Nearly everyone of note stayed at the stately Strand hotel which boasted one of the finest European restaurants in Asia an enclave of European style founded by the same Armenian family who owned Singapore's Raffles.

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Singer weaves that history through drawings, photographs, residents' letters, travel writing, newspaper advertisements, his own text and even a 1932 menu from the Strand Hotel.

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If you have an eye and a streak of adventurousness, you can invest in emerging painters at the decade-old River Gallery at the Strand Hotel.

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The Strand is still there, but totally renovated as a top-of-the-range hotel, where a bowl of spicy lentil soup and a bottle of Mandalay beer will cost you as much as a room once did.

ECONOMIST: Pukkah hotels