Prostitutes, Pitstops and Pulau Ubin

What a stroke of luck, the Formula 1 Grand Prix is in Singapore, so are we!!  The upside we booked tickets and get to see the glitz, the glam and fast cars.  The hotels in and around the track are triple the normal price and or fully booked.  So with this said we headed to Geylang, a district just north of the city.  Not only famous for its food but also Singapore's red light district.  Yes there were women of the night on all corners of our hotel but it was fine.  Taxi driver advice on the neighbourhood "if you don't trouble them, they wont trouble you".  All a bit of a laugh, we played spot the looker of the shift (day or night!) and is that the pimp coming - cheeky!  We gave the girls a wide birth but we tried out the local cuisine.  The menus boasted chicken feet or frogs, we opted for noodles!

With a bit of hunting around on the net we managed to find some Friday night tickets for the F1. The Singapore GP is only night street circuit based race on the F1 calender, 'apparently'.   For a sport we don't normally follow we had a hell of a night. 

F1 Stats:-
The race has only been running for 3 years but it has built up into one of the peak races in the season
Cars hit close to 190mph, pretty quick for an inner city circuit. Volumes reach 130 decibels (earplugs all the way!) 44,000 tyres were made for the 2010 season
Each season life on the road will cover almost 200,000 km covering 19 destinations

We didn't manage any celeb spotting but the people watching was just amazing.  F1 fans are of a certain breed.  The whole city centre had gone GP crazy and there were merchandise outlets everywhere.  In between qualifying races Missy Elliott was on stage, but then the Asia electrics got the better of her and she was plunged into silence.  F1 fans didn't seem to be that good at dancing anyway!

F1 is a photographer's nightmare. You've got a moving (very fast) subject, railings between you and it and then not forgetting the race was at night. Yes there was lighting but this just confused the issue on which setting to use as the lighting was only focused on the track area. Should have packed a tripod really !!

The race lasted for 3 days so due to the skyhigh hotel costs we headed to a small island off the north east of Singapore, Pulau Ubin.  The island is a 15 minute boat ride away and is an example of how Singapore used to be 50 years ago.  Less than 100 live on the island, in kampongs (small villages), using electricity from generators and water from wells.  The boomerang shaped island made up of granite used to be 5 smaller islands but the building of bunds for prawn farming now connect all of the islands.

Apart from a few vans on the island to ferry visitors around, bikes are the only mode of transport.  We hired 2 and did tour de Ubin.  The place we stayed had a fish footspa.  We were non too keen to dip a whole foot in let alone a finger!