Arts Festival

While in Johor Bahru doing banking a couple of weeks ago I noticed signs everywhere for the Johor Bahru Arts Festival. My driver found a large brochure about the event a few days later and it goes on for almost a month and features (according to the brochure) a crafts market, various musical artists and Chinese calligraphy demonstration, among other things. The down-side is that the festival is only in the evenings, beginning at 5pm (according to the brochure).
A good friend and I decided to go there purely for the crafts market, hoping to buy unique handmade gifts for friends and family. She is an American like me and doesn't drive, so we had to work and find a night where her driver could take us, while my driver picked up her husband and brought him to Jeff's office. It was all very complicated and took a lot of work just figuring out the logistics of the process!
We got there last night right at 5pm. There were very few cars around, a set of tents with empty tables underneath them, a stage where some men were tuning up their instruments......and that was it. We walked around trying to "find" the crafts. Not there. My friend asked a police officer where it was and he pointed back in the direction of the empty tables but said maybe not be here tonight, maybe Sunday night?? When we made it back around the building to the empty tables we found one of the brochures and she called the number on the back and asked about the crafts area. Ends up we were SITTING at the supposedly "crafts area". The woman wasn't sure if/when anyone would show up to sell crafts and promised she would call back with the information. She never called. Next a woman with a badge around her neck that made her look like she should know what was going on, came up and asked us what we needed. We told her we were looking for the crafts and she said the man who would bring them may, or may not, show up that night. She said the sales had been slow earlier in the month so he wasn't always coming. She suggested that by 8-8:30 someone might be there. Hmmmm. She then encouraged us to go towards the stage area and we could listen to the music and watch the guy doing calligraphy.
We wander over to the stage area and an older gentleman was standing at a table where (obviously) the calligraphy would be done. However he was texting on his phone and didn't even look up or acknowledge that we were standing there. When he quit texting he began to slice the material into smaller parts that he used to write his calligraphy on. We never actually SAW calligraphy.
Meanwhile, on the stage a man starts talking into the microphone about how the next event is a talk on.....microphones. He continued to say how they set up all the sound for this event and, over the next few minutes, they would tell you all you ever wanted to know about microphones. The BEST part was when he announced that after the talk there would be time for Q&A.
At this point we had been there about an hour and decided to leave, since there were no crafts. Disappointed about not buying anything since we were both in the mood to shop, we decided to go by a shop area that sells handmade local goods produced by handicapped people in the area. I had been wanting to go by the store for awhile and just never made it. We drive about 10 minutes to this area and they were closed for the day. Of course:)