Happy Chinese New Year!!!

Its this time of the year again, when the weather is unusually hot, where everywhere you go in Penang, the CNY songs just overwhelm you in every direction, when kids earn extra pocket from their parent's friends and relatives XD and its the time where family members from far away come back to their family while enjoying lots and lots of nice foods which is synonymous to Chinese new year.

CNY starts out on sa cham meh in hokkien, or the 30th night. Where every member of the family comes back and have their reunion dinner in one of the relatives house (usually the grandma's house). This year, like every other year, my family's reunion dinner consists of steamboat with wine and fire crackers for desert XD


My family enjoying the steamboat


My aunt putting cuttle fish into the broth as my cousin looks on (Yummy~~~)


The 2 bottles of wine for the day a Wolf Blass yellow label Carbonet Sauvangion Red and a South Carolina Premio white!

On the first day of CNY, we would go to my grandma's house for breakfast and receive our first batch of ang pows from our closest relatives. After that, we would go to my grandfather's brother's house which is near Union secondary school. The kids love going there because every year he would hire lion dancers to perform at his house at noon.

Lion dance! With firecrackers hung in between them :P


They are praying to the gods in front of the altar in the house


My family + my uncle's family


Solo pic of me with the lion dancers


Hmm, what's it doing?


Tada! He was making the word 福 which is upside down with the Mandarin oranges


Big family photo with my grandpa's brother in the middle

After that,my mom would bring us to various temples in Penang to pray to ensure that we have a prosperous new year. A worthy mention is the Kuan yin temple in Penang which I considered to be one of the few places which my eyes couldn't open because the smoke inside the temple is too thick and hazardous to human eyes XD


The outside of the Kuan Yin Temple


The Crazy people fighting each other to put jossticks on the main altar


The back of the temple (The place I usually hang out because it has better ventilation XD)