Eastin Bangkok Hotel

Stayed at the Eastin, Bangkok for a few nights, including New Year's Eve (2006-7) as part of a tour of Thailand.
The entrance is strange, as reception is on the seventh floor. You can only have one key card to a room, and they will charge you if you lose it, or keep it as a souvenir!
The location isn't very central, to say the least, but we did walk back from the Pantip Plaza (a mecca for any techie!) in about 20 minutes with an excellent local market en route - prices far cheaper than anywhere else we saw in Bangkok.
I imagine you can get to a Sky Train station within 30 minutes - there is a shuttle from the hotel, free, I think, but it only goes every other hour, from 11-3 but that could have been due to it being a bank holiday.
Taxis are very easy to get outside, but do make sure you've been to reception to get them to write your destination in Thai first! A taxi to Patpong cost 75B going and 51B return!
The area outside the hotel seems a bit ropey, but we didn't feel threatened - and there's a great pavement café just round the back called Café d'élite where the prices are slightly more reasonable than in the hotel. There are also shops, including a 7-11, if you don't feel like venturing too far on your first night.
Our 17th floor room, apparently deluxe, looked out over the new Sky Train line, which is currently being built, and when it opens, will make the hotel far more accessible, as long as there's a station nearby.
Apart from the bathroom flooding easily when taking a shower, the room was adequate, but not luxurious, including a water boiler (looking like a rice cooker) with enough tea and coffee for two cups, more cost 50B a go!
We had two dinners at the hotel, one in the restaurant which was a buffet with a wide selection of dishes, and one on the tenth floor on the side of the pool for New Year's Eve, which was rather cramped, but again with an excellent selection of dishes (as long as you're not vegetarian).
New Year's Eve was a little disappointing to say the least, we're not sure if the atmosphere was subdued due to the bombings, but it was a 70s theme-evening, which consisted of a BeeGees tribute band (from 6pm to just after midnight), interspersed with some Thai dancing.
As much as I like the BeeGees, a lot of the songs they played were ballads and not really suitable for what should have been a happy occasion.
I can see the benefits of using this hotel for a tour operator (easy access for the coach, etc), but if we were travelling to Bangkok independently, I'm not sure we'd stay here ourselves.