The Chiang Mai Flower Festival

by Sandy Jarvis
(San Francisco, California, US)

During the first weekend of February, the city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand celebrates with a colorful flower festival. When the flowers in Thailand are at their best at the end of the valley’s cool season, a parade filled with magnificently colored and decorated floats comprise the high point of the weekend and is held Saturday morning.

Beauty queens from northern Thailand sit atop these floats, which are literally covered in hundreds of beautiful flowers. Another main attraction that makes the festival worth seeing are the public gardens whose color and elegant displays and flowerbeds are maintained until the end of Sunday.

The festival also draws people who are looking for a superb culinary experience featuring the flavors of Thailand as well as the opportunity to view the cultural performances that are featured in this annual festival.

The Chiang Mai or “Rose of the North” Festival is a showcase for both home and garden lovers who want to appreciate the exotic orchids, blooms, and flowering plants that enjoy the temperate cool season of the valley.

The grand parade that is the main highlight of the Chiang Mai Festival attracts many organizations and sponsoring companies to beautify the floats with many decorations that are elaborate and breathtaking, capturing the imagination of spectators with their beauty and vivid colors and sending an important eco-tourism message in the process.

The Thailand Flower Festival parade starts at 9am, lining up alongside the train station to Narawatt bridge, going down Thapae road, then turning left to follow the moat all the way to Suan Buak Haad City Park.

The colorful floats, northern Thai beauty queens, and the hill tribes that make up the parade move at a slow pace, stopping every now and then to give spectators and a fair share of tourists the opportunity to take photographs. The magnificent floats are then placed on display at the Suan Buak Haad City Park and a celebration begins to choose a new Festival Flower Queen for the year.

One can visit the elaborate displays made by landscape specialist for the viewing benefit of the public at the Suan Buak Haad City Park after watching Thailand’s version of the Rose Bowl Parade. From the strident red of the poinsettias and electric orange and lilac of the bougainvilleas, one will find the city completely awash in vibrant colors that reflect the entire spectrum of the rainbow throughout the Thailand Flower Festival.

The petunias also come in a variety shades ranging from pink, white and purple. The entire festival lasts for the entire weekend, turning the city into one giant party and a major holiday destination for anyone who plans to visit Thailand during this particular time of the year.

If you want to know what the Thailand Flower Festival has to offer for its numerous visitors from Thailand and other parts of the world then visit http://www.gogoflorist.com for more details.

Article kindly republished with permission of http://www.gogoflorist.com