The Sarkies Circuit
A route through Penang, Singapore, and Rangoon by way of the brothers who helped invent the grand hotel in Southeast Asia.
Long before tourism became flattened into Instagram reels, loyalty points, and algorithmic recommendations, there was the slower drama of arrival. Rudyard Kipling helped romanticize the phrase “East of Suez” when those faraway, “exotic” lands suddenly drew closer with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. No longer did one need to sail round the tip of Africa. Nor did caravan traders need to traverse the ancient, overland Silk Road anymore. Adventurous travelers—at least from the European perspective—would travel east to India, Southeast Asia, China, and Japan, staying for weeks and even months at a time on a grand seafaring tour, stopping at major port cities from Bombay to Singapore and Shanghai.
In those days, the best hospitality these travelers could find were spartan boarding houses and, if you were well connected, an invitation perhaps to stay at the private mansion of someone local.
The Sarkies Brothers—four enterprising Armenian siblings hailing from Isfahan—sensed this shift towards eastward travel and established the first circuit of grand hotels in key port cities across Southeast Asia to serve travelers of means: largely wealthy Europeans, Americans, as well as colonial officials furthering the business of imperialism.
Penang, The First Door
In 1884, Tigran Sarkies, opened the Eastern Hotel in Penang, Malaysia followed by his brother Martin, who opened the Oriental Hotel next door in 1885. They eventually combined the two properties to form the Eastern & Oriental Hotel, which still stands proudly today along a long stretch of water in George Town, Penang. Advertised as “The Premier Hotel East of the Suez,” the Eastern & Oriental Hotel quickly established itself as a social hub in Penang.
Singapore, The Myth-Maker
Following this, the Sarkies Brothers opened Raffles in Singapore in 1887. As Singapore grew into the most important port in the region, Raffles as the pre-eminent hotel in the city quickly rose in status as well. The hotel was first in the city to have electric lights and fans and soon, Raffles and Singapore were tied so tightly together you couldn’t visit one without the other! If you were passing through Singapore, you stayed at Raffles. Had an important meeting? Probably rendezvous at Raffles.
Rangoon, The River Stage
The Strand opened in 1901 on Strand Road, near the riverfront of Rangoon (Yangon today), then one of the great ports of British Burma. Like the other Sarkies hotels, the hotel offered the same promise: a traveler could step off a long journey and enter a comfortable world already arranged for them, with polished service, familiar rituals, and the reputation of a grand hotel.
Together, the Eastern & Oriental, Raffles, and The Strand are relics of the colonial era, but they are also something more specific: a surviving map of how travel once moved through Southeast Asia by sea.
More than a century later, the Sarkies Circuit still traces a particular idea of arrival: Penang, Singapore, Rangoon. Three port cities, three grand hotels, and one Armenian family’s instinct for turning movement into mythology.
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