When you grow up with bugger all, there's a tendency to try and compensate. Some folk go about bullying and battering folk richer than them; others try and level the playing field using their brain, or as they say in Scotland, by “pure rippin' the pish, man.”
Yet, as hard, smart or caustic as you behave, it's hard not to want more – to yearn for something better. There are days where you sit around fantasising about parity with your peers, but for the most part you're not interested in being equal. Nope, you want to have it all, wealth the likes of which mankind has rarely known.
For example, I used to dream of buying my entire block of flats from the council, paying for replacements houses for everyone inside and shipping them out. I never did quite develop a plan for the empty shell. Meanwhile, I'd have bought Ayr hospital from the NHS (paying double it's actual worth), cleared the Death out and lived up there like a mad old laird, playing golf along the vast corridors and shooting crows from the windows.
For example, I used to dream of buying my entire block of flats from the council, paying for replacements houses for everyone inside and shipping them out. I never did quite develop a plan for the empty shell. Meanwhile, I'd have bought Ayr hospital from the NHS (paying double it's actual worth), cleared the Death out and lived up there like a mad old laird, playing golf along the vast corridors and shooting crows from the windows.
These days I've still got bugger all, but a series of unlikely events have left Wee Mo and I in a position that we can sample what it's like to be incredibly – if not limitlessly – rich. So while some PR layers on the bullshit about her client's new hotel on Sentosa Island, Singapore, it's quite impossible not to drift back to a land of make believe.
Having received a totally amorphous brief to write about “luxury”, a few well-placed emails brought us here to sample the highest of the high-end holidaying in the city-nation. For about 50% of our time, that means glaring at empty hotel rooms, building plans and construction sites, and listening to pious PRs talk endlessly about “unique visions” and “changing the face of Asia”.
It's all part of an endless, impossible lie, perpetuated to make people believe that things are better than they actually are. For two years, I wrote hundreds of thousands of words of this tripe and hated myself for it. My fantasies these days are often more grounded: I just want a future where I don't have to write words like “bespoke” “opulent” and “lavish”. But, as I said, for four days Wee Mo and I have to dive back into this great churning ocean of shit and on more one occasion, we catch ourselves puking out the God-awful industry speak with alarming fluency.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
Anyway, for the other 50% of our time, we get to bathe in a good old-fashioned jolly, which is nice.
Over our half-week, we enjoy goods, services, hotels and restaurants that would ordinarily set us back £3000 (it would have been £700 more, but owing to a mistake from the tourist board, we missed out on a two hour sunset cruise on board a privately chartered yacht. Pish).
That all starts at Raffles, one of those rare places that actually deserves the title “iconic”. The sense of history is not lost on the owners, who splashed out on a museum dedicated to their own glory. That said, the place has won just about every award you can imagine – the press release includes 15 (!) pages of them... and that's just since its 1992 refurbishment. Better endorsements come from the likes of Rudyard Kipling who wrote: “Providence led me to a place called Raffles Hotel, where the food is as excellent as the rooms are good. Let the traveller take note: feed at Raffles and sleep at Raffles.”
Fair enough big man, but you obviously haven't been there in a while. Somewhere along the line – I dunno when – I think this old joint stopped caring. At least, we're made to feel pretty unwelcome which given that we're freeloaders, may actually be pretty fair. Still, for the most expensive hotel in the city, I'd expect... I dunno, a little more. Being old and grand is one thing, but this city is growing up fast and Raffles' USP seems awfully timid by comparison.
And yet, it is cool to go read some of the old articles about the place, many of which are written with the kind of pompous verbosity modern writers can only dream of being allowed to print. e.g:
“Lest anyone be inclined to doubt the veracity of the foregoing statement, a representative of this paper, who saw the dead body of Stripes soon after he was shot, is prepared to bet a new hat that a live, loose tiger slept under the billiard room of Raffles Hotel last night, that Mr C M Phillips of Raffles Institution was informed of the fact early this morning, and that the said gentleman dispatched the tiger in the presence of an excited band of the hotel residents and others.” Huzzah!
From Raffles, we're ferried this way and that, looking at room after room in hotels that we could never afford. And yes, some of them are very nice, and no, I wouldn't – and don't – turn them down if offered.
But make no mistake about it: as grand as I find these five star hotels, I in no way think they are worth the money, even for those who can afford it. Shit, in my opinion the hotel should be just about the last place you spend your time on holiday.
The same cannot be said for a first-class meal. I mean, despite the preposterous economics behind it, I don't see anything wrong with donking, say, £150 on yer tea – especially if you're going to have it matched with wine.
Thanks to this catch-all “luxury” brief our tea is included and, very luckily for Wee Mo and I, we are treated to dinner at Les Amis. Somehow, in hundreds of thousands of pounds of freebies, I have never been allowed to dine at a Michelin-starred restaurant, and things don't change at Les Amis – the famous guide hasn't come to Singapore yet.
Nonetheless, never have I been so sure that I've enjoyed cuisine that would at least merit two of those cherished stars. The seven courses contain plenty of ridiculous dishes (I'd have had to drink in the Chase a while longer before I got served steamed mantis shrimp with heirloom tomatoes, caviar and fried arugula vinaigrette, or whole roasted baby monkfish on the bone with Maitake mushroom, lettuce and caper-lime jus) but while usually at least one dish in such a menu will be a disappointment, every one here is a winner. It's also greatly helped by an expert sommelier and the fact that the owner joins us for the meal at the chef's table.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
As the hours pass, I get his name wrong, blurt out anything and everything I know about fine dining (a lot of which I get from this) and get progressively more shit-faced as the courses tick by, yet we somehow strike an accord. To my total surprise, at the end, he busts out a 62-year-old bottle of Scotch and a much younger Japanese whiskey to toast our gluttony. Days pass with similar things, but Les Amis is never bettered – in fact I don't know if I've ever had better.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
Despite all the bullshit involved in our visit, it's really quite hard not to be impressed by Singapore. For all my griping about having to promote it, only an idiot would refuse to acknowledge that there is greatness here. A lot of it is just like Dubai on steroids – and I could tell you 101 things I dislike about that place – but there's at least a vague sense of history here, and an organisation (British in origin) that the desert city will never be able to match.
The razzmatazz isn't half bad either. Take Marina Bay Sands, one of the most bizarre and visually striking buildings I have ever seen. It looks like some biblical flood has receded and left an ocean liner perched on three humungous blocks. Those towers actually make up the country's biggest hotel, which in turn sits on top of a luxury shopping mall and a sprawling casino.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
7,400 people work at Marina Bay Sands and over 70% are said to be local. It's reasonable to assume the ration wasn't quite so generous when the thing was being built. Modern slave trade aside, though, the results are quite amazing. The whole ridiculous development cost US$5.5bn to build, which seems extortionate, but given the Emirates Palace – a carbuncle in Abu Dhabi – cost US$3.5bn, I think the Singaporeans got a pretty decent deal.
Our final hotel is the Ritz, which is unspectacular, but considerably more relaxed than Raffles. The fact that they've put us in a suite on the 27th floor also helps. Looking through the window across the bay, Singapore looks like a scale model of some far-off futuristic plan – it's at least as ambitious and seems just as inanimate. Part of me admires it; another is terrified. It's all very clean and pretty, but to the point of utter sterility. This, according to the moneymen, is how our tomorrows will look. Look at plans for Abu Dhabi, Taiwan, Qatar, Bahrain... anywhere with cash. Everywhere looks the same: grand, chrome, bland.
And I can't help wonder: where is the character? Where the hell is the fun?
