Escapes: Singapore"s Raffles Hotel is life at its best

SINGAPORE — The last tiger in Singapore was shot and killed under the billiards table at the Raffles Hotel in 1902.

This story is legend, and there are many when it comes to the venerable Raffles. British novelist Somerset Maugham said the hotel “stands for all the fables of the exotic East,” and it’s easy to believe just about anything connected with it.

Concerning the tiger, I will tell you the truth of the matter in a moment, but first allow me to acquaint you with the hotel, whose history is the story of modern Singapore, and then you, too, may be inclined to find the legend reasonable.

The hotel was built in 1887 by two Armenian brothers from Persia. Rudyard Kipling wasn’t impressed when he visited Singapore in 1889, and later wrote, “Raffles Hotel, where the food is as excellent as the rooms are bad.”

But the hotel evolved from a modest 10-room bungalow into a luxurious Victorian Italianate Revival-style, world-renowned resort. James A. Michener, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who first visited the hotel in 1949, wrote “to have been young and had a room at Raffles was life at its best.”

On my second visit to Raffles, I arrived in early evening and the three tiers of colonnaded terraces and balconies, framed by towering livingstonia palms, glowed in soft lights. English novelist Joseph Conrad described the hotel “as airy as a birdcage.”

Raffles attracted royals, American and European actors, and the most elite writers of the day such as Ernest Hemingway and Noel Coward, who frequented the hotel’s Long Bar in the lobby.

The famous Singapore Sling, a fruity punch that packs a subtle but powerful punch, was created sometime before 1910 in the Long Bar for a certain lady who didn’t like the taste of alcohol. The lady remains a mystery, but the drink has become obligatory for anyone passing through the hotel.

The bartenders will give patrons a card listing the ingredients: Gin, Heering cherry liqueur, pineapple juice, lime juice, Cointreau orange liqueur, Bénédictine liqueur, grenadine and a dash of Angostura bitters. For around $36, you can order the sweet red drink and keep the glass.

But I would advise against it. For one thing, the original Long Bar no longer exists; the new Long Bar is in a shopping complex next to the hotel. And the drink is now made from a mix.

So, for an experience that is somewhat similar to that of Hemingway’s, I would suggest relaxing in the leather bar chairs or dark wicker plantation chairs in the Writers Bar in the hotel lobby, and ordering something that doesn’t come in a souvenir glass.

But the rest of the hotel is still the beating heart of Singapore, the meeting place for Singapore’s millionaires and luminaries — one out of every six households has at least $1 million in disposable wealth not including property and businesses, and the country has the third highest per capita income in the world behind Luxembourg and Qatar.

Heads of state and royals still come here. Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge stayed in the hotel’s Presidential Suite in September during an eight-day royal tour of southeast Asia to continue Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee celebration. Coincidentally, the hotel was celebrating its 125th anniversary.

The hotel was named for British statesman Sir Stamford Raffles, the British East Indian administrator who founded the city of Singapore. It remains a testament to British colonialism and is a romantic, intoxicating refuge surrounded by a sterile jungle of high-rise offices and modern condominiums.

In most of Singapore you could just as well be in Atlanta, except for the steamy heat. Singapore is 85 miles north of the equator, and was once covered by rain forest. But now you pretty much have to go to the Singapore Botanic Gardens, also founded by Raffles, to experience nature. That’s what Prince William and Kate did.

But I prefer to relax in the lush palm and fern gardens of the hotel. Maugham worked in the mornings under a frangipani tree in the hotel’s Palm Court, often incorporating local gossip into his stories.

Raffles has somehow kept the best from the past, notwithstanding the Long Bar, and incorporated what sophisticated guests want in the present. The liveried Sikh doormen still wear white turbans, gold braids and sashes, and guide guests through the ornate wrought-iron portico into the three-story lobby. The hotel now has 15 restaurants and bars, but if guests would rather dine on their private terraces, butlers will make all the arrangements including roses and champagne.

Now, back to the tiger legend.

There were indeed many Malayan tigers roaming Singapore in the late 1800s, so many in fact that workers were killed as the rubber plantations encroached on tiger habitats. Bounties on tigers were $100 a head.

And, yes, there was a tiger killed in 1902 at the Raffles Hotel. But the tiger had escaped from a circus, and it was trapped under the billiards room outside in a crawl space.

And it’s true there are no more tigers in Singapore except for a couple of white tigers imported from Indonesia in the Singapore Zoo.

Escapes: Singapore"s Raffles Hotel is life at its best