Dharma bums

 

The Lonely Planet Guide to Thailand says that Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, is a keystone to to any journey to Thailand.  The Guide describes the more than 300 temples, the “quaint  moated, and walled city,” the “night market”, the ubiquitous Thai massage shops, and the easy access to treks and healing spas.  Right outside the Dharma Bum’s guest house, the sign advertised trips to elephant parks, the monkey school, and other wonders.  But this year in Chiang Mai, it was all about the Royal Floral Show!   

The Bums didn’t know what the show was, but they joined the throngs of visitors who traveled to the city between November 2006 and January 2007 for the Royal Flora Ratchaphreuk, a world class “floral expo” staged in dual celebration of the Kings Diamond Jubilee (60 years on the throne) and 80th birthday.  The expo was such a big thing that every hotel was full, every airline seat taken, and the Bums were wondering what the fuss was about.  Plans were made, tickets purchased, and headed to the show.

The Expo was something like a cross between Disneyland, the Superbowl, and a big state fair.  They took a shuttle bus from the train station out of town. After a 20 minute bus ride, they turned off the main road, towards a hill with a towering Buddha (something like Jesus in Rio), and then pulled into a huge parking lot filled with tricked-out tour buses.  These tour buses were garishly and professionally painted with dragons, women with big breasts and muscled heroes with swords – kind of a lacquered,manga/spray-paint graffiti look…with air conditioning.

The Disneyland influence was evident immediately.  These people knew how to move a crowd and keep them happy.  They’d obviously done their homework and spent years in preparation.  Unintelligible music filled the air, something like “It’s a Small World” – but decidedly different.  Pleasant young people in uniforms pointed the way, and misters and fans kept us cool.  We got maps in Thai, English, Chinese, and Japanese.  They were ready for the world to come to the party.  But the question remained:  “Why go to a party about plants?”

 

The place was huge and meant to be walked.  Clearly a fortune, or several fortunes, had been spent on the facility. The first exhibit was about Palms from around the world – and there they were.  Next came a walking tour through “The Vertical Garden” – plants in terraced walls, plants growing along vertical wires, etc.  The plantings were beautiful, the gardens were perfect, but we still weren’t sure what the take home message was.  Perhaps it was a cultural thing.

Then we began to find some exhibits that we thought we understood.  While there were still plants and in these exhibits, we began to see to a policy and commerce focus.  First, the bio-diesel exhibit – showing the different plants that were being used in bio-diesel and ethanol production and information on small scale community projects.  Then a large exhibit on the King’s “New Theory of Agriculture.”  Then came the commercial exhibits;  there was one by a seed and animal products company, then Toyota, a tele-com company.  Nice looking young people handed out brochures – generally asking us first “what language?”

 

We’d been at it now a couple of hours and it was getting hot.  Don B. wished he brought a hat.  We rounded another corner and saw a sign for the Orchid Exhibit.  Normano said “Let’s check this out.”

And there they were.  Thousands and thousands of orchids in a large shaded exhibit.  Orchids from Thailand, orchid hybrids, orchids from around the world, the orchid garden competition, the individual orchid competition (with rating scores and gold award winners.  We’d finally found a reason to to come to the show. 

 

After that, we were spent.  We went to one more exhibit – indoor flowers – but it was a sort of cheesy exhibit sponsored by countries.  Turkey had an exhibit.  So did Nigeria, Kenya, and Japan.  Not a lot of energy in this exhibit.  It was around 1 pm.  We looked at the Expo map and determined that we had seen about one-quarter of the exhibits. 

Dharma Bernie said that “If this was a state fair there would be a beer tent.”  We decided we’d never make through all the exhibits and that we’d seen enough.  We found the food court (though not all like the ones in the Mall) and got soup with pork balls.  And like a state fair, there was beer in this tent.

We left the Royal Flora Ratchaphreuk satisfied.  We never did quite understand what the Thais were getting from the Expo – but for the Dharma Bums, it was all about the orchids.

 

 

 

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 11:32 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.