Scarlet Hotel Singapore

Singapore lets its hair down

I pick up a tourist brochure as soon as I arrive in the leafy metropolis and read that Old Parliament House is home now to "new age curries" and the trendiest restaurants of the moment (Graze and One Rochester) are in the old British army barracks of Rochester Park, in what is now a hi-tech district called one-north.

The Convent of the Holy Jesus, a school for girls, has been restyled Chijmes and serves up Kahlua-spiked tiramisu.

Even table-top dancing and bungy jumping have been made legal in a city that only two years earlier banned Cosmopolitan magazine and Sex and the City.

The effect is uncannily like that in the classic movie scene: a prim, law-abiding young lady takes off her glasses, shakes loose her hair and shows us what she's been made of all along.

Singapore may not be the wildest place in the world, but these days, as I return to it once or twice a year, I can't help feeling that makeovers are its latest love. Connaught and Havelock, Draycott and Cairnhill - the sonorous old British names still toll above the flower-filled roads cutting through parks and over the spicy backstreets, but what fill those same streets more and more seem to be "royal Thai spas", collagen parlours and bust-enhancement centres that give a curious literalism to the sense of a place that is redoing itself in styles as bold as its colours, as international as its markets and as seductive as its tropical air.

Earlier this year, as I wander around the huge Marina Bay Sands casino and adjoining mall, I wonder if the place that has always seemed the counter-Las Vegas, an artificial city committed to learning and to discipline, has now done a dramatic U-turn.

Singapore and its four million people have long been a handy way of taking the measure of Asia, or at least its dreams. For almost 150 years it was, of course, the classic British port, founded by Stamford Raffles, rich with green lawns and tropical law courts, and carefully segregating its races into the areas now known as Chinatown, Little India and Arab Street.

In the last three decades of the past century it stood, high and shining, for the gleaming but often repressive transnational city of the moment.

Now, however, having opened up to the cultural globe while still preserving what it calls "Asian values", and having decided, it seems, that it has to keep up with the Bangkoks and Shanghais of the world, it seems to be turning into a model of the Asian city of a very new kind of future.

High Quality Service Providing Singapore Hotels | emakmafu.com

Singapore is definitely one city that its worth visiting, it has that Italian look and feel to it that captivates you, you will never forget this experience. Nevertheless, I suppose that you’re looking for five star Singapore hotels , of course, for the best comfort and features, and for the people with a little bit extra cash to spend. There are various hotels there, but, as you may have guessed, you have, in this case too, to do some serious research on the market before you choose a hotel to check in. For instance, one hotel may not have the features another has, yet, its expensive, nobody said that all hotels have a good price/quality ratio, so its up to you to consider and evaluate every choice, after the budget. And to name a few good hotels in Singapore: The Scarlet Hotel, Hotel Royal, Grand Hyatt Singapore and the ultimate Grand Mercure Roxy Hotel.

This entry was posted Friday, July 1st, 2011 at 6:13 am and is filed under Destinations . Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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