TacoCat’s Travels #195 (SG): Admiring Lanterns on the River! 🏮

Hey Hive!

It's time for another local trip because back in 2019-2021 we couldn't really fly anywhere due to travel restrictions and/or safety reasons. During that time, we saw more of our own country and I thought it'd be cool to share some interesting places from Singapore!

4 Feb 2022. Friday.

So Sean had managed to get tickets for this annual event called River Hongbao which takes place during the Chinese New Year period! I'd actually never heard of this event before but apparently it's been on Singapore’s festive calendar every year since 1987! Held at Gardens by the Bay, this beloved event is a fixture on Singapore’s Lunar New Year calendar of celebrations, popular with locals and tourists alike.

As part of the celebrations, visitors will be able to take part in an array of carnival games and activities — from Feng Shui live shows to exhibitions featuring greeting cards from the 1950s and 70s — and indulge in an array of street food and traditional snacks along Food Street.

You need to get tickets to attend this event and Sean managed to get 2 tickets from his company so we decided to go check it out!

Since it's tradition to wear new clothes for the New Year and this was a CNY event, we thought we'd dress the part and wear something more fancy! But it was pretty clear when we went that we were slightly overdressed, especially since it was outdoors.

I ordered this hanfu-inspired dress I saw online that looked like a kimono and Sean bought this outfit set that looked like something a yakuza would wear. Since we'd been missing Japan a lot during covid period, we decided to try Japanese inspired outfits!

Anyway, when we arrived, it was well after 8pm so we were cleared to go in although we might've gone in through a different entrance rather than the main one.

But this sign did say this was the Entrance Walkway and had a welcome note so.. I guess it was okay.

This entrance walkway was very nicely decorated with plenty of lights and light fixtures!

They looked like fancy lighted lanterns and they were pretty big and bright too!

This is a map of the whole River Hongbao event, showing all the different huge light fixtures and and what we can expect along the way. It seems like we just had to go in a straight path for most of the route so we just enjoyed a nice relaxing stroll.

The first thing we came across were the amusement park rides, which was mostly just this huge fancy two-leveled carousel! It looked like just those you'd see in the movies or an old music box.

There was a separate entrance for this area since there were a lot of kids and families here and they still had to make sure the crowds were well managed and people weren't coming into too close contact because of covid.

But I guess since it was in an open area it wasn't too bad and we tried to keep our distance from other people as much as we could.

There was another swinging carousel thing here that was smaller and definitely made for kids.

There was also a bumper bots ride? I thought it was bumper cars as usual but the yellow one definitely looks like Bumblebee from Transformers.

Among the different light fixtures were these lanterns of the animals from the chinese zodiac, in the backdrop of Singapore's key attractions! If I recall they were a little animated too and certain parts would move back and forth!

There was a rooster one there too and since that is Sean's zodiac I tried my best to take a picture of him with it but the lighting made it kinda difficult.

The animals looked really cute too and I liked that they had them doing some Singaporean stuff like playing soccer:

And of course playing instruments since music is a big part of any cultural festival!

Each animal also came with a board detailing the zodiac's fortune for the year which includes that zodiac's performance in work, relationships and health. I don't really believe in any of this stuff just like horoscopes but it's always fun to read.

I think we arrived a little too late for the performance but there was a concert going on with a band playing some traditional chinese new year songs!

There was also a huge lighted heart display called Wishing Heart that looked really pretty! In the middle of the hearts had these hanging bells that people could throw coins at and ring the bell for good luck, and all the coins collected would be donated to this organisation called Kampung Senang which supports child care, student care and holistic wellness programs from all ages!

There was also a showcase of this girl on different vacations around the world! I bet they did this because that's what most Singaporeans were wishing at the time after not being able to travel for 3 years!

This display is based on a chinese saying common during Chinese New Year, which is Xin Xiang Shi Cheng which means wishing for one's dreams to come true.

There was also this huge lantern with a rotating lighted display with an old school Singapore illustration that looked really cool!

Then we came across this pond with beautiful koi lanterns as a reference to the Chinese saying Nian Nian You Yu, which means to bring joy and prosperity every year!

I wanted to take a picture of Sean with the lanterns but at this point I didn't have a good enough camera to take both him and the lanterns because he would appear really dark but they were really pretty, especially with the way the light was reflecting off the water!

The reason why I wanted to get Sean with the koi pond is because his outer "coat" has a beautiful koi design with sakura flowers on the back!

Because this River Hongbao event was at Gardens by the Bay, the huge supertrees were also decked out nicely in red and yellow lights for the occasion!

We tried our best to find a spot without too many people around and where we could still take a pic with the trees, and we found this spot with a super bright streetlamp that gave some good lighting!

So we spent some time taking a ton of pics here since this was one of the few places we had decent lighting. With the lanterns it was tough since the focus would be on the lanterns being bright and darken everything else. Also there were people almost everywhere which didn't really make for good pics.

We did a bunch of poses and didn't really care that people were staring at us. In fact there were some other people who had the same idea as us and wanted to take photos under the bright light too, so after taking a bunch of photos we left so other people could take photos too.

But I think that's gonna be it for this post! There's definitely a lot more to share from this event and a lot more awesome looking lanterns so tune in next week for more!

Thanks so much for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

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Check out my previous post in this series!

TacoCat’s Travels #194 (SG): Enjoying a Sunset Skyline Boat Ride! 🚤

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