Raffles Hotel - Friday 12/05/06

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What a fantastic experience to stay at Raffles, this world famous hotel, be it only for one night. After booking in I was shown to my suite where my personal valet introduced himself with a bottle of Champaign in hand. The suite had a dining room, bedroom, double dressing room, and toilet, bath and shower. Surprisingly there was no kettle but a flash of hot water but after a phone call, this was soon remedied.

The hotel has it's own shopping centre built into the complex where the general public can come and go but to gain access to the accommodation, a key is required to pass through wrought iron gates. I met up with Jacky and we called at a cafe at one corner of the Raffles complex for a drink and refreshments, to be surprised at the very reasonable cost for excellent food, it was really good value. After a look around the grounds, we grabbed our swimming costumes and headed for the roof top pool. Once changed, we placed our towels on a couple of lounges then went in the water. After a while, the bar man walked to our lounges and put two glasses of ice water on the table between the two lounges ready for us when we came out of the water.

Later we changed and made our way to "The Long Bar" for a Singapore Sling cocktail. The bar was not what I expected, I was expecting a different atmosphere for some reason. I knew about dropping the peanut shells on the floor, but this place just didn't do anything for me, maybe I’d got my hopes up too much. We returned to my dining room, having been stopped from entering the main foyer due to my dress code and ordered an evening meal through my personal valet. The meal arrived and the table was laid with a fantastic meal and as it turned out, reasonably priced.

After letting the excellent dinner settle and chatting for awhile about the coming weeks diving, we decided to head off up to the roof top swimming pool for a midnight swim before retiring for the night.

The next morning we had a splendid breakfast in the Tiffin Room before my bags were collected and I headed for the check out.

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Photos

Long Bar Enterance
Honest if you let me in here I promise I won't be long and I'll only have just the one drink... Honest