The Bangkok Flower Show


Bangkok is the best place to be if you love flowers. In fact, the city holds its annual Bangkok Flower Show every November. During this time, a lot of tourists visit Thailand for the sole purpose of seeing different exotic flowers in bloom. The Bangkok flower show is usually held on the 24th of November at the Swissotel Nai Lert Park in Bangkok.

The Bangkok Flower Show is the best time for local florists to display their talents when it comes to cultivating the best flowers and plants as well as their best flower arrangements. During the flower show, a lot of local Bangkok flowers are displayed to impress both local and foreign visitors alike. While different Bangkok flowers are displayed during the festival, the star of the flower show is Thailand’s national flower which is the Golden Shower flower (Cassia fistula Linn.) or aptly called Ratchaphruek in local language.

During the festival, the streets are lined with strings of Golden Shower which signal the start of the festival. This particular flower holds a deep symbolism in the Buddhist religion and it is also the favorite flower of the King. In fact, this particular flower is not only found in the many Bangkok flower markets but it is also found in King Rama IX Royal Park which is one of the most popular botanical gardens in Bangkok. This particular flower also symbolizes the unity as well as identity of the Thai people. In fact, this festival is dedicated to King Bhumibol who is Thailand’s longest reigning monarch.

The best place to be during this festival is at the Pat Khlong Talad market which is the biggest and busiest Bangkok flower market. During the festival, the usual volume of blooms sold by florists and flower growers are higher than usual so you can buy a lot of flowers during the festival to take back wherever you live. This particular flower market is open 24 hours but it tends to be busiest at nighttime when tourists and local buyers flock the market to get the best flowers. During the festival, a lot of people can also enjoy getting cheap flowers. This is the reason why a lot of flower aficionados all over the world flock Bangkok during this time.

During the event, it is not only the display of Bangkok flowers that the festival is famous for. In fact, the flower show also holds different events such as floral parades. In fact, a lot of people flock the streets during the festival wearing colorful and flower-inspired costumes. On the other hand, florists also compete with other florists for their prized blooms.

The Bangkok Flower Show is not only a great event to learn a thing or two about exotic plants and flowers but it is also a great event to learn about the culture and traditions of Thai people. The thing here is that flowers play a central role in the culture and religion of Thailand thus attending this event will surely give you an idea about the rich culture of the city.

Tourist coaches are generally fairly plain affairs, at the most sporting a couple of lines and perhaps, in the event of being owned by a modest size company, a graphic of the owners logo painted along their side.

In Thailand though, charter bus owners decorate their vehicles to the max, employing teams of airbrush artists to paint fantasy, cartoon, floral and underwater scenes on almost every surface.

Originally performed freehand, a practice which made obtaining perfect geometrical designs difficult to achieve, the standard practice these days is to produce a printed mockup of the required design on computer, and then print life-size stencils of each component using a printer-plotter, with the various color-breaks cut in the stencils.

While Thailand has suffered through several years of tourist-damaging political protests, the country’s demand for tourist buses has increased, with buses by far the most common form of transport.

Economic stimulus measures introduced by the Government to promote the tourism industry internally have seen an increasing number of Thais travelling to domestic locations, with orders for new buses increasing over the past three years.

At the Mee Saeng Bus Body Co., in the central Thailand Provincial city of Bang Len, a team of five airbrush artists decorate the sides of more than 100 new tourist buses a year, with preparation and painting costs adding an additional $4,500 to the cost of a new bus.

Mee Saeng factory manager, Vanna Khitrungruang, said, “I can not remember the last time we built a bus that didn’t have airbrushing as part of the finishing process.

Head airbrush artist, Krisanapong (Shane) Sathasooth, said it took up to six years to train someone how to airbrush to his requirements, though the salary for good airbrush artists was quite good, and considerably better than what people working in standard paint booths doing smash repair work received.

The demand has also spurred the growth of many independent teams of artists, with about 10 such teams working at the many bus building factories in Bang Len city.

Somchao Taveesabchai, or Toan as he prefers to be called, has been airbrushing tourist buses in Thailand for more than 10-years, and says in the days of freehand airbrushing he and his team of two assistants would complete a bus in a week or less. “Now the designs are a lot more complex – the owners want artwork from the back to the front and now it takes up to 10-days to paint just one bus.

Though Thailand’s wide range of tropical flowers and coastal waters provide a ready source of inspiration for conservative bus designs, Toan said Disney classics, Korean cartoon characters and Japanese Manga designs were very popular, and something he and his team specialised in.

“I’ll often do several buses for one owner and while there might be a common theme to the designs, every bus is different. Some owners want to have a conservative look, while other owners wanted really detailed and deep fantasy finishes featuring well known animation and cartoon characters.

According to Toan a lot of the owners will approach with a folio of the characters they want on their bus, with Japanese and Korean, as well as some Dreamworks [animation] characters requiring many hours of complex color blending to complete.

Visitors to Thailand will see the buses throughout the country, with some owners finishing off the highly prized artwork with rows of reflectors, banks of driving lights, and sound systems that incorporate internal and external speakers that see the tourist buses plying the nation’s roads like giant mobile discotheques.

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