Balloons Over Waikato 2010: The Gallagher Mass Ascension.

Salam to all,

Last week I read about Hot Air Balloons event in Putrajaya, Malaysia from other people's blogs (Malaysian bloggers). Here in Hamilton, New Zealand starting from 24th March 2010 (yesterday) until 28th March, there's the biggest event in Hamilton called "Balloons Over Waikato". This year is the fourth year and final year for us to be able to see this event.The University of Waikato is one of the principal sponsors for the event. That's why the finale program is The Nightglow at The University of Waikato this Saturday, 27th March.

I always excited to see this event and that's why yesterday morning, I managed to persuade my hubby to take us to see The Gallagher Mass Ascension.Since it started at 7.30 a.m., we left the house before 7. Once we were there, we could see that other people had already been there earlier than us. The annoucer cum DJ for that day, annouced that they had to cancel the flying but they were still inflating the balloons. We were fine with that because we were just interested to see the balloons up closed. While waiting for the crews to inflate their balloons, I went over to one of the vendors to buy two cups of hot chocolate. I was surprised when I had to pay NZD $9 for two cups of hot chocolate. Well, may be because we rarely buy food or drinks as we always prepared and brought along food and drinks from home. dah nak cepat2 sgt sampai tak sempat nak buat air panas sblm pergi. huhuOne by one balloons were inflated and we got the chance to see the processes. Hafizah was somehow scared and she tried to stay far away from the balloons.

My hubby seemed excited too because he was among the busiest unofficial photographer on the site that day. hehe. He took a lot of photos of the balloons and we ended up to have about 119 photos that day! There were about 30 balloons altogether. They came from New Zealand (18 balloons), one from Hong Kong (sponsored by Cathay Pasific), 6 from Australia, 2 special balloons from USA, one from Holland, One from Germany. We watched the balloons to be inflated from the first step until they were fully inflated. Each balloon needed at least 5-7 crews plus 3-4 more to help in holding the ropes. My hubby also took the chance to make some videos but unfortunately I'm still not sure how to upload videos here. huhu. sorry.So, please enjoy looking at the photos that I got here.

I saw some of my playcentre friends at the site but I only managed to say hi to Allanah who was actually standing not far from us when we were waiting for the Jack N. D. Box to be inflated. She went there with her hubby and daughter and her son. We had a chat for a while before we moved on to see the other balloons.

By 8.30 a.m., most of the balloons were inflated and some people have already left the area since they had to sent their children to schools. We also left by 8.45. But before we left, we went into Waikato Uni. booth to check out and get a copy of the free booklet. We were also given some free stickers. I couldn't take the photos of the free stickers because my daughters had already stick them on their school bags and later lost them. hmmmm. (*sigh*).

Though we are looking forward to go back to Malaysia soon, we definitely going to miss this kind of experiences. But who knows maybe in Malaysia, it would be as big as this. (I know about the Hot Air Balloon Show in Putrajaya last weekend but I'm not sure how big was that).