Last year was my first Chingay; a giant Streetparade, a bit like the Carnival de Rio de Janeiro. We bought tickets and it was a fantastic experience.
This year we decided not to buy tickets, but go to the festivalarea some hours before the show would start, hoping to catch some of the 8.000 (!) participants in their costumes.
We got more then we expected: we had three hours of photo-ops up-close-and-personal!!!
Wow, or as they say here: Whao….!
It was great; so many people dressed up so gorgeous, funny, colorfull. The make-up, hairdo’s, jewelry, costumes, glitter….
Also the Floats (what we call ‘praalwagens’ in Dutch) were impressive.
Share this experience it with me by going through the following pics.
Some were already posted on my FB, a few in a mail, but many of them I did not publish yet.
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| Cheerleaders. Hundreds of cheerleaders are present to make the more then 100.000 spectators go crazy and participate in clapping, cheering, singing, etc |
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| There is an adjacent programme around the real show. This year there was a lot of attention for recreation and creativity . These are manga-/anime-/cozplay-personas. |
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| To promote the art of balloon-twisting there were some models completely dressed in costumes made out of twisted balloons. You could watch how it was done. I was very impressed by this. What a precision, hours of work, great designs….The models had to be protected by staffmembers to avoid the crowd to bump into them. Otherwise the balloons might snap;-) |
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| These ladies had hatwear made of balloons. Age nor (im-)mobility can stop them from having lots of fun;-) |
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| Bodypainting |
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| Groups started mingling for combined photo-shoots |
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| This lady belonged to a Big is Beautiful-group. They promoted a Cabaret of ‘big’ ladies. |
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| Two more Cabaret-ladies |
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| Ole! |
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| As you can see there are people participating from all races, ages and sizes. Very refreshing, like the Big Ladies Cabaret, that not everybody in Singapore is young and tiny. Diversity is nice, I think…. |
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| Ofcourse there were dragons present from all sizes and materials… |
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| Fire-dragon |
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| 80 Gods of Fortune. It was a funny sight to see these ‘Gods’ all one by one being searched with weapondetectors. |
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| A fluorescent Float with coral and fishes. |
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| Sort of candy-float; chup-a-chup-like;-) |
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| Japanese Float with drummers and lanterns |
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| Peacock-Float |
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| Lotus-girls |
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| Gorgeous and so cute. |
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| People were either walking around, or taking pictures or waiting/sitting during the hours before it all started. |
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| Fantastic |
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| Posing, posing, posing;-) So many hours of work and such a beautiful results deserve that, ofcourse! |
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| And yes, Frits and I posed for one pic as well…hahaha |
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| Me-xi-cooooooooooooo! |
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| More Mexico? |
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| Hey, Ang Moh’s (=Kaukasians= white people;-)) participating!!! Great! |
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| And in came The Jungle: heaps of giraffes, zebra’s and trees-with-bird. A funny sight. The giraffes were adorable. |
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| Pretty zebra. |
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| These guys were carrying around enormous flower-pyramids. Beautiful, but must have been very heavy! |
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| Gorgeous! |
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| My only Jump-pic failed:-( Ah well, who cares after having taken hundreds of pics and being around happy, smiling people for hours…. |
Maybe time to try and participate ourselves, next year?!…….;-)
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