Crowing for Lunar New Year 2017 in Melbourne Chinatown.

Saturday morning- 28th January was somehow an exciting weekend for me since Lunar New Year 2017 with family and friends without taking any extra leave since it's not a public holiday. Reunion dinner was Friday night was perfect as most of us would have scoot off at 4pm or so to head home. Australian-Chinese community get to celebrate the

Surprisingly I woke up at 7.00am, showered, had breakfast, checked the train schedule and took the public transport down from Surrey Hills to Flinders St. I arrived around 9.30am and took another tram to Queen Victoria Market. The opening event was at 10.00am and it started off with a short lion dance and some crappy Chinese singing duet. I managed to grab some photos and stocked up 1 kg of cheap fresh red cherries! They were AU$9.00 per kg...sweet and juicy too.

I met up with a college-uni mate Rachael at Maccas for coffee and soon the two of went to

The prosperity dish with lots of prawns, scallops and abalone

Sam Sam Korean restaurant to have more 'chicken' meal since it's the Year of the Rooster.


We ordered a small original boneless fried chicken and small ginseng chicken soup. I went to Crown Casino to see more mini lion dance parade and beating of drums (kind of wasted my time 'coz it wasn't fascinating). Food and drinks at Hawker's Bazaar were expensive.


As for Chor-Yat (First day) dinner- I have managed to storm up a Fatt Pun Choy dish consisting of blanched bok choy, braised tofu and shitake mushrooms, prawns, Japanese scallops and Aussie small abalones topped with oyster gravy and black sea moss.


Come Sunday morning 29th January, I headed down to the city at 10-ish am to get into Chinatown CBD. It was packed with thousands of Asian community and Aussies to usher in the Lunar New Year. There were plenty of firecrackers and better lion dances in the heart of Chinatown. Everywhere was crowded and took me nearly 20 minutes to pass the crowd as we had yum-cha lunch at Shark Fin's House at Little Bourke Street. Caught up with ex-colleagues and friend of mine Ann and her hubby Mark. Yum-cha was quick but lots of conversations regarding jobs and etc...


Unfortunately my last dessert- tofu-fa was out of stock (finished) so we didn't manage to order anything else.


At time goes by, we walked around Chinatown grabbing a small box of coconut juice to hydrate ourselves from

the summer heat. It was sunny and very hot if one is not wearing a hat or protective clothes. I came back and rested at 3.30pm with a massive headache from the sun heat. Well- easy way out is popping in a Advil to ease the pain. Before I knew it, it was already late evening where 2nd day of CNY just went off so quickly.


And guess what everyone is back at work in Melbourne on the 3rd day of CNY.
I had to wake up early and start work at 7.30am. No big deal...the rest of Asia is still on holidays we are down at the South working our butts off. He he!

Happy Rooster Year and we still have more than a week to go...after all Lunar New Year lasts for 15 days until Chap Goh Meh! (*_*)