Thailand: Good Luck for You. - Day 5 (Royal Flora Festival)

Awed by solemn beauty of Doi Sudthep, we were later brought down to earth by a songthaew driver, as it turned to be a true challenge to negotiate the price of a ride with a guy hardly speaking any English. FYI: songthaew is a covered pickup truck with 2 rows of seats in the back, which is a popular means of public transport in Thailand.
The place we finally managed to get after half an hour of mimicking and waving hands was the Royal Flora Festival at Ratchaphruek park in the outskirts of Chiang Mai.
The Royal Flora in fact was an international flower expo of an impressive scale, a premise with lots of pavilions, shows, tropical gardens, a big Ferris wheel, and green tunnels with giant veggies hanging from the top! One of the gardens included a whole impressive collection of orchids, from regular white and purple ones, to tiny bee-like, spider & star-like orchids, the ones with central part reminding of tiny shoes and many others of all imaginable colors!

Finally, all the walkways led to a wide central alley ending with a big temple on a hill.

We had to catch a plane at night, so couldn’t stay till too late to see the show, but as it got darker, it still looked absolutely magical when, the central garden with flower and butterfly-shaped statues all lit up and started gleaming to the music.

…The plane got to Phuket at around 2am, so we reached the hotel deadly tired and slept like logs .