The Eye Candy (Warning: Photo Overload)

Hong Kong is a very industrial, commercial island.  We saw very few green spaces and even fewer flowers.  One day we visited the flower market, where most people and businesses buy flowers at wholesale costs for their arrangements and holidays.  It spanned about 4-5 city blocks, store after store of fresh flowers and plants.

See the bamboo "curls" in the lower right?  It is considered lucky bamboo.  Buy some if your life is not going the direction you want, because very quickly the bamboo will spin around in a circle and your luck will change.  :)

Have you seen these?  They are some of my faves: carnivorous flowers.  The flowers form a vase shape and collect rain water.  Flies and bugs drown in the water and the flowers absorb them as a way to get food and nutrients.

Singapore was a delight, though.  We visited the Botanical Gardens, which is free, and their special orchid area (for a small fee).  They grow all kinds of natural and hybrid orchids there, even naming some after world dignitaries (Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher).

I was like, would anyone notice if I jumped in for a quick dip????

We were there by about 10:00 a.m. but it was still extremely hot outside.  The mist and all the plants helped with the temperature, but...well, not really.  At one point, G said to our guide, Ignatius, "The white people are melting.  How do you do it?"  Ignatius shook his head adamantly and said, "Everyone is melting.  Not just you.  We are all miserable together."  Amen, brother.

I don't know if you can tell, but my hair is wet.  I showered that morning and it took a few hours to dry (coughsweatcough).  The only time my hair was ever down - ever - on this vacation was for pictures.  I would whip out the hair band, smile, then as soon as the pic was taken all the hair went back up.  Pronto.

For me, walking through a garden of this magnitude is like walking through a museum.  I love it and I want to absorb it, take it all in, but it's just too much.  After a while it's overwhelming.  I want to appreciate it all, but can't, and meanwhile I'm sweating buckets and looking longingly at the sprinkler systems.  

There was a gift shop at the end of our tour (of course) and they sold orchids dipped in gold, in various forms of jewelry.  I ended up getting a very exotic-looking orchid necklace, as well as a display of orchids pressed into glass that, ironically, looks like ice.  I put it in our library window and am looking at it now.  Enjoying the flowers in both cities was a real treat.