from the Patpong Night Market and numerous bars and restaurants, and just a five- to 10-minute walk to the Sala Daeng Skytrain and Si Lom MRT subway stations, the hotel is also well positioned as a base from which to explore the city. A number of shopping malls are nearby, including Central Silom, which is a 10-minute walk, and it’s about a 10-minute taxi ride -- or strenuous half-hour walk -- to the Chao Phraya riverfront and longtail boat pier at Saphan Taksin. The infamous rooftop bar at the Lebua State Tower hotel, featured in the movie "The Hangover Part III," is also a 10-minute drive away. Though the hotel is signposted from the street, the lobby is one floor up from street level and entering involves passing through the ground-floor restaurant. Locating it can be a bit of a struggle.

Rooms at The Siam Heritage vary greatly in quality from one another. But, while acceptable on the whole, they have seen better days. The rooms we saw on our visit had plenty of natural light, but there are numerous reports of dark and dated rooms -- not helped by dark-wood Lanna furnishings. Rooms are finished with a mix of tired-looking brown curtains and more modern white blinds. Some suffer from noise from the hotel’s laundry facilities, but noise from the street is generally minimal and those on higher levels are quieter still. Large king-size beds are dressed up with colorful cushions, but mattresses tend to be on the hard side. Numerous reviews cite maintenance issues including leaking bathtubs and showers, and the smell of stale cigarette smoke. All rooms have desks, satellite TVs, minibars, safes, and coffee/tea facilities, along with bathrooms with either stall showers or shower/tub combos; all but the smallest rooms also include small, dated kitchenettes with mini-fridges, microwaves, and hotplates. Each Suite has a separate shower and bathtub, plus a dining table and reclining leather seats in a separate living room, with old tube TVs in addition to the flat-screens in the main bedroom. Views of the surrounding buildings are generally unimpressive, while some of the cheapest rooms lack these altogether.

The hotel’s ground-floor restaurant and Bunfe coffee shop get particularly good reviews; both are popular with the lunchtime office crowd, and the latter turns out excellent home-baked pastries. The relatively standard buffet breakfast of Thai and western dishes, with eggs and omelets cooked to order, gets a mixed reception, while the small ninth-floor rooftop pool and bar is popular for its peaceful seclusion, greenery, and views of surrounding skyscrapers, but there are only a small number of loungers, and they're frequently in a broken state. A small, fan-cooled gym contains a variety of fitness equipment, while the hotel also offers an in-house spa. A few computer terminals in the lobby provide Internet access, and meeting facilities are available for groups of up to 10. Free Wi-Fi is also provided throughout the hotel, though there are numerous reports of this being slow and coverage being patchy, particularly in the pool area. Reviews suggest the hotel reception is on occasion understaffed, and there are isolated reports of unexpected maintenance charges being made to guests’ credit cards after departure and without explanation.