The long story short:

I arrive at a quite peculiar hotel in Bangkok, and I propose to take some pictures and do the interview you’re about to read now. They reply that the hotel’s manager hates journalists, and I’m quoting, “because they remind him of the Gestapo” (more on this later), but seeing our web site they notice I do hand-letterings, so they ask me whether I would be interested in painting some signs they need. I say of course! So I stay at the hotel for ten days, painting a series of signs. The biggest one is 3,5 metres long and, once finished, they place it above the swimming pool, the first hotel swimming pool ever built in all of Bangkok, in 1952.

The long story:

Hotel Atlanta is a special place. It certainly has a kind of magic, although saying it’s a magic place would be an exaggeration. It’s a budget hotel built in the fifties; of course, there were no budget hotels in the fifties, but it has preserved since then an interior design between art deco and Memphis. It has maintained, or tried to maintain, the same appearance it already had in the fifties.

A hotel doesn’t stay the same for more than half a century without a strong personality behind pushing it and following certain principles. Let’s say it’s lived away from the passing of time. It has been preserved unaltered for decades, at least apparently. The photographic postcard accompanying this article was taken only a few years ago and it still looks out of time, a bit like a mixture between The Shining and The Great Budapest Hotel.

The hotel has been used as a set for the shooting of different films and it’s proud of having the first hotel swimming pool ever built in Thailand, as well as the longest and most varied vegetarian Thai menu in the world. Not happy with that, they say too that they own the biggest collection of Western films on South-East Asia, or shot there.

The hotel has some peculiar characteristics as well, probably derived from the eccentricity of its manager.

It hasn’t only preserved most of the furniture, decoration and structure it had in the fifties, but it somehow tries to keep on doing things in a somewhat anachronistic way. Pop music is forbidden and this is proof the hotel is blinded against modern culture. A brief walk around the hall will make you realise it has the walls full of shelves with books signed by its authors; they have all stayed there or even written their works in it.

The hotel also gives grants so that artists, illustrators, writers and other creatives can do their work in the premises. If you have a project and the manager likes it, you might be able to stay in there for free while you write your work or create your pieces. I got to the Atlanta hotel during some rush holidays I went on last Christmas.  To get there, at the end of a dead-end street, you have to almost compulsorily cross one of the most abhorring avenues in Bangkok, infamous Nana Plaza street, the epicentre of sexual commerce, in which mostly European old men with different degrees of drunkenness, fat and/or crippled, look for a bit of sentimental consolation of the kind their thick (or empty) wallets can buy. I’m not against prostitution, but the spectacle is quite depressing. Both the women and men selling themselves look quite dodgy, and one would say they are all quite happy to play the game of who’s cheating whom. 

This sordid theme park implies that the nearby hotels receive, generally at night time and with some extra drinks in them, lots of visitors, single or married, accompanied by women who are neither their girlfriends nor are married to them; although they might have the intention of marrying them for money, and I’m told that lots of them manage to; strange couples walk by the surroundings, hand in hand. Long life to love! Even if it’s paid for…

This is important for the article since as soon as you step on the Atlanta you’re faced with two huge signs with big red letters saying: “SEXUAL TOURISTS NOT WELCOME”. It might probably be the only lodgings in the area with such a warning. But it doesn’t end there: the hotel has a series of graphic signs and posters warning about the different things one can expect should one not follow the hotel’s norms. For instance, it’s made clear that any illegal activities taking place inside the rooms will be reported to the respective embassies “without prior call to the police”, and that the hotel will cooperate with the authorities to the max in order to put you in jail. It’s probably an exaggeration and they won’t even bother, but it has its effects. During the time I was there I heard no foreigners partying in their rooms, ever.

I’ve got to say that it’s not all warnings: there are lots of signs around the hotel with warnings, but also with recommendations, clarifications and explanations of the particular nature of the place, the country, its culture and its people. It all reminds me of a friend’s mother who left post-it notes around the whole house with detailed and precise instructions of what to do and how in every occasion; but in this case with clean and naked black and red letters on white.

The problem with tourism in Barcelona sometimes reminds me of the mentalness of Nana Plaza. The way Hotel Atlanta tries to deal with it might come in handy to some bar, hotel or even someone from the City Council. Basically, the hotel tries to preserve its identity and also tell spoiled Western tourists that there’s a local culture in there, Thailand’s, Thai, and no matter how used they are to doing whatever they want or to underestimate the locals, they won’t be allowed to do it there.

The thing goes on: there’s a fantastic collection of coasters with almost literary texts about the manager of the Atlanta himself. The guests are not allowed to talk to him (unless they’re willing to pay an absurd sum of money), and no one knows who is he; the only way to find out something about his personality is by reading the notes on the coasters. This feels as if we’re living in a kind of fiction, inside a book or an old film. One of the coasters makes something clear about this character: “The staff are nice. I’m not. That’s why the staff are.”

Going back to the project, once I accept painting their signs, I tell them that OK, but we should meet to negotiate the details. It won’t be that easy. Seeing someone who hides behind literary texts would prove more complicated than it seemed. I need to send three or four e-mails more, but in the end they tell me that the manager is thinking about it, he’ll look for me and ask me a couple of questions and in five minutes he’ll know whether I’m the person for the job!

I start sketching and looking for the person who hides behind that imaginary figure. I’m almost sure is a man with a funny look, half-Thai, half-Westerner, maybe. Twenty-four or forty-eight hours go by until the manager finally comes to see me and asks me about the sketches. I show them to him and we start talking and negotiating the deal. I’m willing to do it almost for free, but I don’t tell him. The hotel is fantastic, and if it remains the way it is for fifty years more, that means my signs will be up there for another five decades too! A good reason to paint them!  In any case, the manager tells me I’m young and need money, so he offers me to stay ten days for free, with breakfast, lunch and dinner included, and agrees on paying me a symbolic sum.

I start looking for materials in Bangkok. Not too bad! They have Japan close by, and all the malls (forget about small neighbourhood shops in Bangkok, I’m told) seem to have Art departments full of brushes and the lot. I buy those Japanese super brush/felt-pens. I couldn’t be happier! But I can’t manage to find the stripping brushes that would make the task of painting with enamel a lot easier. I’ll have to keep a steady hand!

I think it’s interesting to highlight that the project was all done by hand, both the sign painting and the sketching and sketching design. I did have a computer to check references on the Internet, at local Wi-Fi speed. So I looked for forties, fifties and sixties type fonts and sign images that fitted with what I wanted to do. When I showed him the first drawings, the manager told me that before, when he was a kid, they had a similar sign at the hotel door! It showed a girl on a bikini, fifties style, ready to jump on the pool, and he wanted me to include one. So I had to make up the blond girl that appears on the sign from memory and the descriptions he gave me. Without the computer, I had to design everything by hand; for the first time in a very long time I had no computer to clean the designs or try many different colour options, I had to check things to the last detail, although they turned out neither straight nor perfect. It’s redundant in the discourse of the world of design, but no less true, that there’s no worse enemy to creativity, and best weapon at the same time, than a computer. It was a pleasure to design and illustrate all those sketches by hand. In the end, not being able to click on Cmd+Z to erase mistakes or using any other digital resources was no drama.

I can’t remember ever painting in my life in such a damp heat! Fifteen minutes after I start painting my hands are sweating buckets. I paint by the pool for ten days, so the guests come to me and ask me questions. Any artistic endeavour carried out on the street, or a swimming pool in this case, is bound to receive feedback, positive or negative, from the people passing by, swimsuits on. It reminds me of when I used to skate or went with a friend who painted graffiti: some old folks loved what you did and others cursed you for it. In this case, the hotel guests are all nice to me and don’t complain about the solvent smell interfering with their resting time on the deck chairs.

I don’t rest too much. It seems easy, but painting three and a half metre signs with enamel is not exactly fast. I stop at noon and visit the magnificent cinema rooms at the malls. I mention this because they’re fantastic, huge, with giant screens. The smallest must be like the Phenomena one here, to give you an idea. Those are cinemas, and not what we have in Barcelona!

The signs are improving. I take advantage of the temperature descending at nighttime to paint. If you have visited South-East Asia you might imagine the amount of mosquitos happy with my decision. I have three fans around me at full blast while I paint, but I still sweat like never before. Latex gloves last next to nothing and a drop of sweat falls from my forehead to the bloody fresh paint line I’m patiently stretching…

In the end I make four signs for the hotel, three for the swimming pool area, and a small one for the restaurant entrance. The 3,5 m one is amazing! I had no camera with me, so all I have are some snaps I take with my iPhone once they’re finished. The day after, I leave Thailand. When I get to the airport I realise my visa deadline is past. The fine I have to pay is the same I got for painting the signs… The money goes straight to the Thai government. This reminds me of paying our freelance fees here in Spain. Once I get back to Barcelona, I receive an e-mail with some pictures of the signs taken by the manager; since I left one day after I finished, I hadn’t seen them put in place. The day before I leave I meet a photographer staying at the hotel, and later on he sends me some pics too, a couple of which you can see here.

The members of the hotel staff, whom at first had welcomed me with blank faces, like they do with all guests, relax a bit when they see me working. It’s funny seeing them pretending, because they pretend, while they work. I guess it’s manager’s orders. Not trying to be nice, all in uniform, proud of their position; no Thais smiling and saying yes to everything, quite on the contrary. It looks like an old hotel film, and even if it can be a bit of a pain at times, I hope they remain as they are for a long time. If you ever travel to Bangkok, don’t hesitate to visit this hotel. Don’t expect Asian luxury, Wi-Fi comes and goes, but for me it was an experience I’ll forever remember. It’s a budget hotel, but with a charm you’ll find nowhere else: you can feel the weight of History there!

Another story is what were some Germans doing there at the beginning of the forties building a hotel… All that strict attitude must have come from somewhere, but I don’t even dare to mention it. I don’t want to end up in jail! They were very kind to me and I had to finish those signs anyway.

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