The New Asia Bar, Singapore. High in the clouds 71 floors over Singapore City in Swissotel The Stamford, once the highest bar in the southern hemisphere and a favourite of Liquid Sunshine’s since the 80’s.
Back then it was a favoured after-work joint for locals and a tourist haunt during the day, with an always lively bar offering Tiger beer, yards of ale, Moet and Jack.
By the turn of the century it had morphed into classic Asian nightclub mode, catering to passing tourists, expats and locals equally, then grew into the new milennium offering helipad parties and startling night-time views of the growing city.
Happy Hour ran – in the usual Singapore style – till 9 p.m. so could perhaps have been more sensibly named Happy Evening. It was a great time to visit. Watching the sun set over the islands could be simply sensational. Seeing a tropical storm settle in made you feel smug to be in such cosy surrounds as the winds and rain battered the plate glass. The night club crowd were some time away, so the tracks were ambient beats and trancey anthems. And the drinks were chilled to perfection as the icy antidote to the equatorial heat, served with sweet-spicy snacks, and reasonably priced for the awesome location.
Bottles of Johnny Black for four hundred Singapore dollars at an exchange rate of three Singapore Dollars to one Pound Sterling made for affordable night out for small groups, bottles of Moet a steal at S$89, the ever-present Tiger Beer frosty and the Erdinger WiessBier chilled. Cocktails were, naturally, mixed to match the magnificent surroundings, with a substantial pour of bourbon or scotch that never overpowered and always satisfied.
Late nights, as in every city, were more the domain of the trendy and trying too hard, living it large to a soundtrack of Funk, House, Electro, Top 40 and Motown as the music ramped up and the beat quickened. If you weren’t so keen on crowds, Cityspace on the 70th floor was the perfect snug bar, cozy and comfortable, and only a few steps closer to ground.
For four decades, the New Asia Bar was a favoured port of call, always an early stop on the itinerary. It blazed a trail for today’s fantastic new cocktail and whisky bars bars lighting up Singapore’s nights. Over the decades, the view of the city from the New Asia bar changed enormously. Raffles Place rose higher into the clouds, Clarke Quay evolved into a monsoon-proof destination, the Bay morphed from a busy open harbour of jostling junks and bum boats to the restrained Marina Bay of the casino and Formula 1 Grand Prix circuit today, and it’s as fantastic today as it ever was.
While I appreciate progress as much as the next guy and love the city to this day, I adored that old Singapore, with its junks and bumboats, tea houses and hawkers, rickshaws and Raffles.
I miss that Singapore that my father could still recognise from his army days there in the Forties, already well on its way in the Eighties to becoming the city state powerhouse it is today.
