150 / 200 (Marina Bay Sands)

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The Sunday Times here yesterday. The usual bum-wipe. One can be sure, despite all the money in Singapore, many here would use the rag for its proper purpose.
Colour pics on page one telling the regular lazy Sunday stories. In this case the chief item the F1 that was run here last night. An unusual pic in the daily Straits Times during the lead up a few days ago had age-splotched F1 supremo Bernie caught dead on his feet in an unfortunate slant of light, meeting 88 year old living-god Lee Kwan Yew. Confronting mortuary pics like that one non-existent in our own smoothly streamlined newspapers. Here the saviour-founder-proto-type Asian tiger gets a go no matter what.... Yesterday's front page shared by a teary bank chief taking the blame for staggering losses. And the story that gets the whole of pages two and three within:
NO MORE OGLING
Marina Bay Sands closes off
iconic skypool to public view

Page 2:
No more
gawking at
Marina Bay
Sands pool

Resort to curtail public viewing access of
SkyPark pool after hotel guests complain

The Marina Bay Sands is a AAA hotel of at least four and a half stars. (Sand here in Singapore is shipped mainly from Vietnam, an importer who does very well out of the trade revealed over a cuppa in Geylang a couple of weeks ago.) Prime city location for the MBS. The harbour a stone's throw off. Hotel patrons have no need to take a ride on the giant ferris-wheel / Eye next door, but it's there if the impulse proves overwhelming. Orchard Road boutiques on a par with London, Paris, NY downstairs. The Marina Bay Sands has got everything going for it. And not least the roof-top pool open to the sky on the fifty-seventh storey. The Infinity is a 150 metre length pool straddling the top of the three towers of the hotel. Fifty-seven stories measures 200 metres. One tower beside the other in a slightly ascending line seen from one angle creates a spectacular launch pad for a rocket; from others a surfboard, raft or javelin spanning the free-standing structures. The MBS adds yet another iconic building to the waterfront precinct. Regular readers and those familiar with Singapore are aware of the Arts-Science Museum housed in the distinctive Durian building here (think spiky cantaloupe). The Durian is twinned across the river by the likewise half-nature, half-sci-fi inspired Lotus Flower opposite (theatre/concert hall). In that quarter the Marina Bay Sands Hotel is the icing on the cake—the strut on top specifically. The Infinity is the highest open-air pool in the world. If Caesar’s Palace has one, the MBS sits higher still. The sight breath-taking and gob-smacking upstairs and down.
Pool-side there are potted palms, individual beach stretchers, waiters and cocktails, as shown on page one. It doesn't get better than that. One can only imagine swimmers up there catching fireworks during night-time spectaculars along the Singapore river.
A TV commercial featuring a Jap boy-band all in white up poolside deftly snaking through the smartly dressed guests has further rocketed the MBS to even headier heights. Nothing like it exists anywhere anyone can think of. Since the Japanese earthquake and tsunami the Japanese contingent of visitors has sky-rocketed. A get-away and a half for the Japs at the MBS.
Small wonder gawking from the public has become a problem at the Marina Bay Sands.
2,560 rooms, daily handling 4,200 guests, presents a problem in itself no doubt. Especially within the confines of 150 metres, even without gawkers. Of course to get a dip in the Infinity you have to be a guest of the hotel. Otherwise you pay $20 per adult to go up to the observation deck, where from a landing at the top of a staircase you can view the pool, the swimmers and also a piece of the spectacular sky-line.
A typical package for a two-to-three night stay at the MBS is about 120, 000 yen — $Aust2, 000 — during peak season. Guests paying that sorta money don't want rubberneckers lingering, ogling, taking pics. Not the current 2,750 trooping up daily.
Patrons have been complaining, criticizing the loss of exclusivity, calling the facility a public swimming pool. Complaints have been registered at the desk in the lobby, on various prominent web sites. You can just imagine the ruckus. A student who had stayed there a couple of nights to celebrate his girlfriend's birthday compared the experience at the pool to Orchard Road on Christmas Eve. Beside "grouses" about the SkyPark, guests have also complained about the bustle at the hotel lobby. Two thousand seven hundred and fifty divided by 24 hours does not make a pretty picture down around the lifts. Weekends one can only imagine. A doc from the Philippines likened his check-in experience at the hotel to purchasing a train ticket.
Something needed to be done.
The solution is three guided tours daily of 15 minutes duration for the pool viewing, no more than fifty at a time. No lingering. In a further sweetener, to overcome any check-in delays, guests in the lobby are now to be offered champagne, green apples and cold towels.
Geylang and Joo Chiat is only one side of Singapura — Lion City in Malay, after the wild beasts that roamed the island early on. (Tigers the truth of it apparently.) River Valley. Orchard Road. Marina Bay. Sentosa. The shopping malls. No need to say more. That side of SG is well reported.

Late word received: seems the unique, iconic design of the MBS was originally intended for a site in Utah in the States. That fits.