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Chinese New Year — a.k.a. the Lunar New Year — is a big, big deal in Asia. In Singapore, it’s a bigger deal than Christmas, with nearly every store closed down for a couple days (whereas many stores and restaurants stay open for a normal business day on Christmas). There are family reunions constantly during the Chinese New Year celebrations, plus plenty of other activities. We took part in as many as we could, just to get into the spirit.

That included a visit to the official residence of Singapore’s president — more on that in a later post — and an evening spent in the heart of the action, Singapore’s Chinatown.

This year is considered the Year of the Dog, so Chinatown was full of dogs of all shapes and sizes. Like these giant inflatables towering over the main intersection:

There were also lots of these sort of foam rubber dogs, at a more human scale, all over the place too.

Lots of lanterns and lights everywhere (click to enlarge):

Nyan really enjoyed a permanent display of an old rickshaw that’s along one of the pedestrianized streets, I suppose to give a taste of what life was like back int he day.

We also popped into a giant Hindu temple that’s downtown, just for the heck of it. Not very Chinese New Year-y, but it’s a pretty amazing temple, plus there’s a nice patch of grass to roll around in.

Nyan’s school got into the New Year spirit too. Everyone dressed up in brightly  colored clothes for a school-wide assembly:

The kids also put on a very intricate and elaborate dance performance. We’re not sure what it actually means, but it’s actually quite impressive. Nyan can really move! This video is a bit long but worth it:

We close with a couple of shots of Nyan and Jayden. These two really do love each other.

Singapore’s ArtScience Museum hosted a traveling exhibit of goodies from London’s Natural History Museum, including some artifacts from Charles Darwin himself. Nyan’s always been a fan of Darwin — Darwin is, in fact, Nyan’s benchmark for if something or someone is old or not; if it’s older than Darwin, it’s old. If not, not so old — so off we went.

The Art Science Museum is downtown, part of the Marina Bay Sands complex, with great views of the city skyline.

Outside the exhibit was a fake tiger and gear that explorers would wear, which visitors could put on and be silly.

Inside were those artifacts from London, collected by naturalists over many years of exploring. There were lion statues and taxidermied tortoises…

And journal entries written by none other than Darwin himself!

We had fun messing around with shadows:

One of the conceits of the exhibit was, What if some of the skeletons at the museum came to life? And it showed video animation of the outcome – dolphins swimming through the halls of the museum; a pack of saber-tooth tigers snacking on some prey. Kinda cool. There was also a little light display meant to show a tiger’s footprints. Nyan enjoyed that:

They also had an interactive science lab, where kids could select items and actions on a computer screen and it would figure out the results of the experiment. Our boy was definitely into that.

But he said his favorite bit was the faux sailing ship that he could climb into and pretend to be steering across the ocean.

A very cool and informative exhibit.

Every two years, Singapore hosts the Singapore Air Show. It’s mostly an exhibition for airplane makers (and arms dealers) to try to sell their stuff to Southeast Asian governments. But they also open it up to the public for aerobatics shows, tours of airplanes and helicopters, and more. It’s a young boy’s dream; we attended the show in 2016 and weren’t going to miss the 2018 edition, either.

Here’s our hero in the taxi ride to the show. Check out that expression when we pass the airfield and he gets his first glimpse of all the jets parked there, waiting for him:

And sure enough, there were military jets, private jets, helicopters, you name it. Some of them were just for display; others had huge lines of people waiting to tour inside or sit in the cockpit.

Besides a helicopter or two, we took a tour of a US Air Force plane – an aging AWACS radar plane with what looked like 1960s technology, but which the crew said would be used for another 30 years or so.

We also made sure to get a good position for the aerial show, which featured plans from number of regional Air Forces – including Singapore, of course – showing off what they can do with their planes.

The Singapore Air Force had its own pavilion, with lots of displays of its technology, and even a model of a fighter jet for kids to sit in and take pictures.

And inside the cavernous exhibition hall were displays from scores of companies who sell everything from airplane seatbelts to military drones. Nyan was really into the model airplanes. Daddy was less into the crowds.

Among the exhibitors was the company that operates Singapore’s Changi Airport. They are in the midst of building a new shopping mall at the airport called Changi Jewel, and they had a scale model of the new mall on display.

The new mall will include a special feature: high-grade netting that will be suspended high above the ground for people to walk and bounce on. There was a section of the netting on display at the airshow, and people were welcome to try it out. So we did.

Fun stuff!

Bonus: A day or two before the airshow, some jets from the Korean air force were practicing some moves ahead of their display at the airshow. But, oops, on take-off, one of them lost control or something and, well, things did not end well:

No one was hurt, happily, but the Koreans had to pull out of the aerobatics show. Too bad. (Video sent by a friend.)