| Certainly no honey or fragrance has drawn them. Crowding under the circus-like canopies of festive yellow, blue and green stripes, perhaps they see what Van Gogh saw. Maybe they hope to follow the flower’s face turning from east to west, drinking in as much sunlight as it can in a day. When fully grown, the flowers will stop chasing the sun and stand still until their heads droop and their vivid colour evaporates and someone comes along and picks them for what has been described as the ultimate bird food. Although, the mineral content of the disk flowers – the hundreds of spikes that fill the face – make it an amazing human treat. Sunflower seeds are said to be in the same protein league as beef and have more iron than any other food except egg yolks and liver.
Whether it’s the vast spread of bright colour or the up-close burst of life or just a pleasant excuse for a drive in the country, more than a million sunflower pilgrims head to central Thailand each November to January. Farmers in 13 Thai provinces plant sunflowers in rotation with other crops. The sunflower produces the world's second most important and valuable oil seed (coconut oil is the first). Some provinces are far more scenic than others, such as Mae Hong Son, but not so convenient for a day trip.
Lop Buri and Sara Buri are the closest sunflower provinces to Bangkok. Sunflowers, which grow far more abundantly in North America and Russia, come with names as fun as their appearance: Autumn Beauty, Teddy Bear, Russian Giant (more than 3.7 m), Holiday, Italian White, Velvet Queen and Sunspot, which only grows up to 0.6 m.
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| Pa Sak Cholasit Dam |
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Driving north out of Bangkok on Highway 1 toward Lop Buri , we turn some 90 minutes later onto Highway 21 to find the country’s largest sunflower field in Chong Sarika subdistrict. We go first to the Khuen Pa Sak Cholasit dam, which is the country’s largest reservoir, thinking it is surrounded by the flowers. While it is a beautiful picnic spot with white caps on a blustery day, there is only a slight view of one field off in the distance, behind a cluster of trees. But the outdoor market is gewgaw heaven with trinkets, Chinese drums, wooden singing birds in a cage and fake sunflowers galore – barrettes, headbands, shirts, hats, dresses, umbrellas and endless packets of sunflower seeds.
About 13 km up Highway 21 (from Highway 1) there is a right-hand turn away from the main road and away from the hulking agro-industrial plants shadowing the sunflowers now in bloom (look for the road sign to Ban Khao Song). Fortunately many poster boards point the way to the 5,000 rai (8 sq km) of fields nestled in a serene nook of Phatthana Nikom district.
The pavement quickly becomes dirt and rising atop a small hill with blooming fields on either side, the view offers up the far-away seemingly hand-painted layers of mist-shrouded mountains of the eastern border provinces. We foolishly keep driving, expecting another sign to say “You found it”, or some such. But there are only the fields and perhaps wiser pilgrims figure it out faster. We turn back from the tiny sunflowerless village we ended up in at the base of a hill and head back into the fields.
My 10-year-old son seems excited and poses with his arm around the “neck” of a flower the way he does with his good friends. No doubt his amusement is more from travelling with two of those friends but he does admit later it was an “okay” trip because the flowers are “colourful and big” (just as that website line had promised).
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| Sap Langka Wildlife Sanctuary |
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| Phra Prang Sam Yot |
Had we more time, we could also have ventured to the Sap Langka Wildlife Sanctuary, the Wat Khao Wongkhot with a cave of bats in the millions, the botanical gardens or the Nam Tok Wang Kan Luang Waterfall. Had we at least known to turn right once we returned to Highway 21, we would have ended up with ostriches and tractor rides through a sunflower field at the Oasis Agro-Farm. But we turned left instead and opted for lunch and monkeys in Lop Buri town, 45 km away. A billboard on the way espouses a scenic bicycling route through “sunflower land”.
Lop Buri town is known largely for two spectacles: the Brahman, Hindu and Khmer architectural remnants ranging from the Bronze Age to the Ratanakosin period that pop up among the markets and electronic shops and for the monkeys that have taken over some of those shrines. Even if they can be menacing, there is something childishly fun in ending a trip out of Bangkok with the sight of monkeys crawling over the three Khmer-styled towers of Phra Prang Sam Yot shrine in the centre of town and lounging on the sidewalk opposite, munching lettuce they’ve grabbed from somewhere.
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