 |
There is little room for an alternative music scene but the range of clubs and hotel bars are popular, especially at weekends. The bars in the major hotels along Orchard Road are a good bet for a refined drink or even to meet clients. Locals who can’t afford the high prices of such places are happy to drink beer in some of the all-night hawker centres or food streets.
Boat Quay : Heaven for Party Goers
Certain areas and venues are popular with wealthier foreign workers and tourists. Boat Quay is filled with tourists; a string of shop-houses converted into noisy bars and restaurants overlook the river and passers-by are enticed in with happy-hour drinks. One of the best known places is Harry’s Bar, a favourite haunt of Baring’s Bank fraudster Nick Leeson with live jazz and jamming sessions most evenings.
Bars:
Singapore has a bar to cater for every taste, from the refined colonial grandeur of Raffles Hotel’s Bar & Billiard and the Long Bar, to the live music at Muddy Murphy’s Irish Pub, opposite Orchard Towers. The 19th-century Peranakan shop-houses on Emerald Hill contain a good cluster of bars. These include No. 5, 5 Emerald Hill, Ice Cold Beer, 9 Emerald Hill, and Que Pasa, the city’s oldest wine bar, 7 Emerald Hill. The Alley Bar, 2 Emerald Hill, is a stylish new addition and, as its name suggests, is converted from the narrow space between shop-houses. Opium, Empress Place Waterfront, near the Fullerton Hotel and next to Indochine (see Restaurants), fashionable new bar on thewaterfront, with tables and huge sofas for alfresco drinking. Altivo Bar, 109 Mount Faber Road, sits on top of Mount Faber, good on a hot evening with a club, chill-out area and bar catering to a fairly hip crowd.
Clubs:
Still
going strong is Zouk, Jiak Kim Street, one of the best-known clubs in town,
and good enough to attract famous foreign DJs .It is also home to other
clubs within its walls: Velvet Underground, which attracts a more mature
crowd and offers a mellower brand of hip; Phuture and the Wine Bar. The
place of the moment is The Gallery Evanson Hotel on Orchard Road, within
which is Orb, a spacious, two-storey bar playing laidback sounds. Centro
360, at One Fullerton, is a super-hip huge venue, with gay nights on Sunday.
The Liquid Room, at the G@llery Hotel, is a dimly lit, retro-style bar on
the ground floor, with a large alfresco area and huge dance floor upstairs.Karaoke:
As in the rest of Asia, karaoke remains an inordinately popular evening’s entertainment. Sparks, 7th Floor, Tower B, Ngee Ann City, is South East Asia’s largest nightspot with 18 karaoke rooms. At the Lava Lounge, Grange Road, you can sing along against the backdrop of its 70s space age disco lounge and retro music. There are plenty of other karaoke bars off Smith Street in Chinatown and along Duxton Road.
Live music:
The infamous Harry’s Bar, Boat Quay, features a live jazz band and jam session Tues-Sun nights with pot luck on Mondays, while at Crazy Elephant, further along on Clarke Quay, rhythm and blues bands alternate with classic rock’n’roll and alternative underground music daily. Overseas jazz musicians are hosted at Somerset’s Bar at the Westin Stamford Hotel. The Hard Rock Café, Cuscadem Road, features the Malay reggae band Bushmen, every Sunday night.