Flower Festival, Feb 5-7, 2010

The flower festival is absolutely incredible. It's beyond beautiful and smells heavenly.  It's situated in the southwest corner of the old city at Buak Hard Park.  The park is gorgeous even on a normal day, with palm trees, a pond with bright white bridges crossing over it, bamboo, benches, a playground for kids... But this weekend it's perfect. Inside the park is where the carnival games are taking place, where the two moonbounces are set up and where many of the vendors are situated - selling food, drinks, clothing and trinkets. Just outside, on the street that runs the perimeter of the park, are the flowers. Several solid blocks of orchids, peonies, roses, birds of paradise, lilies, chrysanthemums, cacti, poppies, and dozens (if not hundreds) of other plants and flowers I couldn't begin to identify.  There is a huge section full of competition plants, stall after stall of individuals selling their gorgeous blooms, and arrangements intended to give visitors one perfect photo-op after another.  The street is full of locals and tourists alike: smiling, snapping photos, pointing to their favorites, and - as the saying goes - stopping to smell the roses.

I spent several hours on Friday and a few more on Saturday strolling through the festival, sampling foods as I went.  At one point, I stopped to order a whole skewered squid. It was grilled and then cut into cubes, put into a small plastic bag with some set-your-face-on-fire hot sauce ("are you SURE you want the hot? Really?? Okay..." he said, skeptically), and handed to me with a skewer of my own.  I also ordered a coconut (they hack into the top with a butcher knife and stick a straw into it), pad Thai (for breakfast!), a noodle dish with several kinds of mushrooms (shitake and oyster among them), sweetened coffee (after which I was given a cup of tea - to wash it down?), and I bought a kilo of some sort of fruit that looks vaguely reminiscent of a red bell pepper and tastes like apple and thyme.

At one point on Saturday, I saw a woman taking a picture of her daughter at a flower display, and I offered to take one of both of them. After we took turns taking each other's pictures, she asked my name and where I was from. She got excited when I said I was from America; she asked how long I would be staying in Chiang Mai and if I would like to stay with her.  "No pay!" she said, and told me that she would like my help (I believe with practicing English with her and her daughter).  In return for my help, I could stay with them, and she would show me around. She teaches at the university, and lives near the campus. It's a gorgeous area that's less touristy than the old city, and I would be thrilled to get to stay there.  This next part I'm not 100% sure about, but if I understood her correctly, she said that because of her sister's position, she can get me into the King's palace for a tour. AMAZING!! Some days traveling solo is a bit lonely, but I'm pretty sure this offer would not have been extended had I not been alone. I've sent Mao (again, I have no idea if I'm spelling this correctly) an email with my phone number and hopefully will hear from her soon!

Saturday morning was the flower festival parade. It started about 30 or 40 minutes late, which I understand is fairly typical in Thai culture - reminds me of Deaf Standard Time. :)  The floats were remarkable - stunning, really - and I can't begin how much time went into them. Every little detail, every perfectly placed flower...  They were gorgeous, but to be honest, the parade was a little slow for me; a marching band would come through, followed by a group of women in traditional attire, followed by an extravagant and stunning float, and then we would wait for five or ten minutes for the next groups to go through that same general cycle.  Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed it, but more than two hours later (much of which was spent waiting, and it was HOT) when the parade was still going strong, I decided I had to leave.  I met up with someone I had met at the airport, and he drove us on his motorcycle up to a village on the other side of the mountain Doi Suthep.  The food was great (Thai-style iced teas with milk, ground pork with basil, hard-boiled eggs in a molasses soy sauce, and green curry which was good until I was told that the red tofu I was eating wasn't tofu, but congealed blood. I tried another piece for the aware experience, and then worked around the blood.), the company was enjoyable, the sights were beautiful... but the bike ride was terrifying. I thought being on a vespa was scary, but it just didn't compare.  Here, everyone weaves in and out of traffic, ignoring lane lines and traffic lights, and they seem to somehow intuitively understand what the person next to them is going to do.  That intuition or developed sense isn't much comfort to someone like me who's used to American driving habits, however - especially when we're on winding mountain roads and the driver is crossing over double-yellow lines to pass whatever vehicle has the nerve of doing the speed limit.  What do you do when a bus isn't going fast enough for you? Well, you use the four feet between the bus and the curb to zip on past it, of course! If I could do it over again, I would tell the guy to either slow down or let me off, but in the moment, I wasn't sure how to get his attention without distracting him (and NO WAY did I want to do that). I also didn't know how I would get back to my room, and wasn't much more comfortable with the idea of being on foot on the aforementioned winding mountain roads with crazy drivers. Lesson learned: no more motorcycle rides without first discussing comfort zones.

After I got back to town, I stopped at Tha Phae gate, where little kids, most of whom were between four and eight, were performing traditional and modern dances.  It was adorable, funny, and the perfect thing to bring my blood pressure back to normal.  On my way home, I stopped for soup and some ginger tea, both of which were served as most to-go items are: in a plastic bag secured with a rubber band, just like the goldfish you once won at the fair. I forgot about the issue of not owning any bowls, so eating the soup in my room was a bit of a challenge, but I made do.

Tomorrow I head to my first cooking course (can't wait!), but today, I'm in the mood to lounge. I got carry-out Pad Thai (thankfully NOT served in a plastic bag) and sorted through all of the festival photos, and tonight I will stop for a massage on my way over to the final hours of the flower festival.  Life's not too shabby.

If you're interested in more pics from the festival, here's the link to my favorites: http://picasaweb.google.com/MichelleSumner27/FlowerFestivalFaves?authkey=Gv1sRgCLGuurywzt2hiQE&feat=directlink

For the couple of you who will want to see more, I'll post the link as soon as I can get Picasa to stop fighting with me. :)