Postcard from … Singapore
October 19, 2012 7:18 pm
By Peter Hughes
Raffles celebrates its 125th birthday, still standing for fabled
memories with the splendour of colonial architecture When the Duke and
Duchess of Cambridge began their tour of southeast Asia in Singapore
last month, there was only one place they could stay: Room 244, the
Presidential Suite, at Raffles, one of the few accommodations in the
world to which one doesn’t need to append the word hotel. If they had
stayed a couple of days longer, they could have joined the
celebrations for Raffles’ 125th birthday.
Somerset Maugham said Raffles stood for `all the fables of the exotic
east’. It certainly still stands for fabled memories. Its pillared
halls of snowy stucco, louvred shutters, long verandas and fans
spinning from high ceilings; the jade green balustrades, floors of
dark hardwoods and courtyard gardens represent all the dash, space and
splendour of colonial architecture at its most self-assured.
The hotel opened on Beach Road in 1887 as a 10-room guest house in a
bungalow acquired by the Sarkies, four enterprising Armenian brothers.
They named it, like much else in the city, after Singapore’s founder,
Sir Stamford Raffles. The property quickly expanded with the addition
of two wings and the famous billiard room. The story goes that the
last wild tiger in Singapore was shot beneath it in 1902 (in those
days the building was raised on pillars).
In 1899 Raffles gained its noble portico but the wing with the suite
in which I stayed was completed six years earlier. Raffles has suites,
not rooms, and there are only 103 of them. They manage to combine the
era of chaises longues with the world of air-conditioning and (free)
WiFi. Quaintly, the dining-cum-sitting rooms are called parlours.
The birthday was celebrated with a dinner of Brittany turbot and
Mayura beef tenderloin cooked by a Michelin two-star chef in Raffles
Grill, one of 15 bars and restaurants. It’s a room that only 20 years
ago had its fireplace removed as being somewhat superfluous in a
climate where the daytime temperature seldom drops much below 30C.
These days the hotel also offers to arrange VIP airport treatment for
its guests. I was met at the aircraft door by a petite airport
employee in tailored brown uniform, and bustled on to an electric golf
cart. I felt as if I had been gathered into the charge of one of those
corps of brisk Asiatic girls from a James Bond movie.
`Excuse me. Coming through,’ called the Bond girl to anyone oblivious
of our approach as the buggy sped through 3km of Changi’s termini.
Every known brand of watch, pen, camera and luggage flickered through
my consciousness. It was as if I was being fast-forwarded into some
shiny new consumer universe. No wonder Raffles, and the hushed
interior of the hotel Bentley complete with flagstaff, seemed like
sanctuaries.
I had forgotten how big the Raffles building is. I was shown the
Presidential Suite, which is so spacious it contains a dining table to
seat 12, as well as two bedrooms, a drawing room and a library. Among
the Dickens and books on Asian art was a paperback entitled The
Queen’s Fool. Perhaps the duchess left it.
Customs persist: the antique grandfather clock in the foyer is wound
every morning; the silver dinner wagon, buried for safety during the
second world war, is still used for roasts in the Grill, and peanut
shells are still chucked on the floor in the Long Bar, where the
Singapore Sling was invented.
A butler on the veranda of the Raffles Hotel
But Singapore has little sentiment for tradition. Land reclamation,
for instance, has left Beach Road almost 2km from the sea. Raffles’
cleverest trick has been to retain its antiquity while still keeping
up with its arriviste competitors. Twenty years ago it closed for 18
months for renovation, and another bout of modernisation is about to
be announced.
What would the Sarkies brothers build today? The £3.6bn Marina Bay
Sands, perhaps. Its 2,561 rooms certainly trump a 10-room guest house.
Balanced across the tops of three 57-floor towers, with concave faces,
sits what appears to be the hull of a huge boat, an ark come to rest
upon a man-made Ararat. In fact this is Sky Park, an extraordinary
city garden high above the thrumming financial district.
I asked how big it is and got a gnomic Singaporean answer. `It’s the
length of four and a half Airbus A380s,’ said my guide. Translated,
that equals 340m – enough room for almost 4,000 people, two
restaurants, woodland and a pool. Immediately below is Gardens by the
Bay, a 101-hectare park on the same expanse of reclaimed land as the
hotel. Singapore, which used to call itself a garden city, is now
proclaiming itself as a city in a garden.
As I waited for a taxi back to the hotel, a man in the queue next to
me beamed. `Singapore’s latest new project,’ he said, gazing proudly
at the park. `What’s next?’ I asked. He pondered for a moment before
saying: `I don’t know, but there is always something.’
In a place where new means already ageing, and the present is just a
turnstile to the future, how does Raffles survive? Only, I suspect,
because old is now such a novelty that it counts as new. Raffles will
be 250 years old in 2137. By then it may be 8km from the sea and
encased in a biodome, but it will still be there.
Peter Hughes was a guest of Singapore Airlines ()
and Wexas Travel () which offers four nights at Raffles,
flights from London and private transfers, from £1,770
From: A. Papazian
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/49777786-144e-11e2-8cf2-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz2AbJsbuom
www.singaporeair.com
www.wexas.com