Secrets of Singapore

They learned from us – now we need to learn from them

The last time I visited Singapore, I stayed at the charmingly run-down, distinctly colonial Raffles Hotel. I drank a Singapore Sling in the Long Bar, contemplated a well-fed cockroach in my room and fancied myself to be following in the footsteps of Somerset Maugham. It was more than 30 years ago. I felt like Milord Anglais, making my tour around the still pretty exotic Far East.

Well, that’s all gone. Visiting again earlier this month I found a Singapore so prosperous that any possible sense of effortless and, of course, undeserved superiority has been replaced by something close to the opposite. The place is so successful, in so many ways, that I felt like a visitor from a decadent old country on a trip to one that had surged ahead.

I can’t afford the Raffles any more. It has been spruced up and is out of my league.