Furama Hotel, City Center, Singapore

Here’s a hint to architects who design hotels – at least for American audiences.

When it’s after midnight and we come into a hotel, don’t have things there that scare us.

I don’t mean the extra toilet or the unexpected dish sprayer (all of Thailand had them next to the toilet, although we never found a drainer to put the dishes on afterwards!).

We went into our room and discovered that the bathroom had glass walls.

Not the frosted kind, but the kind like you see at the zoo, but without the little wires embedded.

The bathroom is about 10 feet long by 6 feet wide, and you go in from a short side. At the far end is a glass shower – this is, thankfully, frosted over, although it’s got an attachment of indeterminate purpose as well. We’ve decided to assume it’s merely an oddly shaped hand wand for hosing off.

As you go in, your toilet is immediately on the left, and then just past that is a huge bathtub. All of which gives you a great view through the wall and out the windows here on the 12th floor.

If, however, you’re of a mindset similar to ours and want a bit of privacy in the bathroom, it’s a little unnerving to be able to continue to watch television, or be waived at by someone who happens to be in the next room.

Fortunately, there’s an after-market product that’s been applied to take care of that. As best we can tell, it doubles as a movie screen and you simply pull it down when you either want to watch a double-feature or have a bit of personal space. It doesn’t come all the way to the floor, so you still show up from about mid-calf down.

Not especially the most flattering shot of someone, but then, it’s probably better than the alternatives here. Even long term couples don’t need to necessarily share EVERYTHING!

Otherwise, the hotel is fine. It’s at the very edge of Chinatown, which is decorated up for Chinese New Year that happens next week. This is roughly the same level of marketing as the US gets for Christmas, meaning that there’s red stuff everywhere, along with cartoon characters and lots of traditional symbols for prosperity, health, etc.

After we figured out the movie screen, we just dumped our stuff and called it a night. We were to meet the rest of the group in the morning for breakfast and needed a bit of sleep.