1st Putrajaya International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta 2009

First of all, sorry for the lack of 'live updates' following the previous posts. 1st, I have failed to upload photos from my mobile phone into blogger. 2nd, after updating my status half way in facebook... my phone barred me from doing any more surfing using gprs.. guess what?... my credit left RM0.35 cents... down from RM2x.xx!!!!! no more surfing net using gprs.. T_T ~($)~

Anyway, onto the actual thing. Me, calvin, felicia took the midnight bus to KL. I can hardly sleep... and due there's 1 idiot and inconsiderate Indian fellow who boarded the bus and sat in front of me and immediately he reclined his seat all the way down to the lowest point possible. The back of the seat hit my legs and i politely asked him to nudge it up 1 notch. He said.. "what? i've paid for this...", "well, my legs are kinda long and .. ", "I can't do anything bout that?!?" replied that idiot. Oh well, thanks to people like this.. the country will find itself hard to improve... yay~

Enough with that, I barely had any sleep... reached KL around 5 something in the morning and gave Pei Nee a call. hehehehe.. we had a quick breakfast at KFC at puduraya.. KFC breakfast for the first time.. not bad. I had the twister set while felicia had the sausages set and calvin ordered burger set.

Pei Nee's and her bf arrived shortly and off we go.. to Putrajaya.. with my minor help from my GPS... The event was held at Putrajaya, Precinct 2's field. Reached there on time for the morning photo op #1!!!

Ran down and there's already a lot of people armed with all types of camera... and most with dSLRs... -_-! by the barricade. We snapped up a few pics... watched them setup the first balloon.. actually the very first one up the air was Nescafe's!... talk about morning person!

hahahahaha.. served their theme very well...

Next, upon seeing the gate opened, we swarmed into the fields and started snapping like nobody's business...

Actually the process of setting up the hot air balloon was:-
1) bring the flatten balloons in and spread it out on the field
2) attach the er.. seats? buckets? onto the balloon
3) use a giant fan and start blowing air in to inflate the balloon
4) when enough air filled the balloon, use propane burners (as hot as 120 degrees Celsius!) and fire towards the inner part of the balloons to heat up the air inside
5) as hot air fills the balloon it will started to lift up from the side slowly...
6) riders board the balloon and attaching nets releases
7) lift off~~~

Its not that easy as the wind is a strong factor in determining the amount of time taken to lift

I particularly headed for the peacock's balloon as i thought it was really special and it haven't been lift off yet.. hehehehe...

Calvin headed on to other balloons as I was still parked firmly around the peacock area till it lifted off into the sky.

Then I went for other balloons such as the elephant "Nelly-B" and the rest...

After the balloons had taken off, we head out to the resting area where the foods and other stuff were being sold. bought a few drinks to cool off... and saw this Canon booth over a corner and decided to check it out.

There's this photo competition being held, only 30 entries were offered and after a few minutes of hesitating... all 4 of us grabbed an entry ticket each and began selecting our favourite shots.

Mine was the peacock... well.. nothing too interesting... and sad to say... none of us make it. the price was a free ride in the balloon... aiyo... how nice it would be?...

We came back to the scene after a short rest at the evening. But this time the crowd are larger and then the organizer seemed to keep audiences at bay for a longer period of time. we didn't get to go in to the field to snap till almost all of the balloons had taken off.

Of cos there's other event going on as well besides the balloons... among them was kite flying event...

Anyway, overall a very spontaneous and fun outing for siao kias like us~! looking forward to the future hot air balloon events again!

P/S: Thanks to Pei Nee's bf for fetching us early in the morning and all the way to Putrajaya for the event. Thanks to Jimmy zhai for letting us stay at his new apartment for the night and fetching us to the evening session and also brought us and treated us some delicious meals that I didn't snap and guiding us the way back. Thanks to shangyih boy for fetching us back from penang station ^^. Thanks a bunch guys! this is for all of u~



P/S: click on individual photos for larger version...

P/S: Which one is your favorite balloon(s)? mine was the peacock, Zeppelin and 2 face clown~