2/4–Chiang Mai Flower Festival morning

Today we journey across the city to visit the Flower Festival, to get a glimpse of the floats up close, wander through the vendor stalls and eat some street food for lunch.  We leave a little before 10 on our trek to the far end of the moat.  Fortunately, it is cloudy again today so it isn’t quite as hot as it has been lately.

It’s about a mile and a half walk to the park where the Festival is held, and we had decided to walk over, then Uber back.  We pass a great wall mural – hey! We’re back in Penang and didn’t even know it!  It takes us about 30 minutes to get to the far gate of the city where all the displays begin.  The first thing we notice is the festival is set up differently from 2 years ago – the floats are all on the inside moat road, not out in the grassy area surrounding the moat.  And the vendors are all pushed back up on the sidewalk, not out in the street as before. Plus there seems to be less vendors here.  Oh well, it’s not like we’re shopping – we need nothing – and cannot fit anything more in our bags due to weight, so not a loss. 

Our explorations start at the orchid display, where all the beautiful show ready orchids are hanging under a mesh cover.They are gorgeous and quite a riot of color.

Next of course, are all the floats, which as we said previously, are really amazing.  We snap pictures of each, noting the extraordinary detail and intricate placement of flowers.

What is truly amazing is that a lot of the detail work is done in seeds!  For instance all the background in the photos below are different colored seeds.  And then the little people you see there? All forms covered in painted seeds.  How much time did it take to do that? 

I don’t know how many floats later, we finally reach the King float with the strands of rope painted in his likeness (again, how long did that take?), and then of course all the floats we missed, and I couldn’t resist the picture with the little batman boy, and…well…we’re done with the floats!