24-Hour Room Service: Gallery Evason, Singapore

Quirky, stylish and screamingly modern, Singapore's one-year-old Gallery Evason is about as far away as you can get from stuffy old Raffles. The central building looks like a cross between a child's geometric doodle and a Le Corbusier masterpiece; a jumble of primary-coloured windows carved from a big, precariously balanced square. There's only one immediate problem, and that is finding the reception desk, which turns out to be on the fourth floor.

Once you have discovered it, the playfulness continues, with suspended ashtrays fashioned from shiny metal buckets, speedy glass lifts and staff who wouldn't look out of place in a computer game, shooting service from the hip in long, lean tunics and holster-like belts.

The correspondingly cool facilities include a rooftop swimming pool with clear glass walls, a small gym, a lantern-lit bar, a restaurant whose industrial-looking tables are suspended from the ceiling on metal cables and ever-changing art exhibitions.

Location, location, location

The Gallery Evason is at 76 Robertson Quay, Singapore 238254 (00 65 849 8687, www.six-senses.com/gallery).

Clinging to a curve in the river, the hotel is a short walk from the bars and restaurants of Clarke Quay and a slightly longer one from Chinatown and the city's financial centre.

Transport: Without a Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) stop close by, the options are limited to your feet or the bus. Many of the sights and attractions are within walking distance, though.

Time to international airport: The quickest way is by taxi, a 25-minute journey that should cost around $16 (£6).

Are you lying comfortably?

The 222 bedrooms are brightly coloured and very hi-tech (if you step out of bed at night, soft, floor-level lighting comes on automatically). Aside from the clean white sheets and cream walls, rooms are a riot of rainbow furnishings and boast well-designed furniture and panoramic windows. Bathrooms are separated from the bedrooms by sleek, frosted- glass panels, but their chrome and black interiors don't escape the colour treatment altogether; accessories (including bathroom scales) come in yellows and purples. The suites also have items such as silver fruit bowls, huge black lamps and, er, telescopes. Best not to ask.

All floors include a mix of standard and deluxe rooms and suites, but one floor is dedicated to female guests, with restricted access and specially tailored amenities in rooms.

Freebies: A daily copy of The Straits Times and the full complement of Green Line toiletries. The price of the more expensive rooms also includes anything from the minibar.

Keeping in touch: Internet access is available in each room (the hotel can provide a laptop), as well as from a bank of computers in the lounge. And if you're staying in one of the executive rooms, you can borrow a mobile phone and get all incoming calls redirected to it from the phone in your room.

The bottom line

Standard rooms start from S$295 (£110) and suites from S$470 (£175), though you may be able to talk your way into a deal.

I'm not paying that: The newly renovated Madras Hotel (28-32 Madras Street, 00 65 392 7889) in Little India, has decent, if dark, doubles from S$70 (£26).