We’re in Singapore for Chinese New Year - and its a big deal. Our hotel has filled up and the city is decorated to the nth degree.
This morning the lion came to dance at our hotel. This was a much more elaborate event than I have experienced at home.
First came a pair of lions – they danced around the lobby and reared up over the crowd.
Next came a single orange lion with very expressive eyebrows and ears. He danced all around and then jumped up on a platform. On a pole above the platform was a scroll that the lion unrolled.
Once the lion was back on the ground a tray was produced, which had another scroll, oranges and lettuces on it. The lion settled in for a snack, ‘eating’ the lettuce (throwing bits of lettuce here and there), then ‘eating’ an orange – orange peels sailed through the air. The scroll was presented to a representative of the hotel.
And when lions were done in came the dragon. That was another remarkable performance.
They also visited all the restaurants in the hotel and when we went out into the neighbourhood we could hear the clang and bang of the drums and cymbals as lions were blessing businesses all around us.
Wilf had seen information about a big drone show down at the Marina Sands area further into the city. You’ve probably seen pictures of the hotel – three towers that look like a ship is perched on top of them. Anyhoo, we figured that it would be a madhouse to try and get near the actual site, but we figured we could see everything from across the bay.
We were a little concerned about the crush in the subway, but pretty much everyone got off a stop before our target. We arrived to find a great view point across the road from the waterside park looking back at Marina Sands. There were big shallow steps to sit on, so we did. At 8:00 a fleet of hundreds of drones took to the air making patterns in the sky. About two minutes in we felt a few raindrops. Ohoh! And just when things were getting interesting the skies opened in the way that they do in this part of the world. At first we tried to deploy our umbrellas, but soon we were awash. People were dashing around, children were crying – it was a mess. We made a run for the subway – each time we peeked over our shoulder there was a dragon or something amazing to see.
Here’s Wilf’s video of how it went down….
And here’s the last shot before we ducked inside…
Now that we know where to go to watch we’ll try again later in the week - the show runs for several more nights. We got very wet and laughed a lot!
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