Tom Vitayakul, the owner of Ruen Urai restaurant in Surawongse and Executive Brand Planning director of Brandscape, talks to TTOAsia about his family business and his day job at Brandscape.

My family has been in the hospitality business since 1960s; it started off in Sukhumvit 15 at Manhattan Hotel where my father was the General Manager and about the same time my mother was working at the Imperial Hotel in Soi Ruamrudee.

My parents and their business partners later invented the concept of condotels almost 30 years ago in the early 80s. We managed serviced apartments in Pattaya, Cha-Am and Hua Hin as they realised that Bangkokians and expats needed housekeeping service when they went up-country for the weekend or a short holiday.

In 1968 together with a group of friends, they built the Rose Hotel on Surawongse. Later in the mid-70s they bought some properties next to it with the houses where all our family have been living since then. I grew up in this environment since I was 12 years old, studying at Assumption College and later at Triam Udom Suksa School.

The good thing about growing up in a hotel is getting to know what goes on behind the scenes; basically, it’s like living in a multi dimensional household with an unending stream of visitors. Another very positive thing for me is that it familiarised me with foreigners; many Thai people are uncomfortable talking with foreigners.  For me, it’s become like second nature.

It’s also wonderful to be in a place where you can enjoy total service all day long. Of course, you only use it when needed. On the other hand, the down­side is that there’s always some sort of incident occurring out of the blue and you have to learn to solve these issues right away, which leads to very fast thinking.

This house (the restaurant Ruen Urai) was built more than 100 years ago. It was only used as a storage place until very recently. Sometimes during the high season we used to rent out two very basic rooms but we stopped doing it in the early 1990s.

Two and a half years ago my family decided that we should restore and renovate this place. With the help of craftsmen from Ayudhya, we resurrected this beautiful house into what it is today.

The  sharp  roof  is  built  in  the  Ayudhya province style and is completely new; only 50% of the traditional Tai house was kept. All of this made me want to delve into the past and fnd out more about the original owner and the history of this area.

The house belonged  to a herbal medicine practitioner  during  the  Rama  V  period. This  area was part of  suburbs  and  canals which were all over the place.  Our neighbours,  the  Bunnag  family,  arrived  from Persia  in Siam  around 400 years  ago  and have been a prominent  family since King Narai‘s  period. Chuang  Bunnag  became the equivalent of a Prime Minister during the reign of King Rama IV and he was the great  grandfather  of  all  today’s  Bunnags. He ofciated as the Regent for Rama V and it is said that he had over 300 people in his household!

When you come here as a guest you can truly immerse yourself in Thai culture and be reminded of how Thais used to live. Thai art and culture go beyond temples and museums; it is about who we are and how we live as well.

Choosing the appropriate furnishings and decoration for Ruen Urai also led me to learn more about art and antique furniture. Many pieces here used to belong to my grand­parents and parents. I have also added a collection of oars to remind me that Bangkok once was “Venice of the East.” Well, we had no Skytrain back then…

It’s rare to find an oasis like this in Bangkok; we are a hid­den gem in the city. In fact, Thai people created fusion before it became fashionable by mixing Chinese, Indian, Malay, and Indo-Chinese influences in our food and by blending it in a unique way to make it our own.

A Buddhist saying tells you to “do what you love.” In this I am blessed twofold as I also have a very creative and demanding day job. My other passion in life is to create perceptions and images to form ideas in people’s minds. I have been with Brandscape for three years now. As a branding agency, we are involved in many facets of a mission and are implicated from the start to the end of a project.

Branding is a relatively new concept in Thailand. Like be­fore, there were just a few marketing research companies. I studied International Relations at Chulalongkorn Uni­versity and was the youngest graduate that year. However, I didn’t think I’d be good at diplomacy, so I switched to Mass Communications afterwards.
In the future I would like to be more involved with the arts, maybe write about travel, art and culture, or even open an art gallery.