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	---> MORE Cover Stories: _________________________________ CHIANG MAI’S CITY PILLAR CEREMONY Hydrophile Heaven! The Songkran Festival in Chiang Mai The Poy Sang Long Festival Samoeng: ‘Three Cities’ Amongst Lofty Mountains Underwater Warriors: The Beta (Siamese) Fighting Fish CHIANG MAI’S BIG BIKERS WILDLIFE WALKABOUT: The Chiang Mai Night Safari LOOKING FOR THE SERPENT LORD Cruising the Ping River A Tripartite Trip to Paradise in southern Laos Muay Thai: The Inner Fight Farangs' Tale A Two-Wheeled Taste of Chiang Mai A New Look at Traditional Ligay For Those about to Songkran – We Salute You The Hills are Alive – especially at Doi Angkhang Lanna’s Legendary Talismans Animal Wonders in the Chiang Mai Zoo Creative Core - Nimmanahaemin Art Promenade CHIANG DAO - City of Stars Chiang Mai’s Veggie Festival A Sharing Moment on ‘Tan kuay salak’ Day Flower Power: The Queen Sirikit Botanic Garden TATTOOING IN THAILAND AT THE BUFFALO SACRIFICE Human’s Hidden Weapons: They’re all over you 'WALKING STREET'CHIANG MAI Eating up a Storm in Chiang Mai City Chinese New Year DON'T KNOCK THE CHIANG MAI WINTER FAIR Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Son and (hopefully) back again Cruising the Mekong in Style LOI KRATHONG FULL MOON FESTIVAL KHUN BUPHA GETS THE TREATMENT - Western and Traditional Golf in the North of Thailand - Fore! Travels in the Golden Triangle THE REMARKABLE HISTORY OF HERMIT SUTHEP Betel mania - A harmless narcotic in decline SONGKRAN IN CHIANG MAI - A Survival Strategy Visiting a Famous Monk in Northern Thailand City of Novice Monks Skilled at Massage and Cooking? A 'HIGH' IN CHIANG MAI YOU WON'T FORGET ULRICH'S LAST OUTING THE RIVER OF LIFE AND DET Khao Phra Viharn from the Cambodian side WAT PHU - BACK TO A TIMELESS KHMER TEMPLE FOREST GIANTS: Yours to command, perhaps The Gates of Chiang Mai Escape to a Houseboat CHIANG MAI GUARDIAN SPIRITS Sawadee Pii Mai - Splash! A VISIT TO ANGKOR And more besides Thailand's Hidden Green Secrets Teak, King of Timbers: See it While it Lasts Chiang Mai Hero: Khruba Si Wichai 16th Khom Yeepeng Festival Year 2007 The Dhevo Rohana Ceremony The Elephant, Soul of the Thai Nation SWINGING FOR FREEDOM: The Akha New Year WELCOME TO THE GOLDEN LAND THE CHIANG MAI ENLIGHTENMENT TOUR CHIANG DAO NATIONAL PARK LAOS NEW YEAR IN LUANG PRABANG LIJIANG:From Chiang Mai to the Edge of Tibet and Back STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN UP PHU KRADUNG Ready for the Jungle? CELEBRATING A RECORD REIGN Royal Flora International Exhibition Fig trees in lore and life and all around you Next Stop China Shopping on the San Kampaeng Highway Footloose in Northern Thailand THE FOUNDING OF CHIANG MAI The X Centre: Get Ready to SSScreeeaaammm!! SONGKRAN IN CHIANG MAI: All Your Questions Answered OVER THE HILLS AND - DOWN TO MAE CHAEM SNAKES Alive! And all around you in Chiang Mai ALL ABOARD FOR THE CHIANG MAI WINTER FAIR Hold on tight!... It’s Whitewater Season! DON'T MISS THE LOI KRATONG FESTIVAL Phaya Nak: Serpent Lord of the Underworld The RAMAKIEN: Ubiquitous in Thai Culture THE CONSUL WHO LOVED FIGHTING BEETLES Take Flight! EXPLORING CHIANG MAI'S OLD CITY WALKING (!) UP TO THE TEMPLE ON DOI SUTHEP CHIANG MAI NEW YEAR: COMES IN WITH A SPLASH A DAY OF DANCING FOR CHIANG MAI'S SPIRITS Visiting Mountainous Doi Angkhang OFF TO SEE THE PAKERYAW AT HOME JULIE CHRISTIE CAME TO BREAKFAST LIGHTS! BALLOONS! FIREWORKS! Remembering Kavila looking at his City Luang Prabang: Journey to Happiness WALKING UP TO THE WAT PHRATHAT UP ON INTHANON EXTREME LANNA: Get footloose in Chiang Mai THE INTHAKHIN CEREMONY Songkran! Year after Year, I Still Enjoy It THE RAMAKIEN: The Epic that’s Fantastic Fun QUEEN CHAMADEVI MAKES AN APPEARANCE FLYING HIGH IN CHIANG MAI TERA JAN: THE TROUBLED MONK OF WAT UMONG LOY KRATHONG: Full Moon, River, Fireworks and Crowds CHIANGMAI’S MYSTERY METAL MONSTERS CRYSTAL LADY, APOCALYPTIC MONK IN THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS Thailand’s “Women of the Second Kind” CHIANG DAO BOUND

Royal Flora International Exhibition
Big, Beautiful and Lots of Fun

One thing there can be no argument about: the Royal Flora International Exhibition that opened in the Northern capital on the first of this month is a phenomenon.

Situated at the foot of the hills to the south-west of Chiang Mai city, occupying 80 hectares (nearly 200 acres), put into place in short order at a cost of some 3 bn. baht (and even divided by 35.7 that's an awful lot of greenbacks), expected in the three months of its duration to attract something like 3 m. domestic and foreign visitors, nothing quite as ambitiously grandiose and extravagant as this has been attempted before, even by a country famous for its spectacular international events and national celebrations as Thailand is: witness the Southeast Asian Games, Loi Krathong, Songkran and the like.

The occasion of the exhibition provides the best justification of its construction. The Royal Flora Ratchapreuk 2006, to give it its official designation, celebrates both the 80th birthday of the country's deeply respected monarch, His Majesty King Bhumiphol Adulyadej, and the 60th anniversary of his accession to the throne. One of the most visited of the many sites of the Exhibition is going to be the Royal Pavilion, a landmark structure built in the Lanna (Northern Thai) style that features displays about the king's many contributions during his long reign to bringing about beneficial change, particularly to the rural sector of the Thai population - about which more later.

Now it has to be admitted that invited to preview the exhibition a few weeks prior to its opening, the editor of this journal - a lover of nature in the raw, so to speak - felt more inclined to pull on his climbing boots and hike up into the forest than go along. It's a reaction by no means new to him. It goes a long way back - The Festival of Britain? A visit to Versailles? The chance to tour Chandighar? Holy Year in Rome? While he concurs with Dryden that the proper study of mankind is man and his works, he nevertheless feels more comfortable in a contemplation of nature and its mysteries. Even so, duty called, and having responded, he felt on leaving the Exhibition that given the enormous variety of what's on offer, it would be an unusual individual who didn't find something that impressed, instructed or entertained him or her. The Royal Flora Ratchapreuk 2006 certainly deserves and repays one or more extended visits.

The approach itself is spectacular, along avenues billowing with lines of yellow banners, each embellished with the Exhibition logo. Once on site, the sculptures of Phya Nak - the Serpent-Lord of Southeast Asia's Underworld - the elephant figures that remind us of the emblematic and actual importance of the animal to this kingdom, and the apsaras (angelic beings) lining the approach to the Royal Pavilion, heighten our appreciation of the cultural orientation of the region. A small hill, surmounted by a tree and planted to represent the exhibition's logo, provides a sweeping panorama - Chiang Mai city over to the northeast, the forested mountains running down from Doi Suthep to the nearby eminence (Buddha image-surmounted) of Doi Kham to the west, and all round the greater or lesser structures of the exhibition that invite us to visit them.

Given that something like 2,200 species and 2.5 million individual plants and trees are waiting to be seen by us, we're going to have to be pretty sharp in getting round to them. Fortunately, transport's been laid on to cover the extensive site - electric tramcars and buses among them.

Your first stop is like to be the Corporate Garden, where a number of major domestic organisations and businesses have undertaken to interpret the King's theories about agriculture and his concept of `the sufficient economy'. It will be interesting to see how they tackle their task. The International Garden too is going to be popular. Japan has constructed a scaled-down version of Mt. Fuji here, and the `Garden of Good Fortune' that contains it will also display the extremely rare oka hasu lotus, said to have been grown out of a bicentennial seed, and shown publicly only once before. Also featured are `Kiritani Misty Valley', 'The Isle of Tortoises' and `The Isle of the Sarrus Crane'. And this, note, is only one of the international elements of this garden. As to the domestic input, the Chiang Mai municipality is offering a 'Suwan Lanna' garden, showcasing local culture through the exhibition of traditional artifacts, among them the impressive vertical banners known as tung. The provincial administration also is offering a landscape model that owes inspiration to the many Royal Projects that have transformed Thai agriculture during the last twenty and more years.

The Tropical Dome is likely to be a particularly popular venue, each plant on display more remarkable than the last. The names alone are intriguing - Iguanura, Borassodendron machadonis, the Tacca chantieri: while their features match the nomenclature. The latter, for example, have flowers that look like bat faces. The Borassodendron meanwhile is a palm with massive leaves so sharp that even the elephants give them a wide berth - not something you're likely to cultivate in your own garden, evidently. Look out too for the `Dancing Ladies Ginger', which is expected to be in blossom during the exhibition. It is though a rather small and not especially showy plant, no more than a foot high, that's going to be the focus of a great deal of attention. Christened popularly the `Dinosaur-era Wollembi', it can be traced back some 250 million years. Fossil forms of the plant were first found in China five years ago, and Australian scientists have since determined that it was - and now is - a hitherto undiscovered genus of pine. It made its long-delayed comeback, apparently, by a process of cloning from the surviving materials of the age-old plant, Thailand one of only twenty countries to have received a specimen from the Australian botanical experts nurturing it.

But don't forget to look too into the Thai Tropical Garden, which offers a vast variety of trees, plants and flowers: fantastic fruits, glorious orchids among them. It may well be chilly outside during what is after all the winter season here. Both the Tropical Dome and this Tropical Garden will be places to linger, then, before striking out even further afield.

And at some point you're likely to find yourself walking up an impressive avenue between those apsaras mentioned earlier, hands gently pressed together in greeting, a heavenly smile on their faces, as you approach what must be one of this massive exhibition's most impressive buildings - the elevated and ornately decorated Royal Pavilion. It is here that the achievements of the King are being celebrated. In the two-storey concrete and wooden building, designed by local experts in the Lanna style, on the first floor we find an exhibition called The Agricultural King - the Splendour that Benefits the People. Lavishly illustrated with photographs, the exhibition goes back over the decades in which His Majesty has devoted himself, both in theoretical endeavours and in practice, to eradicating poverty and improving the lives, not only of his rural subjects, but also the hill peoples. For this work the King was honoured in May this year with a life-time achievement award from the United Nations, and in June the Ministry of Science and Technology bestowed on him the title, `The Father of Thai Innovation'. On the second floor of the Royal Pavilion, the King's activities and achievements are celebrated artistically, mainly in traditional murals by the Thai national artist, Preecha Taothong. This artist has also designed a sculpture called `The Royal Virtue Tree'. Twenty-one thousand, nine hundred and fifteen leaves adorn the tree - equalling the number of days since the King's accession.

If the Royal Pavilion is one of the highlights of the exhibition structures, also not to be missed are the entertainments that will take place every evening, most of them at the near-by Main Amphitheatre. The temptation to see as much as you can during the warmer daytime hours will be strong, no doubt. But when twilight comes, and Chiang Mai is a twinkle of lights on the horizon and a glow in the sky, there will be another temptation - to pull on your sweaters and bring out your scarves: to forswear going back to the big city for another hour or two, and after a tuck-in at one of the many restaurants at the site - where the cuisine offered will be truly international, but with no shortage of pungent local dishes - to enjoy what the Royal Flora Ratchapreuk 2006 offers in the evening. `The Flora Fantasy Electric Parade' for example! What on earth can that be? You'll only find out by going along and staying into the evening yourself of course.

But knowing Thailand, you'll be fairly safe in predicting that after the daytime exploration of all that's on offer, the evening entertainments are going to offer lots of fun.

Reserve your multiple entry ticket today from the Ratchaphruek ticketing booth on the 1st floor, Central Airport Plaza, Customer Relations Counter on the 2^nd floor, Central Kad Suan Kaew; at any branch of Krungthai Bank in Amphur Muang; and at Direct2U on the 3^rd floor of Central Airport Plaza.

Single Entry tickets can be purchased from any branch of Krungthai Bank in Amphur Muang, and KTB's other 450 branches throughout Thailand.

(Text © 2006 Sivaphol)