Three bars and a band; Singapore by night
April 28th 2008 08:07
Clean, green, well-behaved and law-abiding it may be, but Singapore is far from lifeless and Singaporeans are far from dull. The city has a plethora of bars, clubs, pubs and party places where its people love to let their hair down and live it up.
Most famous of Singapore’s watering holes is the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel. It is a slice of old Singapore; all polished teak tables, green lamps, wooden beams, heavy ceiling fans and worn brass, with narrow French doors opening onto wide verandahs and with the long curved bar which gives it its name, as its focal point. Steeped in a century and half of history, it whispers with stories of times past and of old colonial characters long gone. The traditions of the Long Bar, however, are very much alive and dutifully observed today by the steady stream of visitors who flock to it, like pilgrims to a shrine. The Singapore Sling, invented here almost a century ago by barman Ngiam Tong Boon and whipped up now by the fridge full, is almost a holy obligation. The potent pink pineapple-coconut-cream-tasti ng concoction is ritually sipped accompanied by peanuts in their shells, which are, according to custom, dropped on the floor and crunched underfoot.
Still, is something lost in the loudly marveling polyglot voices, the ankle socks with sandals, the pantacourts and the tank tops of the Saturday night Long Bar of 2008, we wondered? And we found ourselves thinking wistfully of white linen, panamas and voile, with the occasional clipped, crisp comment tossed from behind the Straits Times.
The Divine Wine Society Bar, in the lobby of ultra-modern Parkview Square, offers a completely different, totally 21st century and perhaps even beyond this world, experience. Sunk in deep leather armchairs we drank in the grandeur of the place; the lofty vaulted ceiling, the screened gallery with the grand piano, the art deco bronze balconies, thick with decoration; the art nouveau murals and frescos where formations of stylized deer on the hoof and streamlined birds on the wing speed through groves of fantastical trees; the mighty-temple pillars in bleached-stone white; the carpet like a deep, pink rolling cloud; the towering three storey wine chiller, silhouetted with thousands of supine bottles. An angel, in diaphanous white, with glittering wings and halo, floated silently across on ethereal ballet-slippered feet, with a gold-emblazoned drinks list of biblical proportions, to take our order. We watched in wonder as she soared on the end of a wire, higher and higher, buzzing backwards and forwards, up to the very top shelf of the giant fridge, in quest of our champagne. Had she been accompanied by celestial choirs, rather than a piecing mechanical whine, we might well have believed ourselves dead and in heaven.
The Divine Wine Society Bar is a place with a Monday to Friday rather than a weekend buzz. On weekday evenings, a singer/pianist entertains and the bar is alive with after-workers from the offices and embassies above. On Saturday night we found it rather hushed and quiet.
Chimes, in its last life the Convent of the Sisters of the Infant Jesus, dedicated to the education of young Catholic ladies, was reborn some years ago as a centre of pleasure and leisure. Its chapel is a now a chic reception centre, its cloisters are taken up with souvenir shops, restaurants and cafes, its courtyards and lawns are given over to outdoor dining areas and its classrooms have become clubs and bars which boom with house music, discos and bands. We caught Singapore singing legend, Douglas Oliviera and his band Satellite at le Baroque, a bar/restaurant at the centre of the Chimes complex. Oliviera, the eldest of nine children with a Singaporean mother and a Dutch father, began singing in a bar in Tanjong Pagar in 1972, at the age of 15. With three studio albums and thousands of gigs spanning all the big name bars and clubs across the island state, he is still decked out in his signature style - jeans, chains, black t shirt and sunglasses - and still looks, by all accounts, pretty much as he did at the start. Neither, it seems, has his voice lost anything over the years; he sings with youthful vigour and power, bringing a fresh and singularly Oliviera sound to all the classic, solid gold and top twenty covers that his audience demands. Satellite was a line-up of similarly skilled old pros who played with energy through anything and everything, slipping in bursts, now and then, of truly brilliant virtuosity.
Le Baroque has attentive efficient, good-humoured staff, excellent cocktails, a friendly, relaxed atmosphere and is a great place to dance out your demons till dawn.
Most famous of Singapore’s watering holes is the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel. It is a slice of old Singapore; all polished teak tables, green lamps, wooden beams, heavy ceiling fans and worn brass, with narrow French doors opening onto wide verandahs and with the long curved bar which gives it its name, as its focal point. Steeped in a century and half of history, it whispers with stories of times past and of old colonial characters long gone. The traditions of the Long Bar, however, are very much alive and dutifully observed today by the steady stream of visitors who flock to it, like pilgrims to a shrine. The Singapore Sling, invented here almost a century ago by barman Ngiam Tong Boon and whipped up now by the fridge full, is almost a holy obligation. The potent pink pineapple-coconut-cream-tasti ng concoction is ritually sipped accompanied by peanuts in their shells, which are, according to custom, dropped on the floor and crunched underfoot.
Still, is something lost in the loudly marveling polyglot voices, the ankle socks with sandals, the pantacourts and the tank tops of the Saturday night Long Bar of 2008, we wondered? And we found ourselves thinking wistfully of white linen, panamas and voile, with the occasional clipped, crisp comment tossed from behind the Straits Times.
Deer on the hoof, birds on the wing; the mural in the Parkview Square lobby
The Divine Wine Society Bar, in the lobby of ultra-modern Parkview Square, offers a completely different, totally 21st century and perhaps even beyond this world, experience. Sunk in deep leather armchairs we drank in the grandeur of the place; the lofty vaulted ceiling, the screened gallery with the grand piano, the art deco bronze balconies, thick with decoration; the art nouveau murals and frescos where formations of stylized deer on the hoof and streamlined birds on the wing speed through groves of fantastical trees; the mighty-temple pillars in bleached-stone white; the carpet like a deep, pink rolling cloud; the towering three storey wine chiller, silhouetted with thousands of supine bottles. An angel, in diaphanous white, with glittering wings and halo, floated silently across on ethereal ballet-slippered feet, with a gold-emblazoned drinks list of biblical proportions, to take our order. We watched in wonder as she soared on the end of a wire, higher and higher, buzzing backwards and forwards, up to the very top shelf of the giant fridge, in quest of our champagne. Had she been accompanied by celestial choirs, rather than a piecing mechanical whine, we might well have believed ourselves dead and in heaven.
The Divine Wine Society Bar is a place with a Monday to Friday rather than a weekend buzz. On weekday evenings, a singer/pianist entertains and the bar is alive with after-workers from the offices and embassies above. On Saturday night we found it rather hushed and quiet.
Chimes Chapel and cloisters
Chimes, in its last life the Convent of the Sisters of the Infant Jesus, dedicated to the education of young Catholic ladies, was reborn some years ago as a centre of pleasure and leisure. Its chapel is a now a chic reception centre, its cloisters are taken up with souvenir shops, restaurants and cafes, its courtyards and lawns are given over to outdoor dining areas and its classrooms have become clubs and bars which boom with house music, discos and bands. We caught Singapore singing legend, Douglas Oliviera and his band Satellite at le Baroque, a bar/restaurant at the centre of the Chimes complex. Oliviera, the eldest of nine children with a Singaporean mother and a Dutch father, began singing in a bar in Tanjong Pagar in 1972, at the age of 15. With three studio albums and thousands of gigs spanning all the big name bars and clubs across the island state, he is still decked out in his signature style - jeans, chains, black t shirt and sunglasses - and still looks, by all accounts, pretty much as he did at the start. Neither, it seems, has his voice lost anything over the years; he sings with youthful vigour and power, bringing a fresh and singularly Oliviera sound to all the classic, solid gold and top twenty covers that his audience demands. Satellite was a line-up of similarly skilled old pros who played with energy through anything and everything, slipping in bursts, now and then, of truly brilliant virtuosity.
Le Baroque has attentive efficient, good-humoured staff, excellent cocktails, a friendly, relaxed atmosphere and is a great place to dance out your demons till dawn.
Dancing out the demons at Le Baroque
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