uae 40th national day celebration

the uae national day falls on 2nd dec every year, and this year marks the 40th anniversary of the union of the 7 neighbouring emirates. here in dubai, with nearly 80% of the people being foreigners, you’d think no one would really care. that’s what i thought so too, when i first came last year. but how wrong i was, coz nearing the date, every other person can be seen donning the uae flag colours (black, red, white and green). kids can be seen wearing dresses and clothes that resembled the flag, girls will be wearing hairbands and bangles in the 4 colours, boys will have the 4 coloured scarves around their neck, schools will have special activities to commemorate the day… and there will be many activities happening leading up to the date, and this year being the 40th anniversary, the celebration was even massive.


someone in my facebook shared a link to a celebration that involves releasing floating lanterns (also known as kong ming lantern to the chinese) or sky lamps, to the sky at night. these lanterns are banned in m’sia, so i’ve never had the chance to release one before, even though many of my friends have done it illegally. also, see this promo video for the event:

doesn’t it reminds you of the animation “tangled”? so i was determined to go! :P

see, so pretty!

the event was held in a horseracing racecourse… my first time in a racecourse! anyway, we were very early, which explains the empty seats…

the actual event started at about 6pm, with some traditional arabic dance…

then the hot-air balloons started coming in… see what i told you, the ang-moh girl in the basket is obviously not a local here, but so gung-ho in waving the uae flag…

preparing the balloons…

  we realized our mistake of choosing an aisle seat, coz it got really packed and there weren’t enough seats in the grandstand. so people started standing at the railing right in front of us! luckily later on there were event personnel who went around asking people to move

at around 7pm, they started inflating the balloons… this huge one was a gift to uae (didn’t really pay attention to the announcer, so didn’t hear WHO the gift was from), flew in directly from US. it’s in the shape of a giant birthday cake

then the rest of the balloons were inflated, with air being blown in using giant fans…

then hot air was used to make the balloons stand…

then they switched off all the lights and each balloon took turns puffing the fire, so that there’s a blinking effect…

people and cars were used as anchor…

after about 30 min, they started to deflate the balloons… so much work for just a 30 min display??

we got free lanterns!

while the hot-air balloon display was going on, i saw around me many people holding the floating lanterns. so my colleague asked a man behind us where he got his and he said he won the coupons in a competition. we were like, “huh?” then i saw 2 ladies in front of me holding some coupons, so i asked them where they got their coupons. they said they called in to a radio station and won them… we were quite worried that we can only get the lanterns by winning these coupons, coz we didn’t have any coupon! can’t we buy them off the counter? then the ladies in front of us turned to me and said i can have 1 of their coupons, coz they have enough. woo-hoo! anyway, one coupon is for 4 lanterns… later we found out that they do sell the lantern coupons, for aed 40 per coupon. meaning one lantern is aed 10 (about rm 8).

a runaway, or rather, flyaway lantern…

after the hot-air balloon display, the dj announced that they will be opening the gates soon to let us go down to release our floating lanterns. he also specifically told us many times not to release our lanterns from the grandstand, coz it would be very dangerous… but there are still some who are stubborn/don’t understand english/boh-tak-chek (hokkien: never go to school). haiz…

we were very excited that while waiting, we quickly prepared our lanterns by fixing the wax to the wire below. i also told my colleagues about the chinese custom of writing our wishes onto the lanterns, which resulted in a mad scramble looking for pens in our bags! hahaha…

this is probably the closest i’d ever get to a horse racetrack!

lighting my first ever kong ming lantern!

taking flight!

halfway through, they switched off the lights, which made the place even prettier. should’ve switched them off earlier lar! then my colleague’s boyfriend bought some more lanterns, so we had another chance to make our wishes! :D

sending wishes to the heavens…

well, it’s not exactly like in “tangled”, but it was pretty enough for me… :)