Night Festival Fun in Singapore
The Chus were all feeling slightly wistful last month after scrolling through the many lovely photos of Edinburgh during festival season on Facebook. Sure – when we lived there we moaned about the noise, the tourists and the poster/leaflet carnage like all the other locals; but now that we’ve left, we miss it all!
So we were happily surprised to discover that Singapore has a little festival of its own in August. Nothing on the scale of Edinburgh’s arts, fringe, jazz and book festivals, but a lot of fun nonetheless, and incidentally – right on our doorstep.
It’s the Singapore Night Festival.
We’ve made a short showreel featuring some of the highlights and below are a few snaps of all the action.
Now in its ninth year, it mainly features street performances, buskers, markets and “interactive light art” related to a changing theme each year. This year it was “Inventions and Innovations”. The events are almost all free, and the best bit is that walking around town is infinitely more bearable in the cool of the evening. (And by cool – I still mean around 27°C).
Invasion – a dramatic performance involving stilt walkers, performers precariously perched on moving scaffolding and a “flying” pterodactyl hanging off a crane!
Samara – a beautiful interactive light sculpture featuring a multitude of 3D-printed glowing bulbs hanging from a rattan tree structure.
A few artfully hung mirror balls turn the National Museum garden into one huge disco.
Keyframe – a stunning animated light display draws crowds to the National Museum facade.
The festival is surprisingly child-friendly for a “night” event; although we have noticed that kids in Singapore seem to stay out a lot later than back in the UK. It’s not uncommon to see families with toddlers and babies still roaming the streets at 10pm. Our girls loved being allowed to stay up late and join in the street party atmosphere! One of their favourite events featured an outdoor seating area with beanbags, old-school playground equipment, multiple bubble machines and free flow caramel popcorn and candy floss…I kid you not.
The Chu girls trying to catch bubbles whilst simultaneously eating candy floss…
Performers get up close at the House of Curiosities.
An interactive light “waterfall” which responds to participants drum beats
Live music at Dhoby Ghaut Green – up til now we had never even noticed this massive outdoor auditorium in our neighbourhood! Must get out more.
We had to stretch the kids’ bedtimes significantly to take it all in, but we really appreciated being able to soak in a little bit of that festival vibe in this part of the world this year. Looking forward to next year’s event!
PS. This week, it’s also the Mid-Autumn Festival again! Miss Chu was amazed to discover that her mooncake and shadow puppet video from last year received about six thousand views in the past few weeks leading up to mid-autumn – and is now our most-watched video by a long way! It’s only been a year but we’re already marveling at how much younger the girls seemed back then. It’s nice to have a trail of videos on the blog showing how they’ve grown up!
Miss Chu is the latest YouTube sensation! Festival looks like so much fun. Miss you all lots! J & L xxx