Flower Power

Today we met up with our entire tour group for the first time.  Some of them didn’t arrive until 2:00 a.m. last night so this was everyone’s first chance to meet.  We have a good-sized group of people from Canada, the rest Americans, and a somewhat unusual situation.  Out of the 35 people in our group, only eight are men.  Usually our tour groups have been mostly married couples with just a couple of twosomes being friends or sisters, but this time it’s a girlfriends tour-de-force, a regular traveling hen party.  Thankfully the vast majority are frequent travelers and most are Gate 1 repeat customers who are experienced with this form of travel, so that should keep problems/drama to a minimum, I hope.  So far everyone seems very nice.

Today’s touring schedule was a little on the slower side.  I think they are trying to give everyone a chance to acclimate to the time change and the climate change.  Many of the people in our group are from back East and Canada and have been living through the polar vortex, so you can just imagine going from subzero temps one day to 94 degrees but feels like 104 degrees because of the high humidity the next day. I have to say that although it is quite hot here, it’s nowhere near as bad as it was in Saigon.  That was some serious melt-your-face-off-by-9:00-a.m. heat.  Don’t get me wrong.  The heat here in Bangkok will still melt your face off.  It just takes longer for it to happen.  Kit told us that it’s been a very unusual winter for them here.  Usually it is much cooler in December, January and February than it has been this year.  All three months have been much, much hotter than usual.  Leave it to us to pick the year to come here when the coolest months of the year are going through a freakish heat wave.  Timing is everything.

Kit took us to a flower and vegetable market today.  The flowers were absolutely beautiful.  I have literally never seen so many orchids in one place.  Mounds and mounds of them.  

And there were many other flowers for sale, too, like these beautiful lotus buds.

And marigolds galore






Lots of gerbera daisies

And then there were all the different arrangements, some used as offerings at temples, some used for funerals.

And then there were the veggies.

Only a cat would think this was a logical place to take a nap!

And of course, no Thai vegetable market would be complete without the most essential ingredient in Thai cooking:

From the market we headed to an area with many stupas.  A stupa is a cone- or dome-shaped structure used to house cremated remains.  The largest stupas in the photos below house the remains of some of Thailand’s former kings.  The smaller stupas house the remains of “ordinary” people.  

We also saw some examples of typical ornate Thai architecture.  We will see more tomorrow when we visit the Grand Palace.

I absolutely love how each country that we visit has such distinctive architecture.  The variety and artistic flare is astonishing.  I feel like I’m discovering new visual treasures everywhere I go.  I never get tired of it and I marvel at each and every place we see.  

After our morning tour, we headed back to our go-to cheap yummy eats place for some lunch and then strolled through a local park on our way back to the hotel.  It was a nice oasis in the middle of a very crowded, traffic-jammed city and the greenery gave us a little respite from the heat.

Then it was off to a meeting with Kit and the rest of the group, followed by a welcome dinner at the hotel.  Tomorrow we hit the ground running at 8:00 a.m. and the touring begins in earnest.  One more day in Bangkok and then we will be heading north and will be on the move from here to Chiang Mai, visiting and staying in several cities along the way.  It’s going to be a very busy trip.