Legends of staying power

Asia’s Legendary Hotels
Written by William Warren
Photographs by Jill Goecher
Published by Periplus
Available from Kinokuniya, Bt1,674

Reviewed by Roger Beaumont

The Nation

This is a book not just to savour but to use for further exploration as author William Warren and Australian photographer Jill Gocher have done an excellent job in revealing the fascinating histories of 29 legendary hotels in Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Indonesia.

They may not even be the best hotels in Asia - although some undoubtedly are - but they are certainly the most unique and interesting. It is their beginnings and development that detain us and so they should, for what stories they tell. Within their walls, bars and dining rooms there are secrets, dramas, golden periods, war-time occupation, fading neglect and eventual restoration.

Nearly all were built towards the end of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th. Every major Asian city had one, sometimes more, that "seemed to encapsulate its essence to visitors from afar", writes Warren.

They also sprang up in hill stations in the shadow of the Himalayas and atop the cool hills of Sri Lanka. Their fame and facilities often spread by word of mouth. They attracted not only royalty, diplomats and senior civil servants but also film stars, writers and con men, all back in an age where people stayed for weeks if not months on end, having travelled great distances very slowly with enormous trunks and sometimes their own staff.

All had vast lobbies and high ceilings, armies of servants, beds shrouded in mosquito nets, huge fans, wicker chairs, and shuttered wooden windows that opened on to landscaped gardens or the sea or both. Some even had elevators. These hotels became havens from the "teeming streets outside" - in them, but not of them. Parties, affairs, marriages, deals and deviousness were all part of the fabric of time spent there.

Writers like Somerset Maugham seem to have stayed at every major hotel in Asia judging by the number of suites named after him. "Noel Coward was almost as ubiquitous, adding to his (and the hotel's) renown by writing 'Private Lives' in just four days while confined by the flu to a suite at the Cathay."

Then came World War II and everything changed. Everything. Many of the hotels featured in this book where taken over by either Japanese or Allied officers. Hong Kong capitulated to the Japanese on Christmas Day 1941, "the surrender being signed in the Peninsular Hotel and the Governor being confined for two months in one of the hotel's suites before he was sent to a prison near Shanghai". Now that's what you call a culture shock.

Other hotels were converted into hospitals. The rest went to seed. The time of leisurely travel was gone - along with the breed who sustained it. An era was over and a challenging time began. People had new aspirations and different needs. Mass travel was beginning. Tour groups began to arrive who hardly spent any time in their rooms or even the hotel. Owners throughout Asia were faced with a dilemma. "Many of the rambling structures were in deplorable condition, suffering either from the effects of war or too many years of neglect ... roofs leaked, floorboards creaked, rising damp discoloured the walls."

Even in 1985, the Imperial in New Delhi had "hideous floor carpets" and "reluctant air-conditioning". In "Memories of the Strand" (Rangoon), the owners write: "...oh yes, there were mice, but they were not other mice, they were STRAND mice."

There wasn't one major hotel in Asia that didn't need serious attention. "For some the challenges were simply too overwhelming and they gave up the fight ... several continued to exist physically, but in such a state of disrepair and squalor that not even the most determined seeker of nostalgia would want to spend much time in them."

Major restorations really took off in the 1990s and those who did decide to refurbish, convert, update, and yet keep the original character of these hotels realised it was going to take tenacity and money. Lots of money. Many have spent between US$400 million and $500 million (Bt12.5 billion and Bt15.6 billion) - but the results are astonishing. You want to stay in all of them. And you can. For a price. All the hotels featured here have their websites listed in the book, but I have been too chicken to look up the rates.

But amid all the grand names and global hotel brands we take for granted, there is one I never knew existed - and would love to visit. It nestles on a rock 200 metres off Sri Lanka and was originally a private home. It is called Taprobane, the old Greek word for Ceylon. It now has five rooms, a spectacular garden and covers just two and a half acres, surrounded by sea. One of its several owners, American author Paul Bowles, said "… it is very rational and, like most things born of fanaticism, wildly impractical."

Bowles also received a tart response from his wife when he informed her he had bought it in 1950. "I explained that you took a ship through the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, crossed part of the Indian Ocean, landed at Colombo and hopped on a train which let you off at the fishing village of Weligama, and once you're on the island there's nothing between you and the South Pole. She looked at me for long moment. 'You'll never get me there,'" she said.

Bad decision. Fascinating book.