Singapore | BA first class flights, ten days at the Mandarin Oriental, out & about
Aug 15, 2013, 3:55 am
#16
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Join Date: May 2007
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Mandarin Oriental Hotel
I’m a fan!:
I had chosen the Mandarin Oriental for several reasons, including the location in the marina area, selection of interesting restaurants and nice-looking pool. I am pleased to say that my expectations were absolutely met or exceeded on each account.
Room 1615
Although I appreciate higher cabins on a plane I am not convinced that the amenities of a larger and ostensibly more luxurious hotel room are for me. Accordingly I purchased a standard room at the MO.
The room was aesthetically pleasing and embodied Asian characteristics in the design. I appreciated the natural materials used, wood and granite in the main space and marble in the bathroom. A nice touch was the zen-like animation of fish, orchids, bamboo and water with subtle audio background displayed on the television as I arrived.
The room was designed using extensive amounts of wood and granite…:
…with attractive sculpture…:
…and wonderful draw handles:
Hotel interior and artwork
The hotel uses natural materials extensively in the interior design. There is plenty of wood, marble and even stone cladding in some areas. Water is used to good effect at the base of the elevators. There is plenty of interesting oriental artwork, including pots, pictures and sculpture.
The atrium is rather grand and extends over 21 floors…:
…so don’t look down if you have vertigo!:
The public areas are decorated with nice art and sculpture…:
I’m a fan!:
I had chosen the Mandarin Oriental for several reasons, including the location in the marina area, selection of interesting restaurants and nice-looking pool. I am pleased to say that my expectations were absolutely met or exceeded on each account.
Room 1615
Although I appreciate higher cabins on a plane I am not convinced that the amenities of a larger and ostensibly more luxurious hotel room are for me. Accordingly I purchased a standard room at the MO.
The room was aesthetically pleasing and embodied Asian characteristics in the design. I appreciated the natural materials used, wood and granite in the main space and marble in the bathroom. A nice touch was the zen-like animation of fish, orchids, bamboo and water with subtle audio background displayed on the television as I arrived.
The room was designed using extensive amounts of wood and granite…:
…with attractive sculpture…:
…and wonderful draw handles:
Hotel interior and artwork
The hotel uses natural materials extensively in the interior design. There is plenty of wood, marble and even stone cladding in some areas. Water is used to good effect at the base of the elevators. There is plenty of interesting oriental artwork, including pots, pictures and sculpture.
The atrium is rather grand and extends over 21 floors…:
…so don’t look down if you have vertigo!:
The public areas are decorated with nice art and sculpture…:
Aug 15, 2013, 3:56 am
#17
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Join Date: May 2007
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…with a wonderful zen henge (for want of a better word)…:
…and a series of Chinese paintings:
Swimming pool
The swimming pool and associated area can make or break a hotel for me. The Mandarin Oriental’s instantly became one of my favourites. There are plenty of plants and trees. The benches and cabanas are comfortable and cushions are in good condition.
The pool itself is tiled with high quality patterned tiles. There are three fountains that may or may not represent fish. Those who like diving should be aware that the pool is only 1.4m in depth at the deepest point and whilst diving is possible you have to be careful to make it extremely shallow.
Aug 15, 2013, 3:57 am
#18
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Join Date: May 2007
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Following ruby55’s request in post 9 I am pleased to add a few more shots of the pool area and cabanas, including night shots! Hope they bring back some happy memories for you, ruby55!
Aug 15, 2013, 3:58 am
#19
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Dining
The hotel’s restaurants are superb. I ate meals in the Cherry Garden Cantonese restaurant and Dolce Vita Italian.
There are also some great and cheap hawker centres nearby. Right next door to the hotel is the Marina Square Mall, which has a rather decent food court. And a short taxi ride away is Lau Pa Sat, a more traditional hawker centre with amazing satay stations. I also visited the Old Airport Food Centre near to Mountbatten station.
Service
Staff soon knew my name and it was a bit disconcerting when a chap you have never seen before says ‘hello Mr Sixth Freedom’!
To illustrate the attention to detail, even the paperclips in the stationery draw were arranged into the MO’s signature fan:
They say that you only find out whether or not an outfit really delivers on service when something goes wrong and in this case the MO came up trumps. The difficulty was that the billing page to access the Internet was extremely slow and clunky. Most of the time it did not load at all, and even when it did it took an age.
I was paying SGD 11 for one hour of Internet access per day.
24 hours would have cost SGD 32 or SGD 26 if I purchased it for every day, which could have been an extra SGD 150 for a ten day stay. Fortunately my Clients and prospective Clients tend to use e-mail for information transfer rather than communication so I could download business e-mails daily, draft a response offline and then send it the next day.
But this did mean that I needed to go through the clunky billing page each day. For three days in a row it took nearly an hour to get online. So I wrote a letter to the GM or his Deputy and left it at Reception at 11.50pm one night.
The next day I was invited to call the GM’s Deputy (it turned out the GM was not in the house) at my convenience, and a tech-savvy Manager came to my room to see if he could work out what was wrong. I am here to tell you that he was absolutely flummoxed. A new-ish Macbook Pro with all the correct settings was simply not loading the billing page correctly.
The chap made a call to IT and they spent some time in discussion. Eventually the issue was resolved with the bonus for me the Internet would now be included in my room rate.
So not only did Mandarin Oriental resolve the problem quickly and efficiently, they also allowed me to save a bit of money for the inconvenience! That is good service in my book.
Coming up next … out and about in Singapore, including Fort Canning Park and Singapore Flyer!
The hotel’s restaurants are superb. I ate meals in the Cherry Garden Cantonese restaurant and Dolce Vita Italian.
There are also some great and cheap hawker centres nearby. Right next door to the hotel is the Marina Square Mall, which has a rather decent food court. And a short taxi ride away is Lau Pa Sat, a more traditional hawker centre with amazing satay stations. I also visited the Old Airport Food Centre near to Mountbatten station.
Service
Staff soon knew my name and it was a bit disconcerting when a chap you have never seen before says ‘hello Mr Sixth Freedom’!
To illustrate the attention to detail, even the paperclips in the stationery draw were arranged into the MO’s signature fan:
They say that you only find out whether or not an outfit really delivers on service when something goes wrong and in this case the MO came up trumps. The difficulty was that the billing page to access the Internet was extremely slow and clunky. Most of the time it did not load at all, and even when it did it took an age.
I was paying SGD 11 for one hour of Internet access per day.
24 hours would have cost SGD 32 or SGD 26 if I purchased it for every day, which could have been an extra SGD 150 for a ten day stay. Fortunately my Clients and prospective Clients tend to use e-mail for information transfer rather than communication so I could download business e-mails daily, draft a response offline and then send it the next day.
But this did mean that I needed to go through the clunky billing page each day. For three days in a row it took nearly an hour to get online. So I wrote a letter to the GM or his Deputy and left it at Reception at 11.50pm one night.
The next day I was invited to call the GM’s Deputy (it turned out the GM was not in the house) at my convenience, and a tech-savvy Manager came to my room to see if he could work out what was wrong. I am here to tell you that he was absolutely flummoxed. A new-ish Macbook Pro with all the correct settings was simply not loading the billing page correctly.
The chap made a call to IT and they spent some time in discussion. Eventually the issue was resolved with the bonus for me the Internet would now be included in my room rate.
So not only did Mandarin Oriental resolve the problem quickly and efficiently, they also allowed me to save a bit of money for the inconvenience! That is good service in my book.
Coming up next … out and about in Singapore, including Fort Canning Park and Singapore Flyer!
Aug 15, 2013, 6:08 am
#21
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Dundee
Programs: BA Plastic. HH Diamond. Speedwell Bar Lifetime Platinum.
Posts: 1,425
Ooooh, Very nice - I'm in the MO in October, and have a nice little Club Harbour view room to look forward to as well.
Very impressed with the pool. Thanks for the TR
Very impressed with the pool. Thanks for the TR
Aug 15, 2013, 10:28 am
#25
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Copenhagen
Programs: Emirates Platinum
Posts: 19
Aug 15, 2013, 12:34 pm
#26
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: London
Programs: Qantas, BA gold, SPG gold
Posts: 131
Great TR. I'm thinking of making a similar trip to see the botanical gardens. I guess you would recommend the MO but did you eat in the hotel at all? In particular, I wonder what the breakfasts and dinner are like.