Last month's from the 19th to the 23rd, it was a special week for Pasir Gudang town.
It is the time of the year again. The one week that Pasir Gudang is liveliest in the whole year. It is the time for the annual International Kite Festival.
It started off weird at first for me when out of nowhere my uncle Pakcik Dee called me.
"Hasnol, nanti minggu depan ada Pesta Layang-layang kat Pasir Gudang."
"Erm, kenapa Pakcik Dee? Anol mmg tahu pun next week ada Pesta Layang-layang."
"Hasnol bawak la anak jalan-jalan pi sana ok?"
The fact that I was at the hospital with an appointment with the doctor made the random call even weirder. Never mind. It's not that I intend to miss it anyway.
My personal opinion is less favoring the festival as the years went by. During my first year experience of the festival, I was left in awe at all the gigantic kites. There was even fireworks in the last night of the festival.
In the last two years the festival had taken a nose dive unexpectedly. In 2012, the festival was held in the raining season. No kites could take to the sky.
In 2013, it improved a little bit. At least it was not raining. But it was noticeably less kites and visitors to the festival. Thank god the organizer managed to click all the right boxes this year.
We went to the festival on the Saturday 22nd at almost noon. It was starting to get hot. The air was very breezy. An excellent day for a kite day.
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| Had to bring an umbrella - it was too 'hot' to handle. |
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| One of the major stands in the festival - the Tourism Ministry. |
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| Dahlia checking out one of the stand. |
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| Haziq had to wear his cap because of the heat. |
To enjoy the view, we had bring our own plastic mattress. Luckily we managed to find a shade spot at the far side of the field.
With a place had been found, it was time to check out the kites. For this year, it was noticeably more kites than last year. At least they didn't recycle back the kites from the yesteryear. I noticed something this year - had the organizer made a sea creature kite theme this year?
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| Octopus on 'rampage' |
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| Small kites making a debut |
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| Fish anyone? |
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| Some lost horses in the 'sea' |
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| Some friends just hanging out. |
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| Nemo also came |
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| It was really windy that day |
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| Photographers everywhere.... |
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| The ice cream man making his day on a sunny day... |
When we walked back to the parking spot, I just realized that how big the impact of the festival to the people of Johor especially Pasir Gudang. In the spirit of ultras.... THIS IS PASIR GUDANG!!!
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| Cars... cars everywhere... |
We did came back during the night to enjoy the festival without the heat of the day. What is more special this year, there will be some kites with colorful LED that will be flown. Cool, new stuff.....
I had made a mistake by coming to the festival that night. I should knew better after seeing all the visitors in the day. Because of that, I had to parked the car quite far from the festival's field & need to walk about 15 minutes. Oh well....
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| Large turnout than last year |
True to the organizer's planning, the colorful kites does add some spice to the night.
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| 4 kites 'chasing' each other.... |
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| ....by these Taiwan participant girls |
Even though the planning of the colorful kites was great, the execution didn't really go as well in reality.
The problem is during at night the visitors permitted to enter the field. This is the way the organizer handle the festival yearly. During the night, the visitors usually will bring their own kites & play it with their kids.
But this year, the organizer want to do something different by having their participants to fly the colorful LED kites. This creates problem since the kites are big kites that requires large space for takeoff - and there are peoples all across the field.
I could see that the Rela & the organizer team struggle to control the crowd when the participants when the participants want to fly their kites. They (the organizer) should reserved a spot that the visitors can't enter just for the purpose for the kites for take off.
Even we ourselves had to change our resting spot twice because of this. Hmmmm....
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| 1st spot |
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| 2nd spot after being relocated |
At the end of the day, I feels that the festival starting to get its mojo back. I hope it will get better and better because I'm sure to be here next year!
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