There are at least 5 or more parades / processions in Kuching every year. Most of them are from Chinese Temple, one for the Buddhist on Wesak Day, one or two for the Indian Deepavali and Thaipusam and sometimes Malay parade. Parade organised by Chinese Temple or Buddhist are usually held in the evening where others sometimes happen in the morning. Luckily we don’t have any processions where demonstration takes place.

- A Chinese lady possing in traditional Chinese Costume - Cheongsam, with tradional Chinese Paper Umbrella.

On Thursday, 26 February 2009, there was a parade organised by the most famous temple in Kuching - the Kuching Tua Pek Kong Temple.  It was the 2nd day of the 2nd month in Chinese Calendar, the birthday of Tua Pek Kong (Malaysian Chinese God).

- Unlike older days parade, we can see more and more advertisement on the decorated vehicles.

On that day evening, we went there at about 8:30pm.  The parade was quite long, it started at 6:30 or 7pm, we knew that we may have to go to their last part of their route.  We were waiting opposite the Kuching Waterfront at the junction to the Hilton Hotel where the parade will turn into the junction and go up the hill.  We waited for at least half an hour, and finally the head of the parade arrived.

I only knew that Wilson was also watching the parade after I read his post.  Hehe…  We were watching the same parade but at a different location and he was earlier than us.

- Guan Yin and her two accompanies.

- A famous dancing and performance group in Kuching showed their talents.

- Kids on lorry.

- Lots of kids.

-Even the brides also joined the parade by sitting on a decorated truck.

The parade is getting more and more commercialized.  I was shocked because this is the first time I saw such a  decorated truck.  I am not sure about previous Chinese temple parade because I did not watch Kuching parades for years.

The reason I wanted to watch the parade this time was to test my new camera.  Hehe…  some of you may have known about my new camera (will blog about it soon) by checking my recent photos properties / meta data.

I did not flash even for a single shoot because I knew that the battery won’t last.  This is a mistake that I always make.  Next time I promise myself that I won’t forget about extra batteries.

Half of the pictures were blurred, but some gave the motion effect.  I sacrificed the quality of the pictures by using the highest possible ISO at 1600 to get sharp pictures.  Luckily after I resized the pictures, the noise is not obvious.

- Can you see what is that?

- These fruit are called “Shou4Tao2” in Chinese which means the “peach of long life“.  It is usually in pink and white.

- Another ShouTao (peach).

- Action on truck.  Becareful…  They must have trained to have high standing stability.

- A car equiped with hi-quality hifi.  It had to open up its rear door to let the sound came out loudly and can vibrate your heart by its strong-low-frequency bass that can make youngsters hi.

- A 4-faced-Buddha statue with the incense in front of Him.  The incense has created a heavy smoke effect.

I have more photos about the Tua Pek Kong parade to show you, since I used my new camera with 10 megapixels and I took them all in full resolution, it ran slowly when I edited them due to our slow computer.  !!! Stay tuned !!! .