Raffles Hotel was a colonial-style hotel founded by the Sarkies brothers in December 1887. Illustrious names, including Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling, counted among some of Raffles Hotel's earliest guests. The hotel continued to play host to famous personalities such as Somerset Maugham and Charlie Chaplin throughout the early 20th century. For a brief time, however, after the Japanese surrendered to the Allied Forces in 1945, the once-luxurious hotel was turned into a temporary transit camp for war prisoners who had been released under the military administration.
