Singapore River Nightwalk: The Afterglow of the Chinese new Year

It played in my head as if it happened only the night before. The crowd had come alive at Makansutra Gluttons’ Bay by the Singapore River and the queues grew as they snaked in front of the stalls providing a broad variety of Asian Food. I could not help thinking about the first time I set foot on this place three years ago. It was my first night outside the Philippines.

In 2009, I was one of the bloggers invited by Nuffnang to attend the Asia Pacific blog awards that was held in Singapore. The event itself was excellent, but what really made that trip unforgettable for me was that it was my first trip abroad. On my first evening, I went to the Gluttons’ Bay for dinner with other Philippine delegates and spent the next couple of hours walking around the river area. It was still vibrant in my head like a fresh work on a canvass with the paint still carrying a high potential to stain any surface that comes in contact with it.

Fast forward to 2012.

“I’ll just have some me-time,” I told my pals Ces and Astrid before I broke away from the group. It had only been three years, but I had went to Singapore three times prior to this trip. Singapore, as steel-cold and synthetic as it appears many of the time, always manages to radiate a natural warmth for a nostalgic soul like me. maybe it’s that I give too much value in it being the first country I went to besides my own. Or maybe because I just feel like I somehow belong here, in the middle of the towering skyscrapers and theme parks. The truth is, each time I had a new Singaporean stamp on my passport, this small city-state never failed to surprise me. Like that night when I chose to walk alone.

Small glass vials filled to the brim with colored liquid were weaved together to create a glowing fabric that made up the dynamic huge lanterns that abounded a park on the bank of the river. The lights shone as if summoning everyone. Come closer, these glass creatures hollered in silence. and I was drawn to them in an instant.

Chinese new Year lantern arcs
Traditional Chinese lanterns
Giant glass lanterns
Close up of the glass vials
More lanterns
Entrance to the lantern exhibit

From afar, these huge beast lanterns looked like constellations not only with dots connected but also the spaces in between shaded, spread out in a galaxy. The Chinese new Year had just ended, but its spirit still lingered in the area. The lanterns were probably just leftovers of what I bet was a enormous festival. Nevertheless, the crowd delivered the energy needed to keep this galaxy spinning. conventional red lanterns and much more offbeat animal-shaped ones became the centers of attraction in this universe.

But these weren’t the only stars here. Not very far away, lights, like glowing spirits, escaped through the tiny windows that dotted the body of the skyscrapers that towered over the river. They joined the other lights that bordered the edges of the buildings and the ones that bounced on the river surface in painting a enormous canvass of numerous galaxies. The laser rays coming from the three bodies and the ship of the Marina Bay Sands beamed like fickle comets that cut through the darkness, as spectators viewed the luminous cosmic display in glee.

Laser show by Marina Bay Sands
Singapore skyline at night
I sat in one of the concrete benches that dashed the side of the river and kept on thinking about the first time I was here, the now, and the in-between. I let myself indulge in the thought that when I was a child, never did I think of myself being in another country, much less coming back again and again. never did I wish upon any star that I fly out of the country as I believed I would be reaching for the stars then. I guess I just got lucky.

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