Pure dead brilliant!

One of the larger graves

Sometimes it helps to be Scottish when reading this blog.  Today is one of those times, as otherwise the title of this post may confuse you.  Not to worry - that's what Google is for.

A sense of the wilderness that the cemetery has become

Even though I've lived here for almost 6 years, I still come across parts of Singapore that surprise me.  The latest is Bukit Brown cemetery, which - bizarrely - ranks in the top 10 of TripAdvisor's list of Singapore attractions.  The first I heard of it was last year, when proposals to build a road through the cemetery were published, much to the dismay of conservationists.
Well, I say " a road", but the proposal is actually for an eight-lane highway, in order to relieve congestion on existing roads nearby and to prepare for future housing development.  It looks as if the road building will go ahead, despite the public protestations, so if you live in Singapore and haven't yet visited Bukit Brown, go now before it's too late.

Taking my own advice, a can of diet Coke and my weekend walking companion, the lovely Ann Marie, I tootled off there for a Sunday morning wander and discovered the most wonderful place  - in the middle of the city but part of another world.  The lovely AM brought her camera and all the photos on this post are down to her.  First of all, it's huge - over 200 acres in all.  AM and I had both read up a little before the outing, but we were amazed by the size of the place.  It ceased to be a working cemetery (is that the correct term?) 50 years ago and it shows, but in a good way.  This place bears no resemblance to the serried ranks of graves you see in cemeteries in the UK; it's much more like a tropical forest, with gravestones of all shapes and sizes scattered about the place, many of them almost impossible to access as the forest floor has grown around them.  We were lucky enough to meet a volunteer guide on our walk, who pointed out a couple of the tombs we particularly wanted to see and gave us a brief history lesson.

A small section of the wonder that is Bukit Brown

Apparently there are over 100,000 graves, some very humble and others on a grand scale - like the 600m2 memorial to the 19th century business tycoon Ong Sam Leong, definitely worth a visit.  Many famous Singaporeans are buried here, including some who have given their names to areas of the city or street names, like Boon Lay and Kheam Hock.  It seems to me that the decision to build a road here (involving the exhumation of more than 3000 graves), and the ensuing opposition, is a metaphor for Singapore today.  Bukit Brown is a treasured part of Singapore's history and heritage, but it performs no "useful" function other than as a haven for wildlife and a place to enjoy life away from the stresses and strains of the city.  As a country, Singapore is nothing if not pragmatic and so the bulldozers will shortly cut a swathe through the tranquil paradise of Bukit Brown in order to welcome the roads and enable the building development that is necessary for Singapore to continue growing, as a nation and as an economic power.  The whole subject of Singapore's growth has been a recurring feature in the local press recently, more of which in the next post when I'll share with you some of Singapore's top stories, as I'm guessing the majority of my readers do not have a subscription to The Straits Times.


If you'd like to know more about Bukit Brown have a look at bukitbrown.org or the TripAdvisor reviews.  It is quite simply, in the words of the title, pure dead brilliant!