Singapore!!

Last month I got to go with Jeff for part of a work trip. He went to Thailand for a week, then I got to meet him in Singapore for a week. I was pretty excited for several reasons. First, it's summer weather year round so that means leaving cold Geneva for the sunshine!! Secondly, I love getting to see new places and this was somewhere new for both of us. Finally, it's another country that speaks English everywhere so that always makes things easier. :)

A couple of you have told me that you like it when I give some interesting facts about the place we are visiting so I thought I would start there and then post pictures of our trip.

Here's a map of Singapore in relation to its surrounding countries. Singapore is the little dot at the end of the long peninsula. Malaysia is the country in green and right below it is Singapore. You can't even tell what color it is... basically a dot. The two pink countries to the South are Indonesia. As you can tell Singapore is a very tiny country.

Fun Facts About Singapore

• It's only 3 1/2 times the size of Washington D.C. and is actually an island. (As you can tell in the second map above.)
• The capitol is Singapore City and the entire island is pretty much one city. You can't really tell where one "town" ends and another begins. 
• It's near the equator so it's pretty much hot and ridiculously humid all year long.
• English is one of four official languages. The others are Mandarin, Malay and Tamil.
• Even though it's small there are over 5 million people living there.
• 20% of the land in Singapore didn't use to exist. They have done extensive land reclamation to add more space to the country. Land reclamation is basically the process of bringing in sand, soil and even sometimes landfill refuse from another location and packing it down on the ocean floor until it reaches the current ground level creating new land.
• In 1992 chewing gum was outlawed, as well as, the import and sale of it to help clean up the city as people were disposing of it improperly. The law was revised later to allow for health related gum (i.e. the nicotine gum for people trying to quit smoking). This leaves room for tons of breath mints to be sold. Check out the picture below!

Not a single pack of gum to be found!!