a Bangkok snooze

People go to Bangkok for many, many reasons. Some go there to pray. Others go there to stopover before heading elsewhere. Some pass through the capital before heading to other parts of the country. And most, of course, go there to shop, and shop, and shop.

 

Me?

 

I go there to snooze.

 

Okay, not literally.

 

It's not like I made a deliberate trip to Krungthep just to check into a hotel room and hide under the covers and sleep and sleep and sleep, but yeah, I think that's pretty much what i did in the several days that I was there.

 

It's been a couple of years now, but if I remember it correctly, what I did there can be summed up as: Sleep, eat junk food, sleep, walk a bit, binge-watch drama episodes on viki.com and then sleep some more. :)

Not that I stayed under the covers all day.

I went down for breakfast buffet style and ate lots of kuay teow and scrambled eggs and papaya and honeydew and mango and watermelon and drank cups and cups of coffee. 

I went to the pool and tried getting myself a suntan.

 

There were the Thai massages that ached the heck out of me and are far from the relaxing Swedish techniques, but are very stretchy for the body and excellently good for the muscles.

 

There were also the strolls to the nearby Big C supermarket for Mama creamy shrimp tom yum instant noodles and bags of Twisties and Lay's potato chips and bottles of Coke.

 

There was the meal at A&W for fried chicken wings and waffles and root beer float which was an absolute thing to do since A&W disappeared themselves out of Singapore and we are all nostalgic like that.

 

for waffles and root beer floats

There was, of course, the Thai iced tea, which I bought more than once, and which I fell in love with again and again and again afterward.

 

thai iced tea

And yes, there was the short, easy walk to the Erawan Shrine, where I found myself more fascinated by the flower garland vendor doing her nails in black nail polish.

But I really did sleep a lot in those couple of days.

 

Sometimes you've just got to get away from the environment that you're in and go away to sleep and sleep. Sometimes you've just got to take that bit of courage and leave the space you're attached to and experiment spacing out your brain in a different room, a different place, a different world, a different culture.

 

one of the lobbies

 

and the snooze space

It's surprising what one realizes when that's done. 

 

It's even more surprising what one takes back after that's done. 

 

Me? 

 

I took back a little bit of a history lesson between Singapore, Israel and Thailand. I also took back a little bit of real-life FMCG lessons. And I took back a whole new lot of perspective about entertainment, distribution channels, character building, character structure, casting, cultural export and how engaging content can be.

Which, heh, had absolutely nothing to do with all the snoozing and sleeping at all. :)

bak kut Teh

I'm going to be super honest and say it straight out.

 

*takes a deep breath*

 

I'm not a bak kut teh lover. Neither am I a bak kut teh eater. This local favorite is no where on my list of local favorites. Not at all. It doesn't matter whether it is the Teochew version with the white peppery soup, or the herbal version, which is black. This dish is just not up there at all.

It's not that I don't eat pork. I do. But somehow, in between the char siew rice and char siew pau and wanton mee and steamed minced pork and pork dumplings, when it comes to bak kut teh, I suddenly become as kosher as one can be.

 

But there's one place, and to date only this one place, where I'm okaaaay with the bak kut teh, and the pigs' trotters.

 

Leong Kee (Klang) Bak Kut Teh.

 

At Leong Kee

It's this place that used to be at Beach Road, and which has since closed, and now they're at Lorong 11 Geylang.

  

It's an experience eating at their outlet in the Geylang 'hood. The tables are black, the utensils and crockery are black, and you've got the alternative of eating in the air-conditioned room or alfresco, either at the five foot way, or in the alley back.

 

We're usually at the alfresco five foot way, and you'll find more or less the same dishes on our table each time, no matter what the time. One bak kut teh, one ter kah, one rice, one you tiao, and two little saucers of the black black sauce with no chili inside.

 

you tiao for 80 cents!

 

bean curd skin and veggies

What it is about the Klang style of bak kut teh, I don't really know, but I like their broth. 

 

I like the brownish color, I like the richness and thickness of its texture, I like the huge veggie leaves that they arrange on top of the soup, and the generous pieces of bean curd skin that help keep the meat simmering in the clay pot broth below. I like that they've done it so prettily that the first sight of the bak kut teh isn't the meat and the bones, but the bubbling soup accompanied by the colors of fresh lovely green and the soft beige brown. And I like the herbs, whatever they are, that they use for the broth, which makes the taste rounded and peppery enough for me.

 

And then there's the ter kah. For someone who doesn't really go for  pigs' trotters (I become suddenly kosher at the mere sight of it), I actually do find the dish quite a charming one.

 

pigs' trotters below

There's plenty of vinegar in the black, black sauce that goes wonderfully well with rice. And you get quite a bit of meat, which is cooked so tender that it falls right off the bone,and which you reach only after getting past the parsley that they've chucked right dead center on top of the whole clay pot. 

 

I like the parsley.

 

It comes in very useful for a diner like me who goes completely squeamish and who loses her appetite at the mere sight of bouncy pork fat and the stewed pig skin. I simply spread out the leaves on top of the parts that I cannot bear to see, get along happily with my meal, and munch it up afterwards. :) 

 

parsley camouflage

 

 



Bus Ride Sights: BKE That Side

Okay, I'm calling this post the "BKE That Side" because um, it really is somewhere around BKE that side. Except that I'm not quite sure which side. If I'm not wrong, it's on the side where Senja and Cashew is. Because the bus turned out from Choa Chu Kang, and in the midst of settling down, I found myself near the newly opened Hillion, but whether these shots come before or after Hillion, or is it even Bukit Panjang Plaza, I don't really know.

Such is what happens when you're too busy taking pictures that you don't know the road on which your bus has turned into.

I'm lost in the area.

Hopelessly lost.

Oh, I know the names of a few locations here and there, but the signs befuddle me. I think of Bukit Panjang as this huge estate that comes just after Bukit Timah Hill and is in between the Hill and Woodlands. I also think of it as a place that somehow guides you to Choa Chu Kang and Teck Whye, but I don't know which is which, and where is where...
 

What I do know is that when I first got on the bus, I was on the road that runs parallel to the LRT line (not very helpful) and near where the iTE campus is, and I think it is Choa Chu Kang Road and on the other side is behind all the blocks there is a community center and an NTUC and Sheng Siong and a McDonalds. Then I also do know that somewhere in the zone is Junction 10, or is it Bukit Panjang Plaza.

 

I'm not joking when I say I really have zilch idea where I was, and the more I try to describe it, the more it sounds absolute that I'm going in circles like a dog chasing its tail. But anyway, the bus went onto the BKE, that I'm absolutely sure. :)

 

I am also absolutely sure that it was a very, very, very hot, humid, melting day.

 

there's a canal nearby

 

heading towards a mall

either before or after the mall

 

lone tree along BKE

 

where the road curves into the expressway

Bukit Timah Expressway, or is it PIE already..

 



the licensed Cinderella glass Slipper

 

I should have been admiring the shoe.

I should have been gazing dreamily at it, fantasizing about my Cinderella moment wearing this pointy toe pump and dramatic spike heel at a high society party.

Or I should have been wondering about the number of Swarovski crystals mounted on the shoe from toe to heel.  

Instead, after walking past the window display of this luxury shoe boutique, the first thought that came to mind was, "See? See? Now who said luxury brands and digital animation don't mix?!?!"

Not very ladylike, and not very luxurious-minded, I'd say.

But for good reason. :)

See, there had been this meeting last year, and during it, after the round-robin analysis of corporate videos versus digital animation, the other side came to his own absolute conclusion that luxury brands and digital animation would never mix. He was completely certain that no CEO of a luxury brand would ever think about using digital animation. Too frivolous, too playful for bespoke brands. Too childish, too immature, too much of a plaything for the serious stuff of life. Why, he was so 150% sure about it that he said he could immediately call up his contact at a luxury brand and this person would verify his perspective.

Not even a picture like this shown to him right there and then would shake him from his core belief.

borrowed from the US Louis Vuitton website

Subject to copyright this picture is, I know, so thank you to LV's legal.. and thanks for letting me borrow this to make a point.

It's a d*** strong point I'm making.

The first is that there's nothing absolute and certain in this world. Sure, we know luxury brands. We know luxury boutiques. We know their work. We know their art. We know their boutiques. We enter them. We purchase them online. We fly to Paris and Italy and Spain to buy piece by piece. We purchase their work as investments.

But we are not them.

We aren't Prada or Louis Vuitton or Loewe or Coach or Bottega Venata or Hermes. We don't know their plans, or their business strategies, or which markets they wish to develop or who they want to tap on. We don't know all of that. We might know a person here, or a person there, but if you're not in the inner circle where the design team, or the upper echelons in HQ are, then we don't really know anything at all.

And so we can't be completely and absolutely certain of anything.

Which means that while Lightning from Final Fantasy posing in a Louis Vuitton ad might catch us by surprise, and we might launch into opinions and theories about the pros and cons and if it's heading in the right direction or not, we really shouldn't shut it off, nor shut it up. 

Because it's taking place, and it will continue to take place through various representations.

And if it occurs to you that such unreal, unhuman "influencers" might be far from their league, or that these 'not even people' might be watering down their quality of work, then you don't know the workings of Entertainment, you don't know film, you don't know music, you don't know games and the philosophy of gameplay, you don't know what digital entertainment is all about, you don't know its valuation, you don't know what audiences it communicates to, you don't know the data it collects, you don't know the technology that goes on behind the 'for children only to play play', you don't know  the seriousness that goes into it, you don't know how entertainment influences people and grabs eyeballs and modifies behavior, and you don't know the power of Licensing, Merchandise, and Merchandising.

In fact, you possibly might refute Entertainment altogether.

However, Mr. Bernard Arnault does not. Datuk Choo does not. Coach does not. Christian Louboutin does not. And neither does Burberry.

In which case, perhaps it would be wiser to not speak on their behalf, don't you think?



bak chor Mee

It has to be a Singapore-Singaporean who thinks about whether she should write an article about bak chor mee. No allegories, no references, no discussions, no reviews, nothing of the sort.

 

Just a plain bowl of bak chor mee.. as it is.

 

Of course, one could go on about hawker culture, whether it is dying, for what reason it is dying, whether there're still people going to hawker centers and why, and why not. Of course, one could also go on about whether hawker fare and hawker centers in general have a future, whether they even have a place in 21st century Singapore, whether graduates from cooking school should be encouraged to take up hawker-hood, whether they wish to, and how we can encourage them to forgo their dreams of dessert-making and cake-baking and instead enter the squeezy, cramped, stuffy, box-like space of a stall in the hawker centers.

 

And of course one we could go on about whether we are losing our culture and national identity if we allow the hawker centers to die and what we're gonna do to preserve it.

 

One could go on and on, and honestly, such discussions are marvelous in that they have made hawker centers into a culture. Eating at a hawker center, or ta-paoing food from a hawker center or coffee shop was always part of being Singaporean, but now it has become an official culture.

 

To be Singaporean is to know our local hawker fare. To be Singaporean is to be immensely proud of the fact that you work in a spanking office building in MBFC but will take the Downtown Line to Hong Lim Food Center and grab boxes of buttery muffins or mee chang kueh or kueh chang or have a crayfish laksa lunch.

 

To be Singaporean is also to claim not to discuss anything else other than bak chor mee.... but end up writing a couple of paragraphs before you get to the actual thing. :P

 

bak chor mee

and the bak

I know that there are very popular ones that people go specially for.

But this one is from Killiney Kopitiam at Circular Road, which I'm sometimes at when I'm in the CBD during lunch time. The CBD has a host of cafes and sandwich places and restaurants with plenty of great lunchtime deals. But I prefer local for lunch and this is a fantastic spot to be at. They're remarkably efficient, they've got a good selection of dishes and you don't usually have to wait too long before you get a seat.

Between the Hainanese Pork Chop, the Seafood Hor Fun and all the other dishes, I usually go for this, and I ask the aunty to customize it for me with kuay teow and tomato sauce. They've got the ingredients in the right proportion... fish balls, fish cake slices, soring onions, bak chor, lettuce, pork lard and all, and the tomato sauce isn't too sweet nor too overwhelming and makes a great midday meal when everything's mixed up together.  

the Raya bazaar

 

2017 Lights @ Geylang Serai

The Raya bazaar macam officially hipster nowadays.

 

Because of the 2016 pasar malam lar, that's why.

 

Last time come down, buy, eat, take one photo for memory's sake, okay, can already. Now? All these Millennials and Gen Xs and Xennials come down, see and buy and eat not enough, they must go and Facebook, Instagram, Blog everything they see and eat. And then after they do that, more Millennials, Gen Xs and Xennials come down. And then they also go and Facebook, Instagram and Blog everything they see and eat... so last year's bazaar was crowds lar.

This year the organizers decided they also want the same.

So they made this year's bazaar absolutely hipster.

 

It really did feel that way.

 

I got that vibe, helped no less, of course, by the posts and blogs on social media. But whether hipster or not, I was just going to be there. Because I'm simply someone who thinks that any opportunity to have a fun time is a good one. It doesn't matter whether you go with a bunch of friends and family or by yourself. The atmosphere will make you part of the community... or at least the food will.

This year I had the beef nachos, which was these cute little strips of beef topped with lots of nacho cheese. I had the coconut ice cream, which was three scoops of ice cream served in a coconut shell with carved coconut flesh sitting on top. I had the goreng pisang, very oily but hey, fried banana! I had Thai iced tea. I had the Dutch baby pancakes because the pancakes looked soooo cute and they had salted egg sauce and I like salted egg. And I had a cup of soft shell crab together with a couple of breaded oysters on a stick.

 

The crowds were there. Oh, absolutely... and I hear it got super heavy on the eve of the eve of Hari Raya. :)

I walked both sides this year.

On the Haig Food Center side, there were the locals and foreign visitors thronging around and standing around with cups and plastic bags, munching sticks of snacks and dangling  Styrofoam boxes of dinner from their hands. This was the side with the rainbow colored bagels and the fried ice cream balls and the huge fried squid and the dragon breath balls and the coconut ice cream and the soft serve ice cream and the chendol soft serve for $5. This was the side with the Ramly Burger and the dendeng and the kebab right in the middle of everything and fresh frozen slushies and jagung milk and canned drinks and bandung and bags and shoes. This was also the side for goreng pisang and goreng tapioca and otah and goreng sweet potato and mee hoon goreng and kuay teow goreng, and the unicorn drinks..

On the other side were the stalls offering jewelry and henna art and plastic flowers and bottled kurma milk and mango juice and fruit sodas from Indonesia and bags and headscarves and non-alcoholic perfume. This was the side with the chocolate waffles and the shoe stalls and the bedsheet-blanket stall and the huge Persian carpets and more kebab stalls and this really funky drink of three colors, and further back there were the stalls of beef nachos and Dutch baby pancakes and baju kurung and right in the center, second hand cars that you could pay and drive off rightaway.  

 

But there were stalls I missed, and stalls that I couldn't find.

I missed the stall that offered samples of Raya cookies. Last year they were right outside the mall and I remember they had some very lovely sugee cookies. :P

And I couldn't find the shop selling dates either. I wanted to sample these really big, juicy dates from Iran. :)

the Leaves... they're Gone :(

I'm sometimes at this place where I get the sight of trees and leaves out of the second-floor windows.

Whenever I'm there, I listen to the rustling of the leaves as they brush against each other. I admire the leaves. I listen to the rustling ferns. I watch the butterflies as they flit from one leaf to another whilst they make their way through the trees. I watch the branches sway to and fro whenever the winds blow, and when little yellow birds settle on the branches, I try to distinguish their song.

But I can't do that now. :(

I can't do that anymore. :'(

logs lying on the ground

They've cut the trees away.

They've dug up all these lovely trees from their roots and chopped their branches off and dismembered their trunks and uprooted them from their spots. They've destroyed the homes of the garden ants who crawl helter-skelter around and inside the property as they frantically look for a new home They've piled the beautiful trunks into piles and tossed the beautiful green leaves onto moving trucks and they've gone.

Leaving the once-landscaped space bare and dusty and dry and now I'm left with just pictures, and memories. :'(

three different species

cast shadows

 

 

clear little leaves

the chopped forest

getting stark and grey

farewell, rustling loves



in Hua Hin

A Bubble Pirate I know is in Bangkok now. Some days he's at Lumpini Park. Some days he's at Khao San. Recently he's started going to another park. I can't seem to recall the name now, except that it's a rather long one. He's a bubbl-ogist, and what he does at these places is to bring joy and happiness and moments of magic through bubbles.

 

I've been following his adventure since he started from Singapore. Right through Malaysia from Johor Bahru to Melaka and Penang and Hua Hin in Thailand thereafter.

 

Seeing his pictures made me think of the time I was in the same town. That was a couple of years ago. And it's interesting, but honestly, at that time I'd not quite considered going there very much- I'd rather much have stayed in Bangkok- but it was a beautiful place, very calm, very serene, not very touristy etc. etc, I was told, so I went. 

 

And found myself greeted by this after a very bumpy  train ride from Hualamphong station in Bangkok.



 

flags by the beach

Gulf of Thailand

Which was quite a bit of a relief, I tell you, considering that I'd just spent an hour or so getting here on a hard blue seat, sweltering in a carriage that had no air-conditioning but which had open windows (thankfully). Not that I minded my fellow passengers moving up and down the aisle, nor the vendors trundling their way through the narrow aisles offering foodstuffs and snacks in all kinds of colors to travelers. 

 

my seat in the train

My time in Hua Hin was more touristy than backpacker. :) 

Each morning there was a glorious sunrise from the balcony of my room, followed by a lovely, leisurely breakfast with juice and crossiants and eggs at the lobby. I had time to lounge on the deck chairs near the beach and grab some sun, I had time to sit in the airy lobby and people-watch. There was no rush whatsoever, so much so that from the hallway, I had time to stop and grab a magnificent view of the hills beyond.

 

hills, a range of hills

It was mostly very restful. save for one afternoon where I rented a bike and rode around the neighborhood for an hour and then went along the highway-like road until I reached this place that had a shooting range right beside a lake. I stayed by the lake a while in one of these huts gazing out at swimming ducks before deciding to bike back before the sun went down. 

 

one of the huts at the lake

it's realllly quiet

To me, Hua Hin's one of those towns where you can be both a tourist and a non-tourist at the same time. It is a place that has hotels and tourists and foreigners, but it is also a place for locals. It is a place where locals and tourists seem to live comfortably side by side. Why, next to the hotel property was a residential home where roosters and chickens wandered about freely and whose rooster call woke guests up at the crack of dawn.

Still, there're enough tourists around to have a Village where there're plenty of shops and shopping and food and all. I didn't get to go to the Village area that time. I wish I did. I'd have loved to get some souvenirs and clothes and see all the stuff that's over there. 

Instead, I hung about in the property most of the time, walked around the courtyards a bit and breathed in the air of their landscaped grounds and ponds.

 

lotus flowers

And then I went around to the shops close by, got myself their signature painful massages and ate lots of food. Including a mountain of pad thai, and a very spicy green curry.  

 

green curry

pad thai

Bus Ride Sights: Jalan Besar

Here's Jalan Besar.

From the junction of Jalan Besar and Lavender Road to the nearing end of Jalan Besar and Sim Lim Square, with the reflection of the bus seat thrown in at the Rochor Beancurd side.

This is all on the driver's side, and you can easily figure out where the bus stops and the traffic lights are... ;)
 

just after kam leng hotel there

between a ktv and nippon paint store

nearing kitchener road

a relocation from rochor cener

near a Rochor beancurd

heading to sim lim square

If there's one thing Jalan Besar is synonymous for, it's bathroom fittings. No, I'm not kidding. Ask anyone above the age of 35, and they'll tell you that their parents told them that if anyone wanted a new tap, or a new bathtub, or a new part to fit on top of their toilet bowl, or to refurbish the bathroom, it was to Jalan Besar they went.

There's another thing that Jalan Besar is well known for.

Coffee. And hangouts.

Technically, it's on Tyrwhitt Street behind Jalan Besar, but hey, that's how we describe the whole area anyway. So, you've got Chye Seng Huat Hardware Store at the back, you've got Druggists, you've got Tiramisu House, you've got the Broadway food court (that serves up a great Thai green curry), and you've got more drinking places on the other side of Tyrwhitt leading to Kitchener Road.

Oh, there're also a few KTV pubs, a few coffee shops stretched along the road, with Butter Studio and Swee Choon somewhere in the middle of it all.

when the Business is Food

chap cai peng style

This was my lunch that day, and despite my plate looking not very Instagram-worthy, it actually was quite pleasant a meal. Sufficiently meant to fill the stomach, they'd catered in these huge trays of fried rice, chicken filets, fish filets, siew mais, chicken curry, steamed vegetables and party bites. There was orange squash. There was black tea and coffee with sugar sticks and creamer packets. And there was hot dessert to finish.

 

The queues were long, people stood in line and moved round the buffet table as they filled their plates. The colleague returned armed with two platefuls of food. He'd simply embraced the whole thing with a fun spirit and let the chap cai peng spirit in him take over.

 

Which was the true spirit in everyone at this place in MBFC.

 

F&B

To be Singaporean is to understand what chap cai peng is all about. It's a distinctly Singaporean thing for us to make it an every day meal where we pile rice on our plates and then add a bit of this and a bit of that and squeeze in as many varieties as possible onto a single plate and have it at a value-for-money price. We're practical and efficient in that sense. And it's the same vibe at the nasi padang stall. Queue, point, point, point, pay, and go.

 

That same practicality and efficiency applied in day to day choices were probably the driving message behind the technological disruptions displayed at this event. There were systems to facilitate customers' ordering processes. There were systems that streamlined your supply reordering  processes and placed checks on quantities and supplier-restaurant relationships. There were systems that brought e-commerce trade to the forefront and created new opportunities for new connections with new manufacturers and suppliers.

 

A whole bunch of us squeezed into one of the conference rooms and stood around for presentations and panel discussions on branding and digital marketing and social media marketing and influencer marketing and advertising and creating a website and getting it top spot on a Google search.

 

There were several conversations with the exhibitors, including one that had garnered recent publicity for their gigantic vending machines at MRT stations where you could order a hot dish of pasta to-go for $3.50. Then there were the overheard comments which signified the current temperature of the local F&B climate.

 

Still, if there's one thing that unites the whole climate, whether you're a fresh grad, whether you're into fusion or traditional or desserts or confectionaries or cakes or Mediterranean, it's that we're all about the Kopitiam, and the organizers know it too.

 

a pretty kopitiam chair

 



a Fragrance in Balestier

Balestier is one of those places where you get there, and then you find yourself surrounded in a Time that's present and past at the same time. What used to be one large estate full of gambier and pepper and nutmeg is now recognized as a long, long road that connects you from Bendeemer and Jalan Besar to the Toa Payoh side.

 

balestier road

It is a place where shop houses line the streets and where apartment buildings from the late 70s and 80s stand. It's a place where cars and buses and all manner of vehicles zoom past you. It's a place where there's a mall for (mostly) essentials and a cinema in the same mall and where you can get a filling, value-for-money meal at Collin's. I tried their pizza with brie cheese. It was good. The cheese was solid, man.

 

the Shaw at Balestier

There's plenty of food to be had. You've got the fast food options. You've got a hawker center somewhere down the middle of the whole road that's famous for something which I can't recall now. You've got the bak kut teh, five or six of them that open till late. And you've got the traditional confectionaries that offer wife biscuits and tau sar piah, and the bakeries that have their cutting boards and ovens and shelves right out there at the front of the shop and you can walk past and get yourself Planta kaya toast- which they'll slap together for you on the spot- or a bag of red bean buns or a loaf that you bring along for the day.

 

loaves for sale

I missed out on the brighter and livelier hotels when I hung out in the area. It could have been either Zhongshan or Days (Days has orange walls!) but instead I stayed in one that exuded the serenity and calmness of Zhongshan Park and Sun Yat Sen Villa nearby.

  

the little coffee table

loft bed!

I don't exaggerate. That's what I felt.

See, outside could have a lot of action (and outside the property did have some sort of action on the day I turned up) but take a step into the Fragrance room that is on the first floor, shut the door, and at once you feel the sense of quiet and calmness dissolving your senses.

The room is painted a muted theme of creamy beige and brown. The furniture is mostly made of wood in shades of brown or black. And the sunlight streaming in through a gap in the curtains brings a softness that embraces and cuddles you. 

 

I love the element of space that they've created. 

The bed is on a loft above your head which you access by a cute flight of stairs. The desk, the fridge, the water pot and the glasses and mugs and instant coffee and tea are tucked along the wall. There's a nice lovely sofa at the other end of the room creating what looks like a living room space. And there's a small coffee table placed beneath the television and which you can pull out when you're on the sofa.

The design is all very streamlined and well placed, and despite the room not being huge, I didn't feel cramped one bit at all.

 

narrow steps

Rather, I was attracted by the distinctive softness that filled the whole room. No matter that the property was a no-frills place, after a couple of hours up and down the heritage street, I was eager to return to this soft, delicate atmosphere and just fall completely into it.

 

like walking on stilettos

Yet what I do fancy most about this room is that they've created a space where you can either fully embrace it, or take the theme as a canvas and do it up as you wish. 

I could sit alone on the sofa with a mug of coffee and cookies and classical music and a shawl and a book. But I could also put on some music, blow up a couple of balloons, hang a couple of streamers, invite a few friends and have beer and soft drinks and bags of chips and pizza and burgers and fries whilst lounging stretched out on the floor.

That's the sort of place this Fragrance is, only that I would need to keep the glass doors leading to the balcony tightly shut. Otherwise I'd be staring right smack at the hotel's laundry trolleys... and the backyard of the Chinese temple next door.