As said in my previous post, I went out with JL after the Stats 2 workshop today. Well, the main reason why we went out today was to visit the Gardens By the Bay and view the lanterns on exhibit there which were for the Mid Autumn Festival. But that was later in the evening. Before that, we had the Beef Samurai Burger as a late lunch/ early dinner at Marina Square Mac's which we had wanted to try since couple of weeks back. Once again, it was just a mess of a burger with lots of sauce overflowing and hardly impressive really. Lately, this has been quite common for Mac's new burgers - too much overwhelming sauces on the burger, not to say all are bad though. Anyways, we left after eating and made our way to Gardens By the Bay for the event there. We walked there via MBS though which really caught me by surprise. I had no idea there was a bridge connecting MBS with GBTB.
We got to GBTB just as the sun was setting, just in time for the lanterns to be lit. We planned to follow the loop around the garden and see if there was anything interesting along the way. As we walked, I realised that there wasn't too big a crowd which was a relief. Then again, it might have been due to the large crowd being spread out over the huge garden. Once again, we were walking through rows and rows of LED-lighted structures and figures with absolutely no sight of any traditional paper lanterns, whether on display or being carried on sticks by the visitors. This was quite a dismay to both of us as we had been hoping to see some traditional elements at the event. Thus, it was pretty much the same as last year when we went to the Mid Autumn Festival event at Chinese Garden.
Having said that, I felt that this year's event at GBTB was slightly better than the one we went to last year. This is due to the few points as listed below,
- Firstly, we did not have to pay an entrance fee for this event at GBTB which was not the case for Chinese Gardens where we had to purchase tickets.
- As I had mentioned earlier, it was also not too cramped due to the huge size of GBTB which sure made the walk more relaxing
- There was some traditional element in the event at GBTB in the form of guessing of lantern riddles (灯谜) which was usually played during Mid Autumn Festival as people gathered around their lanterns, hence the name.
- There were also several other booths set up which featured some beautiful handmade lanterns which were winning pieces for a lantern making competition and some other games or talks.
We soon grew bored and tired of walking and left about two hours after we got there. We then settled down at a Starbucks to have a drink and rest our legs before heading home. Thinking back, I feel that the first Mid Autumn Festival I had with JL was still the most fun and memorable which we celebrated at East Coast Park and was totally planned by the both of us, from lanterns to mooncakes and the venue. Think we should plan the next one on our own again ya?
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