Happy (Chinese) New Year

Today is the first day of the lunar year, that means that it is the first day in the Chinese calendar. Singapore being mainly Chinese has a lot of celebrations going on around new year of course. Thats why I was staying in Singapore for this weekend rather then going to some place abroad.

Saturday we have been to China Town and were sneaking around the the small lanes with hundreds of little stalls. They were selling all kinds of traditional new year gifts, where sweets, biscuits and certain fruits are prevailing. The streets were extremely crowded. I have never seen so many people in China Town (its quite crowed on normal days as well). We have been there as a group of five people (3 exchanges and 2 Singaporeans) and it was really difficult to stick together. It was very nice to try all the different things - you could get free samples almost everywhere. After maybe two hours of tasting the sweets, all the sticky stuff was forming a big clot in my stomach. :-) We concluded the evening with a drink on the roof terrace of the Screening Room.

Yesterday we have been again to China Town to see the actual celebrations and the count down to the new year. This time the group was much bigger (maybe 30 people). It was almost impossible not loosing one another. After dinner and walking a bit around in China Town we eventually split up and went on in smaller groups. I went with some guys to Marina Bay where supposedly some fireworks should be launched. We managed to get there just few minutes before midnight and saw the big show... well it was around 30 seconds of firecrackers. I somehow expected a bit more. But there should be some shows on the floating platform throughout the next days - probably I will come back to see some of them.

On our way back to campus we met the other group again - Singapore is small... :-D