Gong Xi Fa Cai

This past Sunday was Chinese New Year and there was a huge build up to the holiday and the week long celebration. It is the biggest holiday for the Chinese who make up 80% of Singapore’s population. Chinese New Year falls on different dates each year somewhere between January 21 and February 20, falling on the second new moon after the winter solstice. This year is the year of the Tiger and as they say here – Gong Xi Fa Cai – Best Wishes for a Prosperous and Happy New Year!

The Chinese New Year celebrations are marked by visits to relatives and friends. More Chinese travel on this holiday than at any other time, it is said to be the greatest human migration in modern history. New clothes are worn to signify a new year with the color red being used liberally in all decorations. On the days before the New Year celebration, Chinese families give their home a thorough cleaning. It is believed the cleaning sweeps away the bad luck of the preceding year and makes their homes ready for good luck. Brooms are put away for the holiday so the luck cannot be swept away. Most have a family dinner on New Year’s Eve and then go down to Chinatown for celebrations at midnight. Dan and I went to Chinatown around 9pm and it was so crowded then, that I cannot imagine the crowd at midnight!

Red envelopes, hong bao, are given by parents and family to the children. The red packets usually contain money ranging from small amounts to several hundred dollars. The money is always given in even numbers with the number 8 being especially lucky because in Chinese saying the number 8 sounds like the word for wealth. Odd numbers are not given because they are associated with cash given during funerals. Also the number 4 is unlucky because saying it sounds like the word for death.

Dragon and lion dances are held during the holiday. It is believed that the loud beats of the drum and the deafening sounds of the cymbals together with the face of the dragon or lion dancing aggressively can evict bad or evil spirits. They are held in the streets, in front of temples and even inside retail stores as this photo shows. We ran into this lion with his band of drummers in the cosmetic section of a local department store.  He even went up the escalator!

Most people get 2 days off for the holiday and most stores are closed for the actual New Year’s Day with many Chinese owned stores closed for the entire week.

A large parade is held at the end of the week with fireworks culminating the holiday. This year the parade was held at the huge Formula 1 grandstands near the Singapore Flyer. It was an amazing parade with over 7,500 participants, 15 large floats, firecrackers, stilt walkers, dragon and lion dancers.
Here are a few video links of the parade.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60yMGkVz4gk
Stilt walkers at the opening of the parade - walking with fireworks on their backs!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MBvEgQmL2c
Fire-eaters & Firecrackers! The noise was deafening. Look at all the people with their hands over their ears!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrXMpi-bPTA
Lion and Dragon dancers!

Health & Beauty 101

Now that we’ve been here for a month we’ve begun to check out the facilities for hair care, massages, pedicures, etc. Singaporeans put great stock in their beauty regimes and have some interesting alternative treatments – reflexology, ear candling, ayurvedic oil treatment, and acupressure message.

Since Singapore’s weather is always warm, most people walk quite a bit, and sandals are the order of the day, good foot care is paramount. Good pedicures are abundant for about S$50 (about $35), but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Foot reflexology is the practice of applying pressure to parts of the feet with the goal of encouraging a beneficial effect on other parts of the body, or to improve general health and to relieve problems in the rest of the body – cure for migraine, back problems and neck problems. Dan found a Javanese Reflexology Center (Salon is too fine a point!) just around the corner of our apartment. He had been several times and took me for a visit a short time after my arrival in Singapore. Dan was so excited and thought it was a terrific massage; I on the other hand could not believe we paid someone to hurt my feet that much!

So having given up on foot reflexology, I decided to try a fish spa. Went to a “spa” called Kenko, advertised as offering Reflexology, Fish Spa and Internet Café! I went in and asked to have a “fish spa” and of course they were having a promotion. As an aside, every store, salon, restaurant in Singapore is always having a promotion! If I booked a 30 minute massage, I would receive a free fish spa. I mean what fool wouldn’t book a massage to get a free fish spa! Sooooo, they take me to the back and I sit in one of those shoulder massage chairs – chest against the chair, face in the hole – and the masseuse begins to (and I use this term loosely) massage my back. When she started with her elbow in my back, I let her know that the pressure was a little too hard but by the end of the massage, I actually thought she had broken a rib! I was sore for three days!

After my “massage” I was apprehensive about the fish spa. First, I was ushered into a foot bath where my feet were washed, and then led to a platform over a large fish tank, basically a deck with several holes cut in it over the tank.

Sitting down on the platform, I put my feet in the water and then came the doctor fish, Garra rufa, which eat the dead skin off your feet. They were first used in Turkey to help people with psoriasis, eating the dead skin and leaving the health skin to grow. It’s a little disconcerting having the fish swarm around your feet but not painful. At each opening was a plexi-glass table with a computer so you could surf the net while the doctor fish did their work – thus the internet café part of the marquee.

I’m still looking for a massage that doesn’t hurt and I haven’t given up on ear candling and the ayurvedic oil therapy but have decided to take a more cautious approach to further treatments!

The Super Bowl in Singapore

Singapore has 8 sports channels! They even have a Football Channel. But of course it is not American Football. They have ESPN but you won’t see Kenny Mayne or Stuart Scott. They love their soccer (oops, football), golf, car racing, badminton, X-treme sports and table tennis, which is really quite interesting. Luckily not much Cricket but you can see Basketball, we watched the Sixers vs. Houston game the other day. They are advertising coverage of the Olympics and March Madness, but American Football, is really hard to find.

Three bars in Singapore advertised that they’d be showing the Super Bowl. The first one we called said they couldn’t get the channel after all. The other two opened their doors at 6am on a first come first serve basis for seats. We seriously considered it but decided that getting up at 5am to take a taxi to a bar to possibly watch a game at 7am was too much for these football fans.

So, we asked our friend, Kathy, to take her computer to the Super Bowl party in Doylestown and Skype us in! It was almost as good as being there. We had a front row seat for the game and every so often they’d turn us around so we could toast the group! For the second half we traveled to Hoboken, NJ and watched with Phil.

Technology is amazing; I just wish I understood it.

Bintan, Indonesia - Sunburned by the South China Sea!

We decided we needed a weekend at the beach so we booked a room at the Angsana Resort on Bintan Island, Indonesia. Picked up Dan at work at noon, took the ferry from Singapore to Bintan, and two hours later we're on the beach for Happy Hour!

Bintan has several resorts on the northwest coast of the island which was leased by Singapore to build resorts for the Singaporeans. Staying at the resort were people of all colors, Chinese, Indian and many white people but we didn’t hear another American accent during the weekend. The people of Bintan are friendly welcoming people and more than ready to help with our lack of knowledge of local customs. The currency in Indonesia is the Rupiah – 9,565 Rupiah = $1 US - too complicated for our math minds, so luckily you could charge everything to the room and the total converted to US dollars at checkout.

The beach has soft white sand, palm trees and warm clear water and there are several beautiful golf courses on the island. It’s quite hot playing golf but everyone rides and has a caddy who rides on the back on the cart.
Friday evening we had dinner on the beach with a nice bottle of wine while being serenaded by a quartet of island singers whose repertoire included the Beatles, Tom Jones and Marty Robbins – very eclectic!

Saturday, we sat under the thatched umbrella all day enjoying the breeze, scenery and margaritas. Then back in our room we discovered that we were totally sunburned. Even with sunscreen and sitting in the shade, white people get totally fried sitting near the equator by the South China Sea!

We managed to make it to the Banyan Tree Resort next door and had a delicious Italian dinner and another bottle wine while sitting on the veranda above the sea, but we had the uneasy feeling that everyone was looking at us like we should be on the menu as a pair of lobsters.

We did book an early ferry home since sitting on the beach again today was not an option and now we are back in Singapore, an unusual shade of pink in our wonderfully air-conditioned apartment!