Return Of Raffles

Following a two-year restoration, Singapore’s national treasure is back and more beautiful than ever. MAGGIE SCARDIFIELD checks in.

- Maggie Scardifield

Leslie Danker has just turned 80. His kind brown eyes are framed by bushy eyebrows, his manner cheery and proud. “When you come to Raffles, don’t ask for more, or they’ll give you Les,” he laughs.

Danker started at the landmark Raffles Singapore 47 years ago as a maintenance supervisor. Now he’s the chief historian. As we walk its glossy white marble hallways, Danker recalls Doris Geddes, an Australian who ran a boutique for 30 years in the Raffles Arcade. She sold a dress to Elizabeth Taylor in 1957. Later at dinner in the Raffles Grill, it’s said Miss Taylor popped the seams.

He tells other stories from the hotel’s 132-year history: of rollerskating parties in the grand lobby, of a tiger shot under the pool table in the Bar & Billiard Room, and of Sikh doormen wrestling wild boars to the ground. Other stories reveal themselves at unexpected moments: when slicing into a Paris Brest at high tea, say, as the light catches on the silver cutlery, a waiter explains that much of the silverware was buried when the Japanese invaded Singapore in 1942, and was later recovered. Or when turning down a hallway, I discover a black-and-white photograph of David Bowie taking breakfast on the same polished teak verandah I dined at this morning.

It’s hard to believe that Singapore’s grande dame was ever a 10-room hotel set in an old bungalow. Founded in 1887, she’s seen extensions, renovations and restorations, but none quite as dramatic as her most recent. After a closure of more than two years, what’s been described as “the most magnificent hotel East of the Suez Canal” reopened in August.

“Everybody was proud of the long heritage and the many stories,” says the hotel’s general manager, Christian Westbeld. “But before the renovation, she was a bit tired.”