Sing-a-Song-a-Singapore

So the reason I was absent from here for a couple of weeks was because I was doing a bit of work in Singapore, stayed on for a weekend's worth of sightseeing and then hopped on a ferry to Tanjung Pinang, the main town on the nearby Indonesian island of Bintan. A full set of photos is on Flickr if you can face them.

It was my first visit to both places and while they are very different I enjoyed them both. Singapore is groaning under the weight of tower blocks and shopping malls but has a cultural mix that makes it more interesting to visit than other places that have developed at breakneck speed like Dubai. There is plenty of greenery to go with the man-made attractions as well. It is definitely worth spending two or three days looking around if you are passing through.

Tanjung Pinang by contrast is grubby and crumbling and could in no way be described as a tourist town (Bintan gets plenty of visitors but they almost all go to the resorts in the north of the island). But the people were very friendly - I was stopped by the local police who wanted to check whether I was enjoying my stay - there was lots of good seafood and all in all it is a fine place just to mooch about.

There are plenty of attractions elsewhere on the island. The highlights for me were the 500 Lohan Temple, a sort of concrete Buddhist version of the mannequin graveyard that Mr Medd and I visited last year, and the Blue Lake and dunes, created when a bauxite mine was closed down in the 1980s allowing nature to take its slightly warped course.

  

I had limited success on the local music front. There was a record shop in a shopping mall near my hotel in Singapore but it stocked almost exclusively metal (apparently there is a lively local metal scene). The proprietor had a rummage around for me and found two CDs from the 2010s by local indie bands which he let me have at a greatly reduced price. They were "Leaving Cemetery Junction" by The Caulfield Cult and "Mannequins EP" by Monster Cat (possibly prefiguring my visit to the 500 Lohan Temple).

I found no recorded music in Tanjung Pinang but did catch the opening night of the annual Wonderfood Kersi Fest which celebrates Indonesian street food and music. The hawkers were doing a roaring trade but the musical side was a bit low key - one local band and some dance troupes. Things were expected to pick up at the weekend when the Indonesian Justin Bieber Farel Prayoga was scheduled to perform. 

"The Black Plague" - The Caulfield Cult

"Mannequins" - Monster Cat