Kelantan International Kite Festival 2012

 The 30th edition of Pesta Wau Antarabangsa Kelantan (Kelantan International Kite Festival) was held from 5th - 9th June 2012 at Pantai Geting, Tumpat. Since it it was held during the school holidays and was part of the Visit Kelantan Year 2012 calendar of events, it attracted a sizable crowd.
Events detail is as per the picture below. Both pictures were taken from cutikelantan.com.

I have missed all the 29 events held earlier due to several reasons among which are my not being in Kelantan when the event was held, lack of interest and initiative, lack of ability to remember the date of the event or lack of publicity about the event. All of these made me regret for not attending the yearly event which has gained international stature.
It was upon the insistence of the other half that made me go to the event after the Friday prayers. Given my choice I would have opted to go to slumberland to catch up on much needed sleep staying awake watching the live coverage of The French Open.
 Despite the lack of direction signages leading to the events side, the sight of the flying kites showed us the general direction of where to go. By following the direction taken by the other cars heading the same way, we reached the site at Pantai Geting.
The weather at the time of arrival was cloudy and windy, a perfect condition for both participants and visitors.

Kites flying from the junction leading to Pengkalan Kubur to the left.

The flying kites as seen when we get nearer.

We finally reached the site and I was lucky to find a place to park not far from the site.

One for the album of my wife Fatthiyah.

 

All sort of kites in various shape and sizes were flown including the local wau which I didn't manage to photograph as not many were being flown then or if they were flown, they would be too high up in the sky and becomes too small to photograph. So just enjoy what I have to show.

The Monkey Kite as the owners call it is flying high.

The persons flying the kites are international participants from India. Here they are. Unfortunately I couldn't remember their names.

 All participants were given commemorative T-Shirts of the event to wear.

 Helmut Georgi from Vienna, Austria allowed me to handle his kite. This is the third time Helmut participated in the Kelantan International Kite festival.

  This stack of six kites attracted my attention.

 Andreas Fischbacher from Germany is the proud owner of  the stack of kites. The pull from the kite was so hard that they had to be tied to a parked tractor to hold them in place. later Andreas did a stunt by trying to hang on to the kite lines which brought him down to the soft sands.
Suddenly the sky open up and rain came to spoil the show. All the participants pulled down their kites.

 This German guy was anxious as he had a camera attached to his kite taking aerial shots with his remote control.

 Here he was seen showing his wonderful shots to his local assistant.

The remote control he used to shoot or tilt the camera with the camera attached to his kite.

The stack of fish, cat and whatever belonging to Andreas had to come down too.

 Down on the ground. Drying them up is a priority now. It would not be a problem if the hot sun is up. But will the sun comes up since it was evening and the rain is yet to stop.

 The proud tiger kite and his puffer fish kite is down too.

 The monkey kite is safely down under the tent under the watchful eyes of the owner.

Since the rain subsided, we decided to go home. The way out was jammed tight. How I wish the organizer would place traffic marshals to ensure the smooth flow of traffic. Given the mentality of some of these drivers, which can be as low as the toilet, many started to jump queue. It it took was for one person to do it and many more would follow suit. It took us almost an hour to get out of the jam over a distance of about a kilometer. Come next year's Kelantan International Kite Festival, I will know what to prepare, have a rain coat ready in case it rains.