Chiang Mai Flower Festival

Aside from spending a few hours in the hospital ;-), we've spent the last two days enjoying the Chiang Mai Flower Festival.  This is an annual event here that is sort of a cross between the Philly Flower Show, the Pasadena Rose Parade, and the New York State Fair.  The main festival takes place at a good sized public park (10 acres or so...) at the southwest corner of Chiang Mai's old city. The park gets a makeover of thousands of flowing plants in huge drifts, tunnels, and living walls, etc, ranging from snap-dragons to tulips to orchids... Especially orchids, of every size, species, and Cole you can imagine!  And it's all lit up like "lights on the Lake" at night too ;-) - oh, and it's free entry as well- amazing!
Outside the park grounds, the nearby streets are lined with vendors of every imaginable floral item, from ferns, trees, and cacti, to hundreds of bonsai and even more orchids. Plus a ton of great street food- no Spedies or Blooming Onions, but you can get the equivalent of fried dough, a great crispy fried crepe rolled up with Nutella on it called a Roti- delish!  And food and plants are all priced outrageously by American standards... Say 100 Baht (US$3.00) for a large dendrobium or cymbidium orchid in magnificent full bloom!


Today we spent the morning watching the main "event," the Flower Festival Parade.  This was quite the extravaganza -- it lasted more than 3 hours, and included dozens of flower encrusted floats that would have given many floats at the Rose Parade a run for there money, 20+ marching bands from every high school in the region, hundreds of beauty pageant queens, princesses, contestants, and their consorts, as well as a range of elaborate drag queens to keep everyone on their toes ;-). 

Amazingly, no fire engines or local politicians! ...a whole bunch civil service offices, however, had what appeared to be their entire staff marching in various costumes!  It was quite fun to watch as well, as the people watching along the route seemed pretty much oblivious to crowd control, constantly crowding the bands and floats while taking selfies and enjoying being part of the spectical.  Just like regular street traffic here, it always seems to be a vaguely contained chaos, where everyone just goes with the flow :-). Fascinating!

Next up- tomorrow we we'll drive northwest through Chiang Rai to the border with Laos, and on Monday we'll begin a two day slow-boat cruise down the Mekong River in Laos to Luang Prabang...
Until the, cheers from Chiang Mai!

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