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The actual date of Chinese New Year in the Western Calendar varies as it is a lunar event, so this year it fell on January 22nd and ushered in the Year of the Monkey.
As Thailand is not only next door to China (as the flu carrying birds bear witness), but also has a large number of the population of Chinese descent, it is as you may imagine a major event here.
In fact it started about 2 days prior to the 22nd with firecrackers being let off from dawn (literally) to dusk and beyond.
Pattaya once again held a major festival to celebrate the event, the main activity of which was scheduled to take place in the evening at the new Bali High pier at the bottom end of Walking Street.
Prior to that several venues had their own celebrations throughout the day, and we attended the one at the Friendship supermarket in the early afternoon.
This building is owned by a Chinese family and could from its architecture be mistaken for a temple but is in fact a supermarket.
Around 2 PM a troupe of performers assembled there, some of the younger ones dressed in Lion costumes and the remainder carrying a huge dragon which at one point was paraded around the shoppers inside the building..
They proceeded to put on a display of music, dancing and acrobatics, including taking the dragon up a huge pole where it then spat fire and sprayed water (being sprayed with water from a dragon is supposed to bring good luck).
Unfortunately during this event it became very overcast and towards the end, light rain started to come down, very unusual for January but not hard enough to spoil the acrobatics.
A selection of photos from this event follows, as usual to view any of them full-size, just click on the appropriate thumbnail image.
The rain continued on and off though out the rest of the day, fortunately mainly light, and in fact had more or less ceased by the time the main parade assembled at the top end of Walking Street around 7 PM.
This parade consisted of another troupe of young Lions, this time in multi coloured costumes, each colour of which has some significance unknown to me, and this time accompanied by a huge seven headed dragon.
The plan was that this parade should make its way the whole length of Walking Street, pausing at several shops and businesses who had signified their wish to be greeted by hanging red envelopes containing gifts of money from their shop fronts or doorways.
As the parade crossed the threshold to Walking Street a large chain of firecrackers which had been laid along the ground were let off, causing a deafening noise to those of us too close to them for comfort (I could actually feel bits of exploding cracker hitting me).
Once past this point, all went initially according to plan with the merry band accompanied by a large number of spectators making its way sporadically down the street.
However, when we all were roughly halfway down, the rain started again and this time rapidly increased to a torrential downpour, forcing us all to take shelter.
This produced the rather bizarre spectacle of a seven headed fire breathing dragon sheltering from the rain inside the Simon Cabaret bar (what would it’s ancestors have thought?).
The young Lions also took shelter there even though most of them were under the permitted age for entering such premises, and when the rain eased around an hour later, were difficult to prise out again.
Nevertheless the parade did eventually reassemble and resumed its progress down to the Bali High stage at the end of the street.
But over an hour had been lost and also the rain had soaked all the stage and most of the special structures that had been assembled for the acrobats to perform on.
So it was a rather muted party that then took place with only a few die hard spectators remaining - although as the rain eventually ceased altogether, their numbers did increase.
The troupe did its best under the circumstances, managing to parade the multicoloured Lions on the stage and then performing some acrobatics, although the items requiring the use of some of the special apparatus were omitted.
A single headed dragon then appeared and did more or less a repeat performance of what we had seen earlier in the day, including again scaling the huge vertical pole and spitting fire again, which being night-time looked even more spectacular.
Unfortunately the security was very tight for safety reasons and we were all kept a long distance away making picture taking very difficult, but a few photos I did manage to take are included in the selection below.
To view any of the above photos in full size, just click on it.
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