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| Athanas family in Singapore for the F1 race. |
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| Spiro in Singapore for his 18th birthday. |
For Spiro’s 18th birthday, we decided to go to Singapore for the Formula One night race. Like Hong Kong, Singapore has an excellent public transportation system, so getting around was no problem. Although Singapore is much more multicultural that Hong Kong (Australians, Indonesians, Filipinos, Malaysians, Indians, etc. versus 96% Chinese), virtually everyone speaks English. The family flew in on Friday night, had a late dinner and slept in.
The Formula One race is the biggest event of the year in Singapore, so all of the hotels were full. Our hotel, the Royal Plaza on Scotts, was very nice and just a few subway stops from downtown.
Saturday morning started with us rolling out of bed and enjoying our hotel’s breakfast buffet. It had literally every kind of food in the world except bacon. The boys found this very upsetting until, on our way to take the subway downtown, the boys spotted a Krispy Kreme donut shop! “There aren’t any donuts in Asia,” Peter said, “so we had many!”
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| "Mushroom things" in Singapore Gardens by the Bay. |
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| On the elevated walkway in the Singapore Gardens. |
With the boys pumped full of sugar, we went downtown and walked around the Singapore Gardens by the Bay. Walking around gardens is not usually an activity our family would enjoy, but these gardens were spectacular. They included huge structures made to look like flowers (“mushroom things” according to Peter) and elevated walkways between them (which, for you Star Wars fans, Peter thought looked like “Endor bridges”. Spiro said the gardens were “really cool” because they “contained hardly anything natural and were mostly metal sculptures of a garden.” By the end of the walk, the sugar wore off and Peter became quite exhausted.
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| Showing the massive size of the "mushroom things". |
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| Street name in Singapore (for our Greek friends). |
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| Peter's sugar-high worn off |
From there we headed to the race track, which snakes through downtown Singapore. In addition to Formula One practice sessions and qualifying, we watched races of Porsches, Ferraris and touring cars. According to Peter, “the Ferrari challenge was very cool.” Spiro agreed. “With the exception of the F1 race, the Ferrari challenge races were my favorite part about our stay in Singapore,” Spiro said. “It was so interesting because anyone with enough cash can partake in the Ferrari challenge, so the driver quality was quite poor. There was one racer who was so slow that she was lapped by several drivers in a short 10-lap race.” Maybe she didn’t want to crash her pink Ferrari? After the races, we and many, many other racegoers saw Queen and Adam Lambert in concert.
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| View from our seat at the F1 races. Ferrari challenge race. |
Singapore is a big city, but it does not feel nearly as densely populated by skyscrapers as Hong Kong or even New York. It seems a bit more like Chicago in terms of the number of tall buildings. Spiro said “the architecture was fantastic. There were many unique buildings and they lit up at night to display themes for the racing.” There is a river winding through the middle of downtown and a small bay as well, which requires lots of bridges. The race cars zoomed over many of the bridges, which Spiro found “captivating.”
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| Spiro and Peter at Fort Canning before the big F1 race. |
On Sunday, we had another big breakfast and went to Fort Canning. We didn’t have time to take the tour of the bunker from which General Percival decided to surrender all of the British colonies in the far east to the Japanese unconditionally in early 1942, but we did walk around the hill above it. Unlike Saturday, which was a bit cloudy, the sun was out with full force on Sunday. Singapore sits on the equator. Thus, the sun always rises at 7am and sets at 7pm. The temperature and humidity are like July in Hong Kong every day of the year. If you have ever been in Miami in July, add a few degrees of temperature and a few percentage points of humidity. You don’t know what hot and humid is until you have filled a bucket wringing the sweat out of your underpants.
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| Peter resting up for another long and hot day in Singapore. |
In the afternoon, we went back to the race track. On Sunday, the practice sessions and qualifying were over. It was just one race after another. Peter said “all the races that day were cool. The F1 race especially.” Spiro said “As it turns out, I think all racing is exciting. Shocker, I know.”
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| Sunday evening after a very long and hot day at the F1 races. |
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| Last night of F1 racing. |
Saturday morning started with us rolling out of bed and enjoying our hotel’s breakfast buffet. It had literally every kind of food in the world except bacon. The boys found this very upsetting until, on our way to take the subway downtown, the boys spotted a Krispy Kreme donut shop! “There aren’t any donuts in Asia,” Peter said, “so we had many!” 
Singapore is a big city, but it does not feel nearly as densely populated by skyscrapers as Hong Kong or even New York. It seems a bit more like Chicago in terms of the number of tall buildings. Spiro said “the architecture was fantastic. There were many unique buildings and they lit up at night to display themes for the racing.” There is a river winding through the middle of downtown and a small bay as well, which requires lots of bridges. The race cars zoomed over many of the bridges, which Spiro found “captivating.” 
