This is the best
time to visit and stay at the Raffles.
A little over 10 years after completion of its restoration in 1991, what needed time to age has mellowed well.
Brass doorknobs have acquired a glazed patina, doors close with snug comfort from having settled into their doorframes, mirrors and furniture no longer gleam with parvenu brashness.
The Palm Court garden rooms are probably the best at this all-suites hotel.
Setting a 1920s
old-world atmosphere complete with electric fan and bell for butler service,
each room also carries Asian touches in the form of bathroom tiles with
Peranakan motifs and Chinese-style accessories.
Rattan chairs in the common corridor outside allow the guest to sit and take in the view of the Palm Court gardens with travellers' palms and frangipanis. I think here, far away from the streams of people at the shopping arcade areas, is where the flavour of the grand old hotel comes through most strongly.
Relax here with a
Singapore Sling and the tremors of the hotel's vintage past are palpable.
Afternoon tea beneath historic arches - hand on parapet - is incomparable. Tea
leaves steeped in hot water smell more earthy and elusive - illusory of course.
But only such an atmosphere as the Palm Court's could stoke the imagination so.
Even as the frangipani flowers in the garden fall with delicacy, past
footsteps of celebrated and infamous guests along its corridors seem to
reverberate in the humid stillness of a tropical afternoon.
Now is the time.
Jeffrey Lee