Thailand Trip 2016 - Chiang Mai - Doi Inthanon National Park - King and Queen Pagodas

One of the main attractions in Doi Inthanon National Park is the King and Queen Pagodas, Phra Mahathat Naphamethanidon and Naphapholphumisiri.

The two chedi were built by the Royal Thai Air Force to commemorate the king’s and queen’s 60th birthdays in 1987 and 1992, respectively.

Phra Mahathat Naphaphon Bhumisiri

Naphaphonphumisiri, meaning 'being the strength of the air and the grace of the land' was built in 1992 to honour 60th birthday anniversary of Queen Sirikit. It's lavender and surrounded by a beautiful garden blooming with flowers.

Phra Mahathat Naphamethanidon

Naphamethinidon, meaning 'by the strength of the land and air' was built in 1987 to honour 60th birthday anniversary of King Bhumibol. It's brown and has a garden too but I felt that the one at the queen's is much more beautiful.

Some buddha wall

Some random shot of the surroundings. This beautiful buddha wall caught my attention. I love the textures it has and the beautiful mix of brown and dirty green. I bet there's a story behind this wall but I didn't probe further.

Flowers

The garden around the pagodas is filled with colourful and beautiful flowers. I noticed a number of workers (mostly females) are watering and maintaining the garden. It sure seems sunny but in actual fact, it's cooling (compared to the humid weather here in Singapore).

Gardeners mending the flowers

Below is the flower that intrigues me. I like the pink in the flowers and the way it illuminates when backlit. The tiger-spots adds character to the flower. This flower has a long stem shooting upwards to the sun. When the wind blows, they started to sway as if they were dancing.

The flower that I like

Lastly, that's a spot where you could view the distant Himalayan mountain. The winds are strong. A couple of tourist had their caps and hats blown away. Do have a sweater with you in case it gets too cold.

Beautiful view across the mountains

Do stop by at Doi Inthanon National Park during your tour in Chiang Mai. Enjoy folks =)

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Singapore Garden Festival 2014 Part III

The most important sections of Singapore Garden Festival is the Orchid Extravaganza. There, you get to appreciate award wining orchids.

Orchid Extravaganza is located at center of the flower dome. There's a queue which allows visitors to enter a tower that is filled with orchids. The view was magnificent!

Orchid tower

The dome was decorated by lovely flowers. I especially like these blue and violent shades of flower. I love how these flowers lead your eyes towards the indian lady enjoying the yellow flowers.

Trail of blue & purple

Below are the beautiful orchids. Some of those are award winning flowers. Some of them are super rare that can only thrive under certain environmental conditions. However, we get to see them at the Orchid Extravaganza. The orchids are of different colours and type.

Encyclia orchids

Encyclia orchids

Tiger orchid

Cymbidium orchid

Cattleya orchid

Tiger orchid

Personally, I feel that this year's Singapore Garden Festival was a bit disappointing. The orchids seems much lesser. The area are too close for comfort which really makes photographing the flowers/exhibits challenging.

Enjoy the flowers folks!

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Singapore Garden Festival 2014 Part II

Part II of Singapore Garden Festival brings you Landscape & Fantasy Gardens, Floral Windows to the World and Miniature Gardens.

Floral Windows to the World brings you enchanting display of beautiful flowers that are creatively and delicately designed by celebrated local and international floral designers.

Next, we have a series of floral dinning setups ranging from posh, classy setups up to rustic and rural setups. Of course they must fulfill the theme of flowers/garden.

Classy setup

Rustic setup

It's interesting seeing a smaller version of a garden. There's a total of 6 miniature garden displays

The Lady of Shalott

Lastly, we have the Landscape & Fantasy Gardens. They are the exhibits of much larger scale and should be appreciated as a whole. Photographing landscape designs proves to be challenging for me. I couldn't seem to get any fantastic composition. Adding on, I got only a 17mm (35mm equivalent) prime lens (no zoom) and the displays are too close together.

Enjoy the photos folks and stay tune for Orchid Extravaganza - view of all the award wining orchids.

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Singapore Garden Festival 2014 Part I

Singapore Garden Festival is back! This event is hosted annually featuring award-winning gardening luminaries from around the world.

This time round, it's located at Gardens by the Bay. You would want to visit Singapore Garden Festival as early as possible as the flowers withered fast! Therefore, We visited the event on its opening day.

Singapore Garden Festival

We reached there around noon and the crowd seemed to be rolling in fast. The sideways are decorated with patched work horses leading you all the way to the entrance of the event. There's also huge and cute mascots of insects to attract the crowd. It seems like I'm walking into "A bug's life" (Random).

Patched horse

Bumble bee mascot

Near the entrances, there's this huge exhibit of random laying pipes with a stream of flowing water. I guess we will see more of such exhibits in the event. (At this point I was thinking, WHERE ARE THE ORCHIDS?)

Exhibit

Next, we browse through the creative outdoor exhibits. We have the Vibrant Outdoor Garden which is beautifully decorated with two barrels and small white lamp stands? Anyways, it does look pleasant and relaxing. It's pretty great to have a garden like this to laze during the weekends.

Vibrant Outdoor Garden

We heard rumblings sounds from the distance. It's not the sound of thunder (Thank god). The sound actually originated from an exhibit named Sound of the Forest. This exhibit consists of a drum and some of us just can't resist the urge but went up to drum. This is the most popular exhibit around the area.

Sound of the Forest

Next, we reached the Learning Garden. A guide approaches us and gave us a mini tour around the Learning Garden. She showed us the plant of some of the common vegetables and fruits we consume in our daily lives. Below are some plants she went through.

Pineapple plant

Chili plant

Padi

Cherry tomatoes

Sunflower

Folks, stay tune for more stunning exhibits and of course the highlights - Orchid Extravaganza.

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Spring?

I wonder if it's Spring? Flowers are blooming everywhere around my hood. And it's beautiful!

Taking a bus ride to my nearby shopping centre, Jurong Point. I noticed that flowers are blooming and they lit up the tress with shades of purple. Somehow, this scene lightens up my mood and I felt a little happier =)

The ground of course, is "littered" by the little purple petals. Just maybe I should take walks more this few days (but I'm lazy haha). This "purplish" scene brings back much memories...

=)

“You can decorate absence however you want- but your still gonna feel what’s missing.”
~ Siobhan Vivian

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