Sunday, December 26, 2010

Taipei International Floral Expo

One of the last things I did when I was in Taipei was to visit the Taipei International Floral exposition. This expo was a huge event during my time in Taipei with advertising absolutely everywhere and it also seemed a whole lot of controversy was part of the expo. Here's a few pictures of the expo as I first entered and the all important ticket.

The first part of the expo consisted of a variety of floral displays, which were a little difficult to see as there were so many people at the expo. Here's a few pictures of my favourites though.

The floral expo of course needed a set of mascots, and here they are, a cross between flowers, musicians and general asian cuteness. Once you get past the intial displays of the exhibition, you reach a wider open area full of all kinds of larger floral displays.

A lot of different countries had their own pavillons at the expo. Here's the first and most impressive one I visited. Its a Shanghai style garden from China.

Next up it was time for more and more flowers!


Next up I visited the "Pavilion of Culture" which was less about the flowers and more about the history of Taiwan. The first area I went to check out was about the history of the indigenous people of the area - including the picture below, which I thought was kind of strange.
Next up was a visit to a pavillion which contained all kinds of Taiwanese arts and crafts.
First of all was the fruit carving, including the most incredible watermelon carving.

In the next area it was time for some works of art - I cannot remeber the type of tree this was but the art works were pretty impressive.


Next up in was time for more traditional art in the form of paintings on very tiny things, like a grain of rice and a seed.


Then it was time for pottery and more pottery - all handmade with beatiful designs.


This area also hard a DIY area for kids to design their own plates.


Then it was time to see more and more and more flowers whilst walking to the other side of the expo to see some more of the international displays.


Speaking the international displays, here is a few of them in order - Palau, Hong Kong, Oman, Canada, Chile, USA, Bhutan, Thailand, Greece, Hawaii (which had a different display to the rest of the USA for some reason) and Malaysia.
Taipei Story house is somewhere I had been wanting to visit for a very long time. Rich and I tried to visit it one day, but it had become part of the floral expo so we couldn't visit without paying to go to the expo so we decided to give it a miss. So I was pretty excited to visit it when I visited the floral expo, however, I was disappointed to find out it was shut by the time I got there. At least I got to take some photos.
Finally it was time for the eco art/pavilion of new fashion. The eco art is a pretty cool building as it's built of recycled bottles. I lined up for the pavilion not realising that you had to take a tour - the tour guide was speaking Chinese of course. The inside of the pavilion was an ode to vogue magazine and various other corporates - which isn't really my scene.