SINGAPORE - Travel writer Pico Iyer first visited Singapore's Raffles Hotel as a young journalist in 1984. Wandering its high-ceilinged halls that so many famous writers had passed through before him, he thought that perhaps he too should try to become a writer of books.

Thirty-five years later, the 62-year-old has been invited to be the hotel's first official writer-in-residence. He has already penned a book, This Could Be Home, about the grand dame, which is more than 130 years old.