There are places where luxury seems like a break from the intensity of the place, in the large and heavily congested urban areas where life is lived at a very fast pace, and visiting can be illuminating, but also extremely exhausting. There are also places where luxury is almost too much, in places where there are only beaches and more beaches, and the idea of having to decompress at the end of a day at the beach just seems somehow too much. Then there are places like Singapore. Luxury hotels here seem like a splendid idea, because the pace is fast but never too much, and the setting is lovely, but never too far away from urban excitements, and the city state just seems to take to luxury very well.
It’s nice to see it in the accommodations when it’s in the fantastic restaurants here, and the extremely high quality of entertainments makes Singapore where luxury is a natural compliment to a place with exquisite taste in fashion and urban design. This is a place where the Tea Dance was once all the rage, and there are certainly traces of it today again, too. It would be somehow logical for it to come back now, when all the cool and hip things of the 60s are returning with their neon smiles. The Tea Dance finds its origins in British culture, and it was in fine fashion here and in Hong Kong when these were still colonies.
In the 60s, young people would gather on Sunday afternoons and listen to records together, or sometimes poets would give their beatnit poems a read for a listening public. There was not always tea, that part was not essential, and sometimes, in fact, wine and beer were the drink of choice. Today, Philipino culture here will do Tea Dances, which usually involve time at the mall, and the idea is similar, and perhaps similar enough that it will become a new phenomenon once again. It is a splendid way to make a lazy day into one that’s filled with luxury, and sometimes a little romance too.
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