River Hongbao is sort of a Chinese New Year(CNY) Celebration activity in Singapore where Singaporean visited the place to soak in some of the festive atmosphere during CNY. Due to covid, there were many changes that had to be made. The event is held at Gardens by the Bay instead of floating platform.

You can book tickets here –> https://riverhongbao.sg/

Many safety precautions had been made to cater for a large scale event. (Not sure if it really worked). Each visitors are limited to 1 hour sessions with colour-coded wristband to identify them. Groups are also staggered to visit different places during the 1 hour with 3 entry point. I think entry point 3 is the best entry point. Entry point 2 is stuck in the middle and causes you to return to entry point 2 to go to the other side of the exhibition.

Perhaps to keep the duration to less than 1 hour, there are nothing much to see this year. A lot of the exhibit had nothing much to do with Chinese New Year. The “Charming lady” and the car had moving eye lid that might even frighten young kids. The giant fortune god is probably the main highlight of the day where photographers gather to take a nice photo with MBS as the background.

There is a separate booth where you need to queue and “check-in” within the exhibit

This exhibit shows history of “Nian” and the history of lion dance, the type of lion dance etc. It’s mainly works with some physical items. The queue does get long nearing the end of the 1 hour so it might be good to visit earlier (since there is nothing much and you should not waste time queuing for this).

The entire booth is on lion dancing
The wishing well *cough cough* money-making booth *cough cough*

The wishing well is also 1 of the highlight where you can toss coins to hit the bell for good luck. I manage to hit it with a 20cent coin. 20cent for good luck sounds like a good deal.

You can read on the fortune of your zodiac

The wish well area is also the area where they display the 12 zodiac and you can read on your luck for this year. You can also take a photo with your zodiac.

Lantern release activity

Surprisingly, there is a place that give you free fake “lotus flower” after a donation. You can drop the flower in the river/pond for good luck. I do thing that the lotus flower should have been given a longer path to float. This is really too small. But, it’s free.

River Hongbao 2021 is catered to have enough exhibitions that last for 1 hour. This is done to reduce the risk of covid transmission yet allow Singapore to have a large scale outdoor exhibition. There is no booth for Singapore Pools to buy the new year TOTO. As this is a free activities, I suppose it is good enough? I would have definitely not come if this is a paid event. If you have nothing much to do during this CNY (Since there is a restriction on visitors), you could consider coming to River Hongbao 2021 and soak in some of the CNY atmosphere.

Just set your expectation lower before coming

Here is my post on river hongbao from 2020 –> https://lifeissinple.com/2020/01/26/river-hongbao-2020/