Singapore Dragons

Rat. Ox. Tiger. Rabbit. Dragon. Snake. Horse. Goat. Monkey. Rooster. Dog. Pig. 12 different animals. 12 different zodiac signs. Each one occurring every 12 years. There's a pretty big party celebrating the new year of one of these animals each year in a lot of places in Southeast Asia and it usually occurs sometime in January or February. The exact date moves around from year to year because the dawning of the new year is based on the position of both the sun and the moon in the daytime and nighttime skies. Some people call it Chinese New Year or the Spring Festival. I'm going to go with Lunar New Year.

I think if you had asked me if I could celebrate just one Lunar New Year in my life under the sign of one of these zodiac animals, I think for sure I would say it would have to be the dragon. I mean you can see some of these creatures in your back yard or on a farm or in a zoo. But a dragon? Oh no. The dragon is different. Way different. Not just because it's the stuff of legend. It's bigger. It's more exotic. It's more badass. It's just better in pretty much every way. And I DO realize they don't actually have real live dragons at these things.

Now as it turns out, 2024 is the Year of the Dragon. Where were we planning to be early this year? Well...just a bit south of China and bit north of the equator. Time to celebrate the dawn of the Lunar New Year. Dragon style!

I'm not saying that celebrating the Year of the Dragon this February influenced our decision to spend two plus weeks in Southeast Asia. For me, the point of this trip was to finally visit Angkor Wat in Cambodia. But Lunar New Year didn't hurt. I could easily make a reasonable argument that a 15 day long celebration centered around this zodiac animal was at least a significant tipping point in finalizing Singapore as our home base of sorts for the first week plus of our trip halfway around this planet of ours. And it definitely fixed the date of our trip. I mean why not go celebrate Lunar New Year when it was around the time we wanted to go anyway. Look...it's hard to resist dragons. And when else are we going to get the chance to party and celebrate this animal? 

I know. I get it. 2036. But that's just too far away.

Now, if we had been a little smarter we would have known that dragons (or at least A dragon) are featured in Lunar New Year rituals every year. There is a traditional Chinese performance enacted around Lunar New Year celebrations called the dragon dance. In this ritual, a team of dancers moving to a pounding and clashing of drums and cymbals hold aloft a paper or silk (or both or similar material) dragon and make the beast move to the beat of the percussion while moving through or around or in front of a crowd of spectators. A team is required because the dragon is typically quite long and support of the dragon's body from its head to its tail is required to make the dance believable. 

Well...I mean as believable as dragons are in the first place. 

We had no idea there was such a thing as a dragon dance and that we could have seen one during any Lunar New Year celebration. I'm pretty sure it would not have made any difference. I'd rather see a dragon dance on a year celebrating the dragon than see one dragon and a bunch or rabbits everywhere. Or snakes. Or oxen. Or roosters. Or...well...you get the point.

There is one more actor in a tradition dragon dance. Out in front of the dragon's head, there is a lead dancer carrying a ball on a stick. It is this object that the dragon is chasing. And it's not a ball, it's a pearl. A pearl of wisdom. The dragon is a symbol of power, strength and good luck in Chinese lore and the dance is a manifestation of the good wishes for a fortunate new year. It's cool that it's seeking wisdom. 

Travel...I'm telling you....the things we learn. Who knew? This is why we do it. At least in part.

Four of Gardens By The Bay's set of dragons. 2024 is the Year of the Wood Dragon.

So given that 2024 was the Year of the Dragon, and ignoring the fact that we didn't know that the dragon is a part of every Lunar New Year, we honestly expected to see a lot of dragons in Singapore. I don't mean one or two or a dozen or twenty. I mean A TON. We didn't know exactly where we would see them or what kind of form they would take but we (and I'm not setting expectations too high here) expected to see these things everywhere. All over the place. Wherever we looked, we wanted dragons. Is that too much to ask? 

Apparently it was not. We couldn't even make it to immigration in Singapore before we met our first dragon. And I don't mean like a poster or a mini-figurine or an electronic sign or something like that. I mean like a three-dimensional, six foot or so high full-color sculpture of a dragon built into a plant arrangement with his mouth wide open and a pearl of wisdom floating just to the right of his head. 

Not even at immigration before we found our first one!!! I view immigration as one of the most boring and sanitized parts of any journey overseas. There is rarely anything but information and signage with many, many rules at immigration in most of the airports we transit through around the world. Singapore had a dragon. A DRAGON!!!

Airport dragon number one. Welcome to Singapore.

That dragon was definitely an omen. It seemed like every place we visited we found more dragons and there was surprise after surprise after surprise here. There were dragons at the airport. There were dragons in the subway system. There were dragons inside temples. There were dragons outside of temples. There were dragons in the streets. There were dragons in the malls. On the ground. Suspended in the sky. Lighted. Unlighted. Neon. Plastic. Paper. Wood. Made from flowers. Small. Person-sized. Oversized. Giant. Lots of dragons. Everywhere. Even the Hennessy counter at the airport had an enormous dragon wrapping around its entire display at least probably 20 feet in length. What do they do with this thing when Lunar New Year is over?

There were some truly impressive dragons rolled out in the city of Singapore for Lunar New Year. I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the truly giant teal-green dragons hanging in the atriums of the mall attached to the Marina Bay Sands hotel and the spectacular collection contained within the Gardens By The Bay. I'm not sure how many we came across in the Gardens but the Flower Dome alone had at least seven dragons out on display for tourists and locals alike. I've posted a few pictures of the dragons from the Flower Dome above. I love the top and bottom ones, intricately carved out of wood. 

Why wood? Well, each year in the Chinese zodiac is assigned not only an animal, but also an element, meaning earth, fire, water or wood. I was born under the sign of the earth monkey in 1968. 2024 is the Year of the Wood Dragon. The wooden sculptures at the Gardens By The Bay were truly spectacular. 

Airport dragon number two (top) and the Marina Bay Sands mall (bottom).

But none of that was the best. The drones were the best.

A couple of days before we headed out to Dulles Airport to start our voyage, I noticed an announcement on the Marina Bay Sands Casino website: to usher in the new year, MBS would be putting on a nighttime display using 1,500 coordinated, lighted drones flying in formation to create a dragon flying over Singapore Bay. THIS we had to see.

We figured this might be kind of popular. So we got there early, but not too early that we'd be killing a few hours. We arrived at the Bay across from Marina Bay Sands about 75 to 80 minutes before the 8 p.m. start time. There is a set of steps on the waterfront leading down from the main pedestrian plaza in that area down to the water's edge. The steps were full. Like absolutely no spots to sit remaining. But the paved area just behind the steps was clear in spots. We grabbed some ground on the top step and held it while the sun set. It was slow but we didn't waiver.

I don't know how many people were behind us by the start time but I think we got there at the perfect time. When we glanced behind us before the show and when we turned around to exit when the show was over, every square inch of paved space behind us seemed to be covered with spectators. Our view was perfect. Our timing was immaculate here.

Right at about 8 p.m., we noticed many, many lighted objects on the paved area in front of the Marina Bay Sands. They started to rise slowly. Showtime!

A giant pearl of wisdom formed by drones above Marina Bay Sands. Everyone is on their phones.

I don't know who conceived of this display or how they pulled it off. I realize that the whole thing is run by computers but how did they even orchestrate this event? They must have practiced, right? But when? They can't do it in the day and they couldn't have done it when a lot of people were awake at night because it would give the whole thing away. 4 a.m. maybe? I suppose we will never know.

I also have to point out ultimately, and ignoring the whole 1,500 drones thing which is just so impressive, this is just a graphic in the sky formed by 1,500 dots of light. There's nothing lifelike or CGI about what happened that night. It's like a super basic computer graphic from the 1980s or something like that. Not very sophisticated or anything. At least not graphically. It's not like we could really believe there was a dragon flying around in front of us.

At the same time, it was absolutely fantastical and amazing. I can quite confidently say that I've never really seen anything like what I saw that night. It started with a giant white pearl of wisdom hovering above the hotel property (although not really; it just seemed that way from our vantage point), morphed into a torii (or temple gate) and then transformed into a giant dragon in the Singapore night sky. And despite the limitations of stitching together an image of a dragon with 1,500 points of light, it was completely believable. Just imagine...

Marina Bay Sands put this display on twice while we were in Singapore. We caught the first one. As lifelike or complex as some of the dragons that we saw on posters or in garden displays or at stores in malls or in the streets of Singapore were, there was nothing that topped 1,500 drones flying around over open water creating the illusion that there was some giant creature flying around one of the city's premier tourist attractions. Nothing. 

This was the best dragon we saw in our seven nights in the Lion City and it wasn't even remotely close. I am sure that in future years, technology will advance to the point where someone, somewhere will be able to create a perfectly lifelike and totally fake dragon during daylight or nighttime that will appear to be flying over any city in the world. But for 2024, all of that stuff that will happen in the future didn't matter. This was the best of the 20 or 30 or 40 or whatever the number was of dragons that we saw to celebrate Lunar New year this year. Our Lunar New Year experience in Singapore was absolutely the best thing we did on this trip. The drones put the whole thing over the top and created a memory that will last a lifetime.

We found Singapore (and most everywhere in Southeast Asia, really) to be extremely hot and very humid. A fierce or semi-fierce rainstorm sometime in the afternoon or early evening seemed to be a daily occurrence in that city when we were there in early February. So, of course, the daily rainstorm happened at like 7:59 and 30 or so seconds p.m. on the night of the drone show. It was actually mercifully short and didn't involve lightning, so it didn't cancel the show. We were wet but not soaked and it didn't really affect the wonder that we experienced that night. 

But it did affect one or two pics we took. There's some fuzziness and haziness. I don't think it affected our memories what happened that night. In fact, it might have cooled us off a bit and made us more comfortable. But certainly the graphic quality of our photographic memories were diluted just a bit. I hope the overall effect comes through loud and clear.