Ramadhan’s Bedil In Kuala Terengganu

In Kuala Terengganu, one of the most special part of Ramadhan is the ‘bedil’.

How I wish there is ‘bedil’ in Kuala Lumpur too, to signal the time for Iftar and Imsak.

Below is a post that I wrote on September 28, 2010 about photographing the bedil in Kuala Terengganu.

Photographing The Bedils

I snapped this photo myself. I need to aim my camera to the right spot and snap at the right moment because if I was a few seconds late I’ll be snapping photos of smoke.

In Kuala Terengganu people break their fast after the sound of the ‘bedil’ in the Ramadhan.

There were ‘bedil‘s on the 2nd day of Eid until 7th day of Eid too.

On the 5th day of Eid, my dad took me to Bukit Pak Apil in Kuala Terengganu to watch ‘bedil’ shooting.

These are the bedil shooting base.

A policeman guided us to a safe location to watch the ‘bedil‘.

The ‘bedil’ contractor and a policeman reached the ‘bedil’ shooting site.

The ‘bedil’ contractor preparing the ‘bedil’.

First we have to wait for the sound of ‘dup’.

Then we started snapping lots and lots and lots of photos as the ‘bedil‘ exploded in the sky into a gigantic umbrella of colourful lights right above our heads.

Then the umbrella turned into tiny sparkles of lights like colourful rain drops and faded into tiny umbrellas of smoke.

The bedil after the ‘dup’ sound

The bedil exploded…

…into tiny sparkles of lights like colourful rain drops…

…and faded into tiny umbrellas of smoke.

We went there again on the 6th and 7th day of Eid to snap more photos.

It was very, very hard to snap the photos because we have to aim at the right spot of where there the wind would blow the ‘bedil’.

We also need to snap at the right moment before the beautiful ‘bedil’ faded into umbrellas of smoke in the sky.

We also had to squat down fearing the loud sound made us jump and fall down the cliff.

We need to squat because we do not want to fall down the hill.

I snapped some beautiful ‘bedil’ photos and I am very proud of them 🙂

I snapped all the above photos by myself!

The Bedil

This morning at 5:25 am, I watched the bedil at my

nenek’s house in Kuala Terengganu. The bedil sound is

boooooommmm and after  the fire works came out it

sounds tssssssssssssssss. The fire works was beautiful.

I can hear the bedil 3 times a day. 1st and 2nd for imsak

and 3rd for iftar to break our fast. Bedil is a huge fire

works. It is not dangerous because they use a timer to

fire the bedil. My dad said that long time ago they used a

cannon. Cannon is dangerous.

.

In Kuala Lumpur there is no bedil. We waited for

Maghrib azan on TV to break our fast. Just now I saw a

little house where they keep the bedil to be fired. The

house is on a hill.The hill is named Bukit Pak Apil. Do

you know what is bedil? Have you seen it?