Mid Autumn Festival Celebrations at Gardens By The Bay, Condos & Toastmasters Clubs

  Outings and Events - Gardens By The Bay

Mid autumn festival, a harvest festival, a festival of the moon is celebrated in Singapore and Asian countries and places with Chinese populations and Chinatowns. 

In Singapore you can see seasonal displays at Gardens by the Bay.  How long should you allow? Twice as long as you thought. 

Condos Holding Parties

Private events take place in condos. At a condo in Cashew Heights, Singapore, adults and children were given lanterns.

Cashew Heights Condo party for the Autumn Festival, with flowers and coloured paper langerns. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Toastmasters

Toastmasters clubs in Singapore decorate rooms with lanterns and serve calorific moon cakes.

Tampines Changkat Advanced Toastmasters Club in Singapore.  Lanterns for the Mid Autumn Festival.

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardens_by_the_Bay

https://www.youtube.com/user/gardensbythebay/videos

https://www.toastmasters.org/Find-a-Club/

Mooncakes to Buy Worldwide, to Choose At Hotels and Supermarkets, Or Clubs, Or Make

Every year Chinese and Asian communiities hold a mid-auttumn festival which is celebrated with moon cakes. In the UK we have apples falling from trees in gardens. In Chinatowns and Asia and online there are mooncakes.

Moon Cakes

Traditonal moon cakes have a baked pastry case.  Inside are dense sugary fudge-like filled The sweetmeats are muffin size. If you have a group, you cut the mooncake into tiny triangular sections like a large cake. A tiny piece, like a dice of fudge, goes a long way. Most are pure sweetness. 

You can buy a variety of flavours. 

Flavours

Red bean. Lotus. Grreen Tea. Ice cream. Durian.

Eggs

More expensive are those with teeny boiled eggs inside. How do they get the eggs so small? Are they baby eggs or shrunk? They are duck eggs. The eggs complement the sweet taste, and provide protein. 

Souvenirs

Hotels sell expensive versions with decorative boxes you can give as gifts to business associates and as a thank you to hosts or guests. Pop-up shops sometimes sell individual ones as well as large boxes of four or more.

You can buy mooncakes online from the websites of supermarkets in Singapore. But watch out for scams on WhatsApp.

DIY

You can find recipes and buy plastic or wooden moulds.

Amazon sells a set of two modern mooncake moulds which push out the mooncake.

Mooncake moulds from Amazon.

Supermarkets

In September 2023 Fairprice supermarket in Singapore was offering online mooncakes, a single moon cake at 15 Singapore dollars, Flavours include lotus paste, green tea. A large number of individual mooncakes and boxes are shown on the website.

Fairprice supermarket also stocks halal mooncakes.

See my previous posts on mooncakes.

Useful Websites

Useful Websites

https://www.fairprice.com.sg/product/prestigio-delights-lotus-paste-double-yolk-mooncake-180-g-90141002?gclid=Cj0KCQjw6_CYBhDjARIsABnuSzqoTmivI4NL7jBe8llIkCAsZKfM6iacogPsvPBRNPxuJEwVoRyr2EgaAs6TEALw_wcB

https://www.facebook.com/toastboxsingapore/posts/these-traditional-teochew-style-mooncakes-from-thye-moh-chan-are-made-with-delic/3213940525320115/

Great recipes:

https://zhangcatherine.com/mooncakes/

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2021/09/food-and-fun-at-autumn-harvest.html

Please share links to your favourite posts 

Chinese New Year Nearer - Decorations

 

Chinese New Year decorations in Singapore with lanterns. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

The decorations are going up all over the world, especially in Singapore in the condominiums. 

As this picture shows, January 6th 2021. So early. 

"Yes, because Chinese New Year is early this year!" comments my swimming companion, 'Veronica'. 

Not that early, February 1st, which is less than a month away.

Decorations are in outdoor areas which are protected by projections, with artificial flower displays in large vases.

Chinese Writing Symbols

 The hanging mottos have tassels in a reddish orange colour. Some of the symbols are read on a gold background. Others are gold on a red background. 

If you have trouble recognizing the symbol, that might be because the symbols are hung upside down. The story goes that good luck symbols were hung outside houses to ward off plague. First the good news. The plague ended. Then the bad news. The emperor rode out to admire the symbols. Then he saw that one illiterate family had hung their symbol upside down - he was incensed! 

He was about to condemn them to death, when the quick-thinking and kind empress pointed out that one of the symbols has a second meaning. It also means upside down. 

So, the family was saved. They had 'double happiness' (a Chinese wish), spared the plague and spared the anger of the emperor. To commemorate this good luck, the symbols are now hung upside down. 

 Overhead are red lanterns with swirling golden and red hanging items attached and blowing in the wind.

The public malls have more decorations, multi-storey outside the malls. Multi-storey indoors in the atriums.

At night the strings, scallops and little lights hanging down like stalactites, flash on and off, like fairyland.

About the Author

BIOGRAPHY

Angela Lansbury B A Hons ACG ALB PM5 EH5 DL5 VC5 
The Author of several books including  Etiquette For Every Occasion. Wedding Speeches & Toasts. How to be the Best Man. Quick Quotations. Who Said What When.

Blogs travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

translateforfun.blogspot.com

Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters Speakers Club Vice President Public Relations (VPPR), Previous President

Join BHA 1st Wednesday 7pm and 3rd Saturday 2 pm Singapore time 

Vice President Public Relations (VP PR) of Tampines Changkat Advanced;

Secretary of weekly online Singapore International Dynamic Toastmasters Speakers’ Club;

Member and past president of Harrovians toastmasters club, UK; Past member of HOD Toastmasters, London. Past member in Singapore of: Toastmasters Club of Singapore (TCS); Tiarel; and Senja Cashew.

More details from Toastmasters International find a club.

Regular attendee at annual Swanwick Writers’ School, England.

Regular attendee at annual Writers’ Holiday, Wales.

Contributor to poetry readings, and after tea courses on: Speaking On Radio To Promote Books; and Plots And Character.

Winner of many club and area speaking contests in the UK and Singapore.

Language advisor to Empire Toastmasters club in Indonesia.

Language and speech workshops in Singapore.

Speaker on radio and TV in England, Scotland, the USA, and Australia.

Compiler of a school course on public speaking for teachers to prepare pupils for school open days with attending ceremonies before government ministers, Singapore.

Former member of Harrow Writers’ Circle, London, and two writing groups in Singapore.

Angela is on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter. She would be delighted to link up with new friends.

 Please share links to your favourite posts.

Books by Angela Lansbury
How to be the best man. (Ward Lock / Cassell.)
Wedding Speeches and Toasts.(Ward Lock / Cassell.)
Unforgettable British Weekends.
Poetry Workshop Workbook.
The Tailor and the Spy. (Lulu.)
Larry The Talking Labrador. (Lulu.)
Writing Poetry for fun.

Quick Quotations

Who Said What When

Lovely coloured lanterns in Hanoi, Vietnam

Photo by Angela Lansbury.

I presume these lanterns are paper or reinforced paper. You see them strung across the fronts of shops and restaurants. Another design has paintings of flowers or other patterns on the coloured background.
In Hanoi, capital of Vietnam.

In the UK we most often see the circular, collapsible lanterns, mostly in plain white, sold in cheap stores. These lanterns in Vietnam are more like a teardrop design.

For hotels
booking.com
Comparison site:
https://www.clicktripz.com/rates/search/index
For airlines
travelok.com
vietJetair.com (Comprehensive list of budget airlines in Wikivoyage.)
For transport
https://www.grab.com/vn/en/

Language
Duolingo.com 
(Remember to click on the sound symbol to hear how words are pronounced.) 

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.
Please share links to your favourite posts. I have several more on Hanoi, Halong Bay and Vietnam.

Chinatown lights in Singapore

Near Chinatown Point and Chinatown MRT station along the main road are strings of dramatic lanterns and illuminated figures of characters and trades which founded Chinatown. At dusk around 7 pm the lights come on. You can see them from the bus going in both directions.

My family would have told me not to take a photo. However, I took a couple of shots from the bus on my phone as a reminder. From my photo I am reminded of the statues, the name of the building Chinatown Point. On a third check of the photo I find I even have the street name.

Chinese New Year, Singapore Style

Next year will be the Year of the Monkey.

Chinese New Year decorations are up in advance in malls and major buildings.

Lanterns.

A lantern made from the paper red packets used to present gifts of money to singletons.

Spring flowers and fans decorating light fittings.

Colourful displays on light fittings, flowers on lobby displays and decorations up staircases.

Gifts you can buy including mahjong sets.

A colourful display stand selling gifts.

Wall decoration.

Lanterns hung from a light fitting.

All photos by and copyright of Angela Lansbury.

Celebrate in Singapore with a Lo Hei dinner. Or buy sweetmeats from the stalls.


Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Lights and What to see in Winter London: Wembley, Watford and Singapore streets and malls

In central London the major lite streets are Oxford Street and Regent Street. The major window displays are Harrods by the Knightsbridge station, Selfridges near Bond street, Carnaby street near Oxford Circus station, hamlets toy store in Regent street nearer the Oxford Circus station, but many people like to walk from Piccadilly and Piccadilly station along Regent street.

Wembley Arch
Travelling by bus or train, you can travel into London to see the lights. If you are travelling out of London, or into London, by train, you can see the Wembley arch lit up at night from the Metropolitan railway as you pass. Have your camera or smart phone ready.

Many shopping malls have lights. For example, Watford's Intu. Most of the London malls have more lights inside than out. Plus a Santa's grotto and entertainment in the middle.

Suburban Watford's Intu

Train for children to ride at Intu shopping mall (for a fee).

Double decker view of lights on columns at Intu, Watford.

Lights on one level at Intu, Watford, England at night.

Intu lights in the day time - still a fairyland.

Singapore's Changi and Orchard Road
Changi airport has changing exhibitions in the departure and arrival halls, even on the carousels. Expect Christmas lights, Christmas trees and piped music of carols, instrumental or with words.

Singapore has lights along Orchard road, the main shopping street with several large malls. You also hear carols. Singapore tends to have the big displays over the front of the mall, sometimes overhead above pedestrians, best seen from across the road or from the upper deck of buses or from the overhead light railway in the suburbs. If you want refuge from the rain or to hide from the haze, an indoor walkway runs under Orchard Road from the huge underground shopping complex below the central Orchard station on basements one and two. You can come up again at any of the malls, such as Ngee Ann City towers.

Diwali
In London Diwali is celebrated with fireworks. Diwali will be celebrated with lights in Little India in Singapore.

Chinese new Year
Chinese New Year decoration will be all over Singapore, in the centre, and the atriums of the larger hotels, as well as in Chinatown's streets and malls.

Red and orange lanterns appear everywhere in Singapore, for Chinese festivals, including swimming pools and public areas and walkways of government and private housing estates.

More information and photos:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3323408/Aux-armes-citoyens-Fan-s-video-shows-incredibly-emotional-Wembley-moment-English-French-supporters-joined-sing-La-Marseillaise-tribute-victims-Paris-attacks.html

See later post Nov 19 2015 for photo of Wembley arch in tricolour. 

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.
Pictures will be added later today, Wednesday.

Chinese New Year Decorations in Malta's Grand Hotel Excelsior

I must admit to be rather partial to the Grand Hotel, Excelsior, where I stayed. I also liked the neighbouring Phoenicia Hotel in Malta's capital city, Valletta, and the Kempinsky on Malta's second largest island, Gozo. But the Grand Hotel outdid everybody else with its lively decorations in red, the traditional Chinese lucky colour and Chinese New Year colour.

The hotel had a Chinese New Year dinner and a webpage explaining the significance of the new year of the ram.

http://www.excelsior.com.mt/blog/01/2015/chinese-new-year-2015/

Angela Lansbury is a travel writer, photographer, author and speaker.

Above photos are by Angela Lansbury, copyright Angela Lansbury 2015.

More about the Grand hotel and its harbour views and food in my next posts.