Cindy Fan

By Cindy Fan

SINGAPORE – Some time after the third Singapore Sling I started to get loud.

“Another Sling, ol’ sport!” I bellowed, slapping the wood bar, sending peanut shells flying. The bartender looked nervous. He also looked like he was 15 – scrawny, insignificant.

Never mind that one Sling was $20 – half my lean backpacker per diem. Or the fact that it was a terrible drink – pink, frothy and sweet, with enough gin to knock out a mule, or make you into one. But there were things that you had to do while in Singapore, and sipping Singapore Slings at Raffles Hotel’s Long Bar, where the drink was invented, was one of them.

I had stumbled into a time capsule.

Leather stools, rattan furniture, wooden shutters, brass fixtures, punkahs on the ceiling waved back and forth – the Long Bar was one of those places you’d expect to find mustachioed men in white uniforms and pith helmets, and well-heeled ladies complaining of the dullness of “this horrid country” and the afternoon heat. Throw in a few foreign correspondents and Rudyard Kipling penning verses in a corner and you’ve got the hotel at the turn of the 20th century.

[This article was published in The Toronto Star. View it on their site here.]

So I played into the hotel’s historical fantasy. I became one of those drunkard writers who sat at bars making heavy, astute notes – 100% lucid until it was time to get up and walk a straight line. If I dared try to leave, all the alcohol would shoot up and down my spine, liquefying speech and legs, rendering me into a savage in a fancy hotel. You see, I had to stay at the bar to maintain my dignity.

The hotel was built in 1887 and named after Sir Stamford Raffles, the bloke who arrived to a swampy set of islands in 1819 and founded Singapore as a trading post for the East India Company.

The place was nice – too nice for squiffy outbursts or my flip-flops. Before settling in at the bar, I recall wandering the grounds, jaw to the marble floor in awe. It was a grand three-storey building, an oasis of British colonial architecture in the middle of modern Singapore. 11 restaurants, a ballroom, a shopping arcade full of things I couldn’t afford, courtyards, gardens. The white walls were lined with photos, a who’s who of guests: Ava Gardner, the Queen, George H. Bush, Liz Taylor, Charlie Chaplin.

Am I sitting where Joseph Conrad sat? I wondered seriously. Would they notice if I stole the photo of Somerset Maugham?

Spending an irresponsible amount on bad cocktails was absolutely necessary for hydration. Singapore was one degree north of the equator. The air was always swollen with humidity, always rife with the tension of a thunderstorm dying to be unleashed. I sat at the bar wiping mascara off my face. Women, of course, don’t sweat – we glow. I was glowing like a pig.

In “Tropical Trials: A Hand-book for Women in the Tropics” (1883), it advised that “a woman should abstain from the use of alcohol in any of its forms” – because, naturally, we have weak constitutions and the repugnant habit in such a climate would endanger our health.

Perhaps that’s why sometime around 1910, a British officer asked bartender Ngiam Tong Boon to create a drink befitting of a young lady. Ngiam Tong Boon thought a cocktail with a whopping 70 ml of spirits – one third of the drink – was sufficiently girly. Hell, it was pink. He shook up gin, Heering cherry liqueur, pineapple and lime juice, Cointreau, Dom Benedictine, Grenadine and a dash of Angostura bitters. The Singapore Sling was born.

Another six orders for the drink came in. The bartender mechanically reached for the juice and gin.

“Say ol’ sport,” I said, jabbing the Sling’s signature swizzle stick speared with a maraschino cherry at him. “How many of these things have you made in your life?”

He grimaced and shrugged his shoulders.

“Then how many d’you make in a day?”

“About 800 to 1000 ma’am.”

“How many days a week you work?” I barked. “How many years have you worked here?”

“Five days a week, ma’am, for five years.”

“Let’s see. 800 multiplied by five, and then 52 weeks a year, that’s…”

That was too much math for me in my condition.

“…but x and y do not satisfy this equation; we need a natural logarithm, stat! Never mind. Whatever the number is, I’m gonna add one more to that total,” I said tapping the bar. I grinned. I was feeling fine – very fine – but I knew I wouldn’t in a few hours. Might as well go for broke. Literally.

In “Tropical Trials,” it listed treatments for common ailments us women face in the tropics such as “heat apoplexy,” “Burmah Head,” “hysteria and other functional derangements.” I just hoped it had a cure for hangovers.

Cindy Fan is a writer, photographer & travel blogger based in Laos. www.cindyfan.com

JUST THE FACTS

Raffles Hotel Singapore, 1 Beach Road; MRT station: City Hall www.raffles.com/singapore

SLEEPING The hotel has 103 suites. Rates start from S$640 ($515 US). Care to sleep where the Queen slept? The 2-bedroom Presidential suite is S$10,000 ($8,000 US) a night.

DINING The Sunday Brunch buffet, served at the Bar & Billiard Room, is a lavish gastro-affair where champagne flows and bellies expand. Reservations recommended. S$178 ($140 US)

DRINKING The Long Bar serves up so many Singapore Slings they make it in batches with a blender. Request for your drink to be shaken the traditional way.