Chiang Mai 2

Last night turned out to be a lot of fun. I did, in fact, cross the river and found the bars where the live music was. I encountered three Irish lasses who had picked up a Mexican woman from their elephant trek earlier in the day. By the time I joined them they had also ensnared a couple of Aussie women, so we made quite a gaggle of women. The band were Thai and did top-40 type cover songs and they were pretty good. One guitar player sang a bang-on Bob Marley followed by a bang-on James Blunt. You have to give some credit to anyone who can imitate both those voices. It was a very late night, but good fun. Another guitar player had on a Rush 2112 t-shirt, which I found rather nostaligic. For those of you who don't know, Rush is a Canadian band and the 2112 album came out in 1976.

I received an e-mail from my father the other day asking me if I could find him seeds or bulbs for a flower called the parrot flower. He had received photos of it over the internet. I did a quick Google on it, and found a couple of chat rooms. If indeed this is a real flower, it originates in northern Thailand. However, there is some speculation that the photos are doctored and that the flower doesn't actually exist. It apparently doesn't show up in any botanical guidebooks.

I went out this afternoon to the huge flora expo which is going on outside of Chiang Mai in search of the elusive parrot flower. This expo is in fact a tribute/gift to the king of Thailand who celebrates his 80th birthday in a few weeks as well as 60 years on the throne. He holds the record as the world's longest-reigning monarch. The Thais love him, and rightly so. He's done great things for them and many of these were celebrated at the floral expo.

Alas, after several hours I gave up my search and had to admit defeat. As seems to be the case with other Asian gardens, the Thai gardens are focussed much more on form and shape than on colour and flowers. There's no denying that the gardens were spectacular, but it was more a landscaping show than a flower show. Even the "World of Flowers" pavilion was dedicated to floral arrangements rather than to the flowers themselves. The only exception was the Orchid pavilion which totally took my breath away. I must have 50 pictures of orchids - it was truly amazing.

Anyway, I found no sign of the parrot flower and there wasn't really anyone to ask about it. This was truly an expo of the people for the people and most of the signage wasn't even translated. Sorry dad - not much more that I can do. I'll keep my eyes open during my trek over the next few days and if I spot one, I'll dig it up for you.

Speaking of which, I'm leaving tomorrow for a 2-day trek outside of Chiang Mai and Chiang Dao. I'll do some hiking, swim under a waterfall, ride an elephant (again), ride a bamboo raft and do some whitewater rafting. I will be visiting a couple of families in the hills but have been promised that these are not the "human zoos" that many tourists impose themselves upon during their treks.

The day following my return to Chiang Mai, I'll leave early in the morning to catch a bus to the Laotian border and then take a slow boat down the Mekong river to Luang Prabang. It's a two-day boat ride so I'll have to overnight on the way. It will therefore probably be about 5 days before I'm able to blog or check e-mail again.