So, I’m not Chinese, but being Singaporean, I grew up around Chinese people and have many Chinese friends. Being here in the UK for exchange meant that some of them were missing Chinese New Year with their families for the very first time. They were really excited to check out the CNY parade in London and finally haves some Chinese food, so of course, I was totally up for it as well!

The parade procession had a couple of dragons, people in traditional consumes and people holding props. We came pretty late so I’m not sure if we missed it but I was really disappointed that we didn’t get to see a lion dance, which has always been my favourite part of CNY.

No matter, we still had yet to go to Chinatown! We walked our way through rainy London.

Chinatown was expectedly massively crowded, and it was also full of food! We immediately activated the foodies within us and set out.

The first thing I saw was You Char Kway aka You Tiao and I was so damn happy. These deep fried churro-like things are pieces of heaven when dipped in piping hot milk tea. As we walked on, we saw a shop selling Teh Tarik (milk tea) and I couldn’t believe my luck. You know I bought that 3 pound cup of tea and had my fill of the taste of home.

We then moved to Trafalgar Square where there were some performances ongoing. After squeezing our way through we decided to stay a while and enjoy some song and dance.

We then headed back to something I was extremely excited for- M&M world! They had all sorts of M&M merchandise, and a rainbow selection of M&Ms in huge tubes in 3 different flavours- peanut, caramel and milk chocolate! I grabbed a bag and filled mine with caramel & milk chocolate.

You can also print personalised messages & even your face onto the M&Ms, they were giving out freebies as advertisement. Pretty cool, eh?

We then did a little bit of window shopping before heading back. It was a pretty good experience since CNY in London is nothing like CNY back home. It made me miss home, I can only imagine it was way worse for my Chinese friends. But there’s still much exploring we have to do here before heading home!