Today I am sharing about one of the highlights of my trip to Thailand that was really unique for my family.

My Grammy started her flower shop, Cottage Flowers, 28 years ago, and has since passed the business on to my mom. I have always said that growing up in a flower shop made for a pretty interesting childhood and really it is the main place that I call home. So when I read about Bangkok’s 24-hour flower market I knew that had to be on our must-see list.

By the way, curious about how this trip came to be or what else we saw? Below are my other two travel journal blog posts from this trip that I have posted so far:

Travel Journal: Wat Pho, Wat Arun and the Grand Palace in Bangkok, Thailand

Travel Journal: USW South Asia Board Team to Thailand and the Philippines

Pak Khlong Talat Flower Market

The flower market was AMAZING and we spent almost an entire morning walking around it.

I can’t really say whether or not every traveler would love it, but if you love farmer’s markets, flowers or produce in any way I would highly recommend it. Plus it seemed to have less of a tourist vibe and I don’t actually remember seeing any other tourists there. I read that the best time to go to see a lot of the market busy in action is early in the morning that we weren’t quite that motivated.

The market is the biggest wholesale and retail fresh flower market in Bangkok, and also has quite a bit of produce.  I am not going to try to guess how big it is but the wholesale part of the market takes up a large warehouse and some alleys, while the retail stores were in various sizes of stalls lining the outer part of the market along the street. It was really fun for us to walk through and point out the things that were different from how we care for and design with the flowers, and what things were exactly the same. And we couldn’t get over the cheap prices! It was one thing for us to know what a baht converts to in U.S. dollars, but it put things into a different perspective when you applied it to flowers and arrangements.

I took SO many pictures that morning, so it is a miracle that I was able to narrow it down to even this many.

My Grampy and Grammy.

Main entrance.

These were really cool arrangements made of really little (about the size of a penny or dime) flowers. When we were inspecting them a Thai women who was designing one gave us one of the flowers.

Growing up one of reoccurring chores at the flower shop is to refill water picks (for the end of flowers when they are being wrapped and not put into a vase.) Our look a bit different in the U.S. so the women let me take a video. Plus she was so fast!

I didn’t the picture I wanted to in time, but all of those flowers are balance on a trolley cart and we watched this man that was almost shorter than the stack pull it along with it basically resting on this back.

The chili peppers were so pretty!

Part of the vegetable market.

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Stay tuned for more posts covering this trip!

Cheers!