The End of Chinese New Year

Hundreds of lanterns made by the local children

With Penang's enormous Chinese population, the Chinese New Year is a major event.  We arrived at the close of a two week long celebration and joined Labarque and Out of the Blue II in town for the Chap Goh Meh Celebrations marking the end.

With Labarque & Out of the Blue II

Beforehand, Patrick from Labarque took us to his favourite eating establishment, an unbelievably good and inexpensive Indian vegetarian restaurant in Little India.  We sampled an amazing array of extremely tasty dishes along with their tosai (dosa), a rice batter bread/pancake along with its cousin, a hollow football-sized variety of which I've forgotten the name.

Tosai

The football?

The festivities in the evening included a lot of noise, some fireworks (always fireworks), gaudy lights and ornaments and an orange throwing contest.  The orange or tangerine are particularly significant Chinese New Year symbols.  The bright orange color of the fruits symbolizes 'gold', hence it has an auspicious meaning to bring in good luck and wealth. This was followed by more noise and more fireworks but the last bus back to our anchorage didn't allow us to stay for the final fireworks show so home we went.

PHOTO ALBUM:

A shop in Little India

With Lyn (Out of the Blue II)

Paul trying out a hoverboard