Not so much a hotel as Singapore’s best-known landmark, the expansive Raffles is a timeless colonial complex with almost two-dozen eateries, a dozen posh boutiques, and half-dozen palm tree-studded courtyards. Named for Singapore’s colonial father, Sir Stamford Raffles, the hotel became a pit stop for Japanese troops in early 1942, and was renamed as Syonan Ryokan or "Light of the South," the Japanese moniker for occupied Singapore. But decades before, it was known as the birthplace for the city-state’s eponymous Sling, which was fashioned by a bartender in the hotel’s Long Bar around 1910. Today, its history is as rosy as the shades of that cocktail, thanks to an extensive renovation in the '90s and a National Landmark designation