The Great Singapore Saloon Series/Raffles

...pears bent on cashing in on the coloni- not to come away with a grudging acimmortalized in his story "The Letter...

...which Mr...

...More gruesome stories are associated with the brutal Japanese Occupation during the Second World War, when Raffles was reserved as home to senior Japanese officers...

...Problem of democracy, you end of the day in the midst of barely cals, who tended to cut up nasty at 1930s—one does not have to be an un- see...

...The otherhalf is unabashed self-promotion, whereby minor incidents are transformed into major legends...

...And, of course, a sea of pink gin slings made from Mr...

...Indeed, one homes to slog over impassable mounhistories are at pains to note that he did its ravages, and the Raffles has of the occupational hazards of those tains, clear forests, drain swamps, es-his writing in the morning, clad only not been spared...

...The staff suffered countless indignities, and were forced to adopt Japanese dress and language...

...But after a letter of complaint in lesson...

...Folklore has it, for example, that Malaysia's "last tiger" was bagged in the billiard room in 1902...

...back in 1819, Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, the hotel is the most prominent survivor of the bygone days, when men were men and, according to the British, the Asians weren't...

...Its fame springs from a variety of William McGurn is deputy editorial page editor of the Asian Wall Street JournaL sources, not least that it was once home to Somerset Maugham and two or three other ill-tempered writers, but serious bacchanals revere it for The Long Bar...

...Herman Hesse stayed for a fortnight in 1911, describing it as a "large and noisy hotel," and Noel Coward checked in for a month in 1929...

...Ho We How, chiffon for cut-offs and T-shirts...

...In contrast to freewheeling sister Hong Kong, however, Singapore has developed into a sort of Oriental Zurich, where even the leaves pause before dropping down on Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's pristine sidewalks...

...It was founded in 1886 when the Armenian Sarkes brothers took over a beachfront mansion belonging to Capt...

...Unlike their British overlords, however, who were caught out when the Japanese came by land rather than sea, the Raffles staff managed to bury the silver roast beef trolley in the Palm Court, where it remained until after the war...

...in truth the unfortunate was a tired escapee from the circus who crawled under the hotel, where he was then rather unsportingly dispatched by a bullet from Singapore's crack shot...

...al past rather than eradicating it, par- knowledgment for the superiority of Maugham's relationship with the Raf- titularly to attract the most nostalgic the British colonials, men who left their fles was no one-night stand, and theD ecolonization continues to spread of tourists, the Americans...

...Here Indiana Jones would be a merchant banker...

...What Kipling in fact wrote was "Providence conducted me . . . to a place called Raffles Hotel, where the food is excellent as the rooms are bad...

...Elizabeth Taylor must have wished she'd stayed on the verandah when a gown she'd ordered split at the seams during a dinner here in her honor...

...this THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1988 35 resulted in a public screaming match, discretions turn up in Maugham's regret the passing of white duck and in the Long Bar turns out to be from with Liz accusing designer Doris Ged- stories and novels...

...These were the days before fans, and guests were kept cool by punkah wallahs, Indian staff who operated sheets of cloth suspended from the ceiling to create a breeze, moving the sheets by means of a string attached to the big toe...

...Evidently, too, he rected—the hotel, ahem, did not allow of one's fellow countrymen with the quarter of the globe, all so that at the was not all that popular among the lo- Asians or Eurasians in until the same idea...

...Although some un- traversing the world's saloons in search tablish cities, put down local tribesmen, in his shorts, at a table set up for him mentionable practices have been cor- of Authenticity is the unseemly number and raise Her Majesty's flag over a in the Palm Court...

...This in turn leads to an awkward tolerable living conditions they could finding their private affairs and in- abashed admirer of Lord Palmerston to find: as in the Hofbrauhaus, everyone enjoy that one last tipple...

...Today its peeling white facades and antiquated neo-renaissance style make the Raffles very much the aging dowager among Singapore's fleet of five-star skyscrapers with their rooftop pools and designer atriums...

...More happily, when the liberation did come a number of Allied POWs enjoyed their first bath in Raffles after their release from the colony's notorious internment camps...

...Ngiam's celebrated formula: 1/2 jigger fresh Lemon/Lime juice 1/4 jigger Grenadine Syrup 3 jiggers Pineapple Juice 1 drop Angostura Bitters 1 dash Benedictine Dom 1 dash Cointreau 1/2 jigger Peter Herring 11/2 jiggers Gin Mix gently in a cocktail shaker, strain into a tumbler, and then garnish with a slice of pineapple and a cherry...

...des of shoddy workmanship and Doris Maugham's room boy, now a barcap- early days of independence from Brit- But lamenting the fall of an era accusing the full-figured star of being tain, was once asked by the great man ain the People's Action Party was so whose curtain had dropped long before too big for her britches, or words to whether he'd read any of his stuff, to ferociously nationalist that the Elizabe- one's birth is a healthy part of the atthat effect...

...Ho replied that he didn't than Grill was renamed the Epicurean traction...

...Sitting in the Long Bar, even of course, was Somerset Maugham, has since mastered the written word, he the Times, and a boycott by local with Frank Sinatra's "Chicago, My whose favorite drink was not the continues to display consummate good British businessmen, the Queen was re- Kind of Town" blaring over the loud-Singapore Sling but the gin-and-ver- taste by declining still to read any stored and the government now ap- speakers, it's nonetheless impossible mouth-based Million Dollar Cocktail Maugham work...

...36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1988...

...Nor is it without its history The most prominent of the literati, know how to read...

...When the direction of the war became clear in 1945, moreover, one Japanese officer committed hara-kiri in his room but thoughtfully left a note exonerating the staff...

...rr he Long Bar is still here, an aptly 1 named room about 30 x 50 feet with studiously faulty overhead fans, de rigueur cane chairs and tables, and one open-air wall • that faces Beach Street...

...Although Mr...

...In the Long Island...

...Ho Grill...

...Cheers...

...Raffles itself was already something of a monument by the time the Singapore Sling was invented...

...Named for the man who established Singapore as a free port for the British East India Trading Co...

...A century later Kipling's advice still holds, and the wise traveler takes dinner and drink at Raffles but retires to the nearby Oriental, Mandarin, or Hilton for a good night's sleep...

...Feed at Raffles and sleep at the Hotel de l'Europe," which an enterprising manager edited down into the aforementioned endorsement...

...Let the traveller take note...

...In fairness it ought to be pointed out that a good part of Raffles' mystique is simply that it has outlasted the competition, particularly the Hotel de l'Europe, whose grounds were taken by the government in the 1930s...

...George Julius Dare and began renovations that culminated a year later in the opening of a twenty-room hotel, later expanded to 100 rooms and since remodeled several times...

...In addition to Kipling, Joseph Conrad is said to have stayed here during his three trips to Singapore between 1883 and 1887, though the evidence is thin...

...Like most former British colonies, Singapore owes whatever measure of charm it retains today to the ambitions and especially the pretensions of the Empire...

...I sat on the verandah of the hotel, sipping a gin-sling and staring at the muddy sea...

...Technology, alas, has robbed these people of their livelihoods, and today visitors who've had enough of the tropical discomfort of The Long Bar can repair to the air-conditioned "Writer's Bar" just across the lobby to have their sweat halted and frozen...

...The most famous associations, however, have to do with the movie stars, kings, and writers who have passed nights under the roof...

...Unlike most, Singapore's colonial charm is threatened not by de-colonial Third World rot and neglect but by the city-state's transformation from a foul Southeast Asian backwater to a world trading power whose citizens enjoy a per-capita income that with Hong Kong is second only to Japan's...

...For here in 1915 barman Ngiam Tong Boon created "the hit of the century": the Singapore Gin Sling...

...Like others before him he was by no means enchanted: "During that holiday I think my spirits reached their lowest ebb on the first evening I spent in Singapore...