ZoukOut Festival in Singapore

This weekend was Asia's biggest outdoor dance music festival, ZoukOut, and so I popped over to see what all the fuss was about.
Now in its ninth year, ZoukOut started as an offshoot from the Singapore superclub Zouk. Zouk's been running for 19 years and is arguably Asia's most respected club by DJs and clubbers alike.
This year's festival featured sets from Armin van Buuren, Ritchie Hawtin, Miss Kitten, Aeroplane and Tiga.
A crowd of 30,000 clubbers hit the beach on Sentosa Island in the south of Singapore. The contingent were mainly locals but I bumped into clubbers from England, Germany and Australia not to mention lots of people from India and neighbouring Malaysia.
The party started at 8pm and was due to finish at 8am, although Armin van Buuren played for an extra 25minutes, much to the annoyance of the 5 star hotel right next door to the beach (earplugs were given out to residents)
Four open-air stages meant there were all kinds of music to choose from. One of the funniest was hosted by one of Zouk's club nights - Mambo Jambo - the Singapore equivalent of Guilty Pleasures. Clubbers like to act out the lyrics in a sort of 12-year-old at the school disco kind of way. Sort of 80s skanking if you like.
Elsewhere Simon Dunmore and his Defected label took over one stage. The English house label love ZoukOut so much they've named their latest compilation after it.
Zoukout isnt just all music. At one end of the 400m long beach were two artificial wave making machines, which meant you could try out surfing or waterboarding (the snowboarding like sport, not the form of torture) without having to wade out into the sea.
The world most powerful lazer was moored just off the island and provided a green ceiling to the beach from around 1am. There was also fireworks, women on stilts, very popular micro-torches that clubbers wore as rings, oh and no drugs - the law in Singapore is very strict about drugs. Get caught with something you shouldn't and you will be hanged!
I had a fantastic time at ZoukOut and in Singapore in general. The friendly people, scorching weather (I'm very red today) and breadth of acts made this one of the world's best beach parties. In fact it makes the Full Moon Parties of Thailand's Ko Phang Ynag look like a BBQ in Skegness.
For more information on ZoukOut check www.zoukout.com. Hopefully we'll see you there next year for their tenth anniversary party.