After the teeny tiny (albeit lovely) doll house hotel rooms of France, the suite at the Marina Bay Sands is big enough to house all the current occupants of the Coogee Surfside Youth Hostel. So huge and spacious is it I estimate my entire hotel room in Paris would fit into the bathroom alone. I know. That is one big bathroom.
A little bit of luxury with your backpack doesn't go astray. In the heady days of being younger, poorer, more carefree and more in tune with the need to survive on $1 a day, the thought of anything more luxurious than the joy of happening upon a hairdryer, finding a bottle of hair conditioner, or not having to sniff the several-days-old prosciutto you’ve had tucked away in your backpack before you decide to eat it doesn’t really cross your mind. I may well have started life as a real backpacker, kind of, and there may well be an actual backpack involved in my travel luggage today, but you cannot begrudge a girl a room the size of Montana filled to the brim with toiletries, hair dryers, a standalone bathtub big enough for three people and an armoury of soft, white, fluffy towels. Call me a snob (ok, you're a snob) but I adore a flash hotel. Look me in the eye and honestly tell me you don't too? You can't do it, can you? No.
Two standout things can excite guests the most about a flash hotel: one is all the tricky little toys included in your room; the other is constant access to large amounts of gourmet-style food. For example, at The Peninsula in Bangkok you can lie in your extra-large king-size bed, press a button on the console of your bedside table and all the curtains will miraculously slide open revealing the Oriental Hotel on the opposite bank and the Chao Phraya River below, complete with mandatory toy ferries ferrying tourists from side to side. It also still remains the site of the largest spread put on for breakfast I have so far ever seen. Ever.
The Marina Bay Sands are on to this. They know how to wow a person.
Placing my hotel key card into its slot on the wall, soft lighting immediately illuminates all the rooms (yes, plural) in a calm evening glow and - this is seriously cool – two entire walls of curtains automatically slide back to reveal the night time Singapore vista 49 floors below. You never forget your first time. It is quite the moment. Shame that I had no one to share it with then. The Husband had not yet arrived from Sydney for our International Rendezvous. But let me tell you, when he did he was going to like this. A lot.
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| Life is Suite: sizing up the view |
Apart from an exciting near-miss two ferries had on Tuesday - and if you'd blinked you'd have missed it so lucky I happened to be watching - everything runs like clockwork in Singapore. Staff at the hotel are perpetually friendly and helpful (who could not love The Club's obliging Mary Rose?). Unless there is an unscheduled, torrential downpour, Concierge can always ensure there is a cab at the ready in case you decide you do want to leave to go and, you know, sightsee or something. Apart from Tuesday’s near miss, ferries courteously give way to each other as if they are on rail road tracks, puttering around taking tourists from the base of the Marina Bay Sands to the Fullerton Hotel to Clarke Quay or to wherever else they so desire.
If you happen to be staying in a Club room or a suite (that's me) then you have access to The Club on the 57th floor for breakfast, afternoon tea and cocktail hour (which is actually 2 hours). Essentially The Club is a beautifully decorated glass haven with views to what could be Indonesia and beyond. All white leather seats, dark walnut floors, travertine tiles and light stone bench tops. The food is plentiful, gourmet and tiny enough in size to lull you into eating loads without feeling guilty at the time. iPads are helpfully provided on demand to cater for all of those important things like surfing the Internet, sending gloating emails to your friends back home and making sure all your Lotto entries are in. The Wi-Fi is free and only occasionally drops out (and if this happens, there is a well-staffed business centre with a plethora of cordless and wireless Apple products available to ensure your every business, Google or facebook need is met). And the best part? You can’t bribe your way in. Nope. Again and again we contentedly watched people try. Which was a whole other world of fun.
Almost everyone on the entire planet knows that Singapore is shopping heaven. If you are a mad-keen shopper for anything designer though then this is without a doubt your Nirvana. Not a street corner goes by without a sparkling new Louis Vuitton, Prada or a Gucci flaunting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of the absolute-very-latest in cutting edge fashion, all safely protected by a burly security guard who may not smile much but will open the door for you.
To say the Marina Bay Sands is an architectural feat is much like saying the Pope is Catholic. It goes without saying. The problem is that you forget about how extraordinary the architecture and the engineering must be to have built a 150 metre pool spanning three buildings 200 metres in the air because usually you’re not actually looking at it, you happen to be floating about in it each and every day.
Those of you who know me won't be surprised to hear I’m a bit of a fan of the Adults Only pool. It’s not that I don’t like children, you understand, it’s just that I don’t like them very much when they are constantly shattering the peace by issuing blood curdling screams as if they are being murdered. For such small people they have surprisingly well-developed lungs. It is therefore with great delight I point you in the direction of the 50 metres worth of Adults Only infinity edge bliss where grownups can quietly rest their weary heads. And if an errant child does manage to defy the rules and sneak in (you see what they’re like don’t you, they’ll try to go anywhere they’re not supposed to), there is usually a handy lifeguard nearby ready to shoo them straight back to their own noisy, splashy, child-friendly zone. This I enjoyed watching on many occasions.
I am a bit of an outdoors girl. I don't mind heights. When it is hot (and it is just about always hot in Singapore) I adore nothing more than cooling off roughly every quarter of an hour in a truly magnificent pool (and, to make you feel justifiably snobby and entirely elite, one that has a ‘Hotel Guests Only' section). The only other thing I need is a gym. Oh, there it is. On the 55th floor. You can run on a spotlessly clean treadmill placed precariously close to floor to ceiling windows and feel as if you are about to bungy off the edge, plunging 55 floors to the river below.
And so it is that a person never needs to ever go to the ground floor again (unless you want to shop or go to the casino). Head to the elevator, press 57, flash your room key to Security as you saunter by, and you are in. And once you're there, don't leave until it's time to return to the airport.
I do have just one question though. In between snoozing, eating, swimming, eating, reading my book and eating the one thing I did ponder is how we could be so high up without so much as a breath of wind?
At 200 metres above the ground it should potentially be blowing so hard that the manicured palms bend and toss and the perfectly spaced lounge chairs are blown into the pool and over its infinity edge. Hollywood has proven that whenever scoundrels in CSI, NCIS, SVU or any other acronym are being chased by the likes of Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs or Senior Field Agent Anthony DiNozzo they always head to the nearest emergency fire exit and effortlessly bound up a thousand stairs without puffing, reaching the roof of a building where it is generally, without fail, eternally windy. I mean, we've talked about the gale that was blowing at the top of the Eiffel Tower, haven’t we.
So I ask you, why no wind by the infinity pool at the top of the Marina Bay Sands? Clever engineering, the perfect aspect, or simply a lucky wind-free week for me?
At 200 metres above the ground it should potentially be blowing so hard that the manicured palms bend and toss and the perfectly spaced lounge chairs are blown into the pool and over its infinity edge. Hollywood has proven that whenever scoundrels in CSI, NCIS, SVU or any other acronym are being chased by the likes of Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs or Senior Field Agent Anthony DiNozzo they always head to the nearest emergency fire exit and effortlessly bound up a thousand stairs without puffing, reaching the roof of a building where it is generally, without fail, eternally windy. I mean, we've talked about the gale that was blowing at the top of the Eiffel Tower, haven’t we.
So I ask you, why no wind by the infinity pool at the top of the Marina Bay Sands? Clever engineering, the perfect aspect, or simply a lucky wind-free week for me?
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