Singapore...Famous Locations and F1 Races

The arrival into Singapore tells you that you're now in the modern age:

It's a big city: kind of a city-state, like Monaco, and like Monaco, real estate is limited so they build up, not out.  Our tour was a bus ride around town with a stop in Chinatown to look around.  Singapore is divided up into areas:  Chinatown, the Arab area, the Indian area, and the European area.  The people who originally populated the area decided to stick with their own.

The city is loaded with public housing, VERY tall buildings with small apartments that have reasonable rents.  While it seemed common to us, many of our fellow cruisers were amazed and aghast at the laundry hanging outside the windows on the 20th floor.  Apparently our fellows have not spent much time in Europe.

Singapore is a very clean city...they call it "a fine city".  There's a fine if you're caught chewing gum (yes!  it's illegal to chew gum), littering, spitting, not cleaning up after your dog, and the list goes on.  Fines run from 500 Singapore dollars to over 1000.

The tour hit the high spots, of course.  Here it is, the famous new Marina Bay Sands towers.  This photo is taken from the F1 track:

Also, if you watch F1, you'll recognize the Fullerton Hotel, also on the track:

Here's the actual track, at the overpass:

Finally, we stopped for photos at the infamous Raffles Hotel.

Singapore sense of humor in Chinatown:

We had indeed just crossed the equator the previous day.