So, I was back in Singapore on the first leg of my journey to meet up with the girls for our Annual Girly Trip (AGT). Because I arrived really early and Dee was already leaving for work then, I wouldn’t be able to make it in time to her place so I decided to get a hotel for 2 nights. Asking the hotel to hold my booking from the night before so that I can check in early and not have to wait for the normal check in time at 2pm. I was browsing my usual websites for good deals when I was intrigued by possibly a new boutique hotel on Mosque Road on www.booking.com. It looked interesting on the website and was at a really good location. Just a street away from Chinatown MRT station which is where incidentally is the main Chinatown street. Which also means I can just cross the road to People’s Park mall or is it shopping centre via underpass or the overhead garden pathway.It is also cheaper than my usual hotel which is a darn good 3 star one!
The room was relatively cheap for Singapore’s prices and it is supposed to be a 4 star hotel. It had a very interesting name too. Porcelain as it said on the site. I was intrigued. I immediately booked and was looking forward to the stay. It was so new that the taxi driver had a bit of a problem finding the place though now that I know where it is, it is hard to miss. The road is one way anyway, so there is no way you can miss it. It is at the end of the road. It is much easier to spot at night when the whole building it lit up. Blue lights with Chinese motifs and the little round blue lights with the hotel name on a white background. It really stands out at night.
There are many restaurants on that same street which none were open yet when I arrived and was dying of hunger! The nearest according to reception is McDs, and I am not about to eat that when I just got back to Asia. Plus I was dead tired. In the end I gulped down water after a hot shower and crawled into bed till 5.30pm when I reluctantly dragged my ass out of bed to get ready to meet the girls for Korean food. But I must say, the next day, I did walk over to the opposite side where I was told there is a food court and I got myself a hot bowl of noodle soup for breakfast. Bliss!
Now to the rooms. I had quite high expectations for the rooms as it boasts 4 stars and a “boutique” word in its description. Though I must admit that the room was nice, clean and very comfortable, the main thing it didn’t have was WINDOWS! I had a window-less room. My first, EVER! The strange thing was that the reception told me that they “upgraded” my room! I am curious to find out what was my original room. My room was on the ground floor and it is one that is equipped for the disabled. One thing great was that because it was a disabled room, I had a huge ass toilet. The size was exactly 50% of the entire room! The toilet is as big as the room! Though if I went there with M, we wouldn’t have any space for our luggage. 😦 I barely fit mine in there without it being in the way all the time. But we will have ample room to boogie in the toilet! 😛
Then, there was no closet space. The only space I had to hang anything was the hangers they provided that was mounted on the walls above the desk. A very strange place to put them since this is a room for the disabled, I doubt they would be able to reach it to hang anything. Unless they climbed on the table. Which I think would not support anyone’s body weight, at least not prolonged use. Their tv channels were also severely lacking. Never mind that they had only 5 channels, that is still ok with me BUT out of the 5 channels ONLY 2 were watchable!! And I don’t even mean content wise. The rest was so blurry, fuzzy and very bad sound that I ended up with only AXN which I was lucky had good and interesting content. They had free wifi which is a plus but since their bed is like a built in bed, I have to crawl in and out from the bottom of the bed, I found it troublesome and really inconvenient to not have at least 1 power point next to the bed. I had to charge my mobile phones and the laptop only at the table. Which means, I can’t surf the net in bed for long. And I can’t charge the phone while I am sleeping either because I am too lazy to get up and get out of bed just to reply an sms and crawl back into bed. It works wonders if you have an early morning and the alarm on your phone is at the table, you are then forced to get up. 🙂 I don’t see this as being disable friendly either. I find it troublesome to get out of bed to answer the phone while it is charging, so I think it would be extremely inconvenient for someone in a wheelchair, don’t you think?
Overall, I had a good experience. Not sure if I will stay here again but maybe I might if the price is right! A few snags here and there. I really do think that whoever designed the room especially for the disabled, did not think through their design or have never really stayed in that room before. Aesthetically it is beautiful but practically in the finer details, not so much.
If anyone has stayed in this hotel before and did not get the room I got, please let me know how it went.
mouseytong 