I adore Singapore. The race itself is one of the most fun on the calendar, but what I really like about the city-state is its food. A crossroads of Asian cultures, Singapore is a place where it's very easy - and usually inexpensive - to eat well.
My Singapore gluttony means I usually travel well ahead of the F1 pack, and this year I arrived on Monday afternoon, full of plans to stuff my face with lao ban fresh beancurd, black pepper crab, sambal stingray, and much more besides. Sadly, my body had other plans and I spent my first 24 hours in the country dealing with food poisoning.
Before leaving the UK there were reports that this year's Singapore Grand Prix was under threat thanks to a thick haze drifting over from Indonesia. Last year we had similar problems, and I'd assumed the story was more storm in a teacup than anything to worry about.
And then I got to my hotel.
Thanks to what I assume has to have been a pricing error on my preferred hotel booking site, I managed to score a room in one of the fancy hotels overlooking the track for less than I usually pay for my hovel in Little India. The Singapore Flyer is less than 500 metres from my hotel, but at 5pm last night the Indonesian haze was so thick that it was invisible. Should these conditions persist until Friday, the medical helicopter won't have enough visibility to take off.
The air in Singapore was visibly thick on arrival just after lunch, but as the afternoon turned into evening the haze thickened and visibility dropped. Instead of the surrounding high-rise hotels that normally make up a city centre view here, all that could be seen from my balcony during what would have been live track sessions were distant red lights peeking through the haze.
Tuesday has been little better thus far - following the usual heat-breaking tropical downpour in late morning, the skies above Singapore remain heavy and grey. Shortly after lunch, the haze began to descend again, and it has been thickening as I type.
Without wanting to do any scaremongering, if conditions remain like this for the rest of the week it seems unlikely that F1 will be out on track on time. At the 2013 US Grand Prix in Austin, FP1 was delayed by 40 minutes when thick fog made it impossible for the medical helicopter to take off. Only three weeks earlier, FP1 in India was similarly delayed due to poor visibility.
If the second downpour of the day is anything to go by, local efforts to put out Indonesia's forest fires by launching rain-triggering chemicals into the sky (a practice known as cloud-seeding) appear to be bearing fruit.
Recent years have seen far higher levels of pollution than those currently being experienced. Monday's high of 222, while unhealthy, is nearly half the historic and hazardous high of 401 seen in this week in 2013.