thanks for the invite Cicerone
feels like I was there myself (well not quite if I'm honest
)
Pity I was too late for the competition...I was going to guess a bar in Singapore too.
I spent some time on google yesterday looking for old photos of Raffles, but all I could find were photos of Old Raffles... and finally one site with old postcards, one with a tiny picture, that I couldn't enlarge, of the old hotel and its surroundings in days gone by.
About ten years ago on my first visit to Singapore, a Chinese couple I met on my trip to Scandinavia took me on a personal tour of Singapore, and my host told me that the old Raffles looks much different today than it did in it's hayday. For one thing, most of what we see today around Raffles are all reclaimed land. The front of the old Raffles was actually the beach. My host was born only a half block from the old Raffles.
Hey, C.I. This one is for free. <smile>
As recorded by Manhattan Transfer
On a little street in Singapore
With me - beside a lotus covered door
A veil of moonlight on her lovely face
How pale the hands that held me in embrace
My sails tonight are filled with perfume of Shalimar
With temple bells that guide me to her shore
And then I hold you in my arms
And love the way I loved before
On a little street in Singapore
On a little street in Singapore
With me - beside a lotus covered door
A veil of moonlight on her lovely face
How pale the hands that held me in embrace
I slightly remember the old old Raffles being on a beach with trees behind the hotel (or maybe just at the sides)... that is part of why I was looking for a photo, as I remembered the surroundings in whatever photo I saw years ago differently than the surroundings now.
So, your friends' description makes sense with that..
This is the court with another bar within the Raffles hotel.
ossobuco wrote:I spent some time on google yesterday looking for old photos of Raffles, but all I could find were photos of Old Raffles... and finally one site with old postcards, one with a tiny picture, that I couldn't enlarge, of the old hotel and its surroundings in days gone by.
Might be, this is a bit larger
Walter, Those pictures are magnificent! The second one seems to be the upgrade from the first, because the facade looks the same today.
BTW, Raffles was the founder of Singapore. When he founded Singapore, it was called another name - which escapes me just now.
Sir Stamford Raffles was the founder of modern Singapore - but the city was called so since the end of the 14th century (the Sanskrit name Singapura means 'Lion City').
Quote:Written accounts of the early history of Singapore are sketchy and the names used to refer to the country are varied. In the third century, a Chinese account gave reference to Singapore as Pu-luo-chung, or "island at the end of a peninsula". In 1320, however, the Mongol court sent a mission to a place called Long Yamen (Dragon's Tooth Strait) to get elephants. This probably referred to Keppel Harbour. A visitor from China, Wang Dayuan, who came around 1330, called the main settlement Pancur (spring), and reported that there were Chinese already living here. One of the earliest references to Singapore as Temasek, or Sea Town, was found in the Javanese Nagarakretagama' of 1365. The name was also mentioned in a Vietnamese source at around the same time
source:
Singupur history
I like those postcards! The first one is similar to my memory of whatever photo I saw years ago, though that one was from further away.
"Temasek" is what I heard while in Singapore during our tour. Thanks again, Walter.
I know I wrote it down somewhere, but I haven't gone over all my paperwork from the trip. It's sitting in a plastic bag besides my computer desk.
I know our tour group wouldn't be staying at Raffles in Singapore, but we did stay at Raffles Grand Hotel d'Angkor in Siem Reap last February.
I noticed that site in my travels through Google, nice looking hotel.
