Column: Shallow I know, but living through yet another Noah’s ark-like deluge has made me pine back to the more tropical climes of South East Asia.
Always the distant hubbub, the steamy heat, all the senses assaulted at every turn. And where one’s hotel can become a refuge. No more so than in one of Asia’s ‘Grande Dames’.
These exotic and impeccable hotels, traditionally one of note per Asian capital, have long offered exquisite refuge to generations of travellers. And my visits to many of them whilst working with Asian Hotelier magazine during the 1990s gave me real insights into their gilded pasts.
Trusted names like the E & O in Penang, Hotel des Indes in Jakarta, the Imperial of Tokyo, The Strand in Rangoon, or Royal Station in Kuala Lumpur. A lucky few like the Peninsula in Hong Kong, Raffles in Singapore, and Oriental in Bangkok have had millions lavished on them.
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Some I mourn, like my once-favourite Bela Vista, an eight-suite ex-colonial mansion on Penha Hill overlooking Praia Grande Esplanade in Macau.
Not only has the beautiful inner harbour it once presided over been reclaimed, but today it’s occupied by Portugal’s Consul General, part of their deal for so co-operatively handing over the former Portuguese colony to China in 2000.
Once, while dining on the expansive tiled veranda of that Bela Vista, I badly cut my finger while slicing through a Portuguese chorizo sausage with the sharpest bread knife I have ever been provided with.
Blood everywhere, all over the tablecloth, so embarrassing. I was forced to finish my meal with a cotton napkin wrapped around my finger.
I swear the impeccable Macanese waiter displayed genuine sorrow, shouting me an extra bottle of Portuguese wine to dampen mine.
These ‘Grand Dame’ hotels ooze with something that younger hotels can never claim to have – traditions ardently kept alive.
When I visited the opulent Oberoi Hotel in New Delhi, the manager and I sat down in the conservatory next to an empty rattan chair still reserved daily for the founding owner of the hotel, Mohan Singh Oberoi.
Every day he would come in for afternoon tea and sit in the same chair. Even though he has long passed away, the current staff still reserve his favourite chair and put out a cup of finest Assam tea for him every afternoon.
I like the way the ice tinkles in these grand old hotels, the way the butlers wait (at least they used to) at the end of every hallway, how one can put one’s shoes out at night and find them polished to a mirror finish by morning.
These are the little touches, but their histories go far deeper than that.
During the World War II, General Rensuke Isogai commanded Japan’s Pacific Invasion from the commandeered Peninsula Hotel at Kowloon in Hong Kong. Near the end of the war, allied fighter planes raked all the 8th storey windows with gunfire, the floor where he was thought to be staying.
After the war, it took two years to tidy up the hotel before it could reopen again.
General Douglas MacArthur did the same thing at the Manila Hotel. Top brass knew where to stay while their grunts got minced on godforsaken atolls.
Visitors can still rent the MacArthur suite at $3300 a night, these hotels delivering to their client’s appetite for period nostalgia. The Continental Hotel in Saigon heartily advertises that Graeme Greene got drunk there most nights when he lived in the city.
For around $3400 a night, you can indulge in Somerset Maugham’s suite at the Oriental in Bangkok. It’s worth googling a picture of it, all majestic red, hot pink and gold colour-schemed, matching four-poster beds and elegantly crafted furniture.
This is the hotel which, before electricity, used to employ four “fan wallahs”, to keep high-paying guests cool in their room while they slept.
You can still check out James Clavell’s little annex room under the stairs at the Peninsula in Hong Kong. We’re not talking overnighting here. Clavell wrote all his Asian trilogy of Noble House, Taipan and Shogun while staying in ‘The Pen.’
Even if you can’t afford staying the night, one should at least visit the Peninsula Hotel when travelling through Hong Kong. Fifty bucks will still get the elegant afternoon high tea and strawberry cakes in The Lobby, mingle with a few of the city’s high society while accompanied by a four-piece orchestra.
The Peninsula lobby is a like being in Alice in Wonderland. The ceiling fans may be long gone, replaced by more effective air conditioning, but the tall columns, gilded ornamental ceilings and sculptured angels exude as much opulence as the day it opened.
In bygone days, it was customary for ‘ladies of easy virtue’ to sit on the left or western side of the lobby, while social matrons and their daughters graced the eastern portion – a typical cross-section of colonial high society life.
Although the connection is obvious, the term ‘grand hotel’ came out not so much associated so much with grandeur, but more defining a totally self-contained establishment which for the first time (around late 19th Century) combined all the aspects of hospitality under one roof – accommodation, fine food, opulent corners to rendezvous, in house laundry, currency exchange, telegraph and telephone operator, even sports and exercise facilities, essentially everything guests needed, even the ability to make onward booking arrangements.
I have to admit, I like them a little faded, like the Majestic used to be in Saigon where I always used to stay before it got tarted up.
Tiles grubby with patina and peeling wall paint were standard décor. Cheap as too. Ten bucks a night, there was no such thing as hot water, and I always had to prize open my balcony doors which were always nailed shut to thwart climbing thieves,
Breakfast was served on the open roof, overlooking the bustling Saigon River.
“Take care, my friend. This can be a very dangerous city,” warned the doorman every time I left the hotel. But I still recall the feeling that hotel gave me after a day spent so tryingly outside, where the air was always heavy and oppressive.
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