May 13 2006 - Flower Market

On Saturday Lee and I went to the Hong Kong Flower Market. The Flower Market is a Hong Kong institution. It’s in all the tourist guidebooks as a place to stroll through and admire, but when you live here, it’s where you go to buy houseplants and cut flowers at prices that would be undreamed of in the US. The estimate I saw in a book is that the prices are 1/8^th of what you would pay in the US. Probably, because we are Westerners, we paid a lot more for what we bought, but still I think we paid 1/3^rd of the US price. For example we bought a beautiful bouquet of a dozen roses for $24US. I think it would be safe to say the roses themselves would have cost close to $100 in the states.

The Flower Market is in Mong Kok, across the Harbor, north of Kowloon. It doesn’t take very long to get there. I still can’t get used to the change in intensity when you go to the other side of the harbor. The crowds, the pace….I don’t really like it, but it’s just something to put up with in order to get to what you DO want.

The Flower Market is about 2 blocks from the subway exit. It encompasses a 2 block square area, filled with shop after shop. The flowers and plants spill out onto the sidewalk. The hawking wasn’t too bad (very little “hey lady!”). I think it makes a big difference when I’m with Lee; people leave me alone. Lee says that I get a “deer in the headlights” look when I’m stressed or confused. I guess the shopkeepers must pick up on that! Anyway, I was just enjoying myself, looking at all the pretty flowers, deciding what we wanted to buy.

We walked through the entire market, and then went back to a few shops that we had liked the most. It’s better to pick one shop for your purchases, if you want things delivered, so that you only pay the delivery charges once. We ended up buying a large Japanese maple, a bougainvillea the size of a tree, 3 large crotons, plus pots for the crotons. We also bought some herbs, an exotic begonia and a couple other small plants. All of this was delivered to our apartment later in the afternoon. Now, with our IKEA table and chairs, our little balcony is very inviting. We ate dinner out there last night, enjoying the cool(er) temperatures, and the view.

Now that I’ve been there once and seen what a fun place it is to go to, I’ve got plans. There were beautiful, beautiful orchids there, for not much money. I didn’t want to buy them, because I’ve never had much luck with them, but Lee said, at those prices what does it matter? So I think the next time I go I’ll buy some orchids. There is a built-in planter on the side of the balcony and I’ve decided that it needs ferns. I need a BIG pot for the bougainvillea tree (I thought I had one large enough, but I don’t). And, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t go there once a week to get some beautiful cut flowers.

Now that we have a couple of large trees on our balcony I can find our apartment from the street! I know it sounds silly, but that makes me feel happy….