Some flowers of Bangkok

Here are several pictures of flowers I have found around Bangkok. They seem to love roses, orchids, lotus and frangipani as well as many others they use to weave garlands. I found a lot of these orchids in Jim Thompson's garden. Jim Thompson revitalized the Thai silk industry in the post WW II era. His house is in an unassuming industrialized area smack in the middle of the metropolitan maps of bangkok they pass out- down a dead end street marked by dozens of cheap trinket sales men, tuk-tuk cabs, and one dinky little sign that if you aren't coming from the right direction you will miss.

Luckily enough most of the people you meet along the street recognize you to be a nut case looking for Jim Thompson's house- otherwise why in hell would a foreigner like you hang out in that neighborhood. They are only too happy to point you to the right direction and as well extol the virtue of their gems, jewelry, coconut drinks, fried bananas, and god knows what else- all with a smile and all taken with no umbrage when you refuse.

It turns out that Jim Thompson has an annual silk sale and we happened to be in town for it. For those of you from the east coast who have gone through Filene's basement sales- this was sort of like that except everyone was a foot shorter than you and going at twice the speed you are capable of! Also its huge- they rented out a complete hall of a convention center called Bitec, ran free shuttle buses to it, had kiddy town in side, gurads and people on patrol all over the place. More on that later.

This a very humid and smoggy climate right in Bangkok. The typical temperature while we have been here is around 87 in the day time and about 80 well into the evening. There seems to be no shortage of water, and the drinking water is remarkably good. Skin, hair and epiphytes love this climate. The only similar growth in orchids I have seen is in Singapore where orchids bloomed on stalks of 10-20 feet in length while at home all I could get was a measly 10 inch stalk on orchids of the same kind.

Thailand has a rose garden festival here too. What is most interesting though is a few days before the kings birthday trucks load (and i mean in the tens to hundreds of thousands of plants) of marigolds- yellow the king's birth color and one of his favorites- started to come into the city. Hundreds and hundreds of city workers built special presentation gardens all along the main street- the ROYAL Avenue - between the King's formal palace ( the one everyone can visit) and his private residence palace a couple of kilometers away. Every public park had marigold displays, every tree had yellow ribbons, evey store had marigold displays, every subway had marigolds. The whole place was a yellow blitz. Further hundreds of other workers simply cleaned the routes the king was likely to take through the city- more on that later too.