So yes I have been quiet for a couple of months thanks to other commitments but now that things seem to settle down a bit, I could get back to spending some time writing.

The trip to Bangkok happened during the Chinese New Year break earlier this year. A couple of days off from work plus the weekend was too good of an opportunity for not going anywhere and we were looking to kick-start our 2017 travels. Hence when Malaysia Airlines had some good offers to Bangkok, we purchased it without much thinking. (of course the “was that another impulse purchase” guilty feeling came a bit later :P)

The plan was simple, get an OK hotel, spend some time touring Bangkok, shop a little bit, get some good food and a round of massage and just chill. Then the idea of checking out sunflowers came into the picture thanks to some photos we saw online.

After checking with web sources, it was clear that the sunflower season in Lop Buri, a town about 2 hours outside Bangkok, is from November to January and we were in Bangkok the last week of January. It was a 50-50 thing, we could take the risk and travel all the way to Lopburi only to see the sunflowers all gone or we could still be lucky to catch the last batch of flowers.

As if our daily routine is not stressful enough, we took the gamble and hired a car+driver for a great rate via Rat Service — http://www.ratservice.com  . We got John who speaks awesome English and also super friendly.

The drive was quite boring with typical highway view except for some random interesting sights. Like the artwork on large trucks and lorries.

As we entered Lop Buri, there were lesser cars on the small roads. From one famous sunflower farm to another we kept seeing either empty fields or sunflowers that were beyond their glory of blooming days. Most have changed colours and pointing all the way down just waiting to be harvested.

We got nervous. This goes on for a good 30 minutes. But our awesome driver remained calm and positive.

Alhamdulillah, we finally saw a big hand-written signboard in Thai which roughly said “the last batch of flowers”. Thank God, there’s this one farm that still has that familiar pretty sight of Lopburi’s main attraction 🙂

Hundreds of sunflowers and just the 2 of us.

The blue sky and yellow flowers combo makes a good photo opportunity.

Props.

The “souvenir” shop. From kuaci to sunflower oil.

From this one particular farm, we went on finding more farms; there were at least 1 more which stillhave flowers but we decided to check out other attractions in Lop Buri instead.

You know you’re in Lopburi town when there are sunflowers as road dividers 😛

Pa Sak Jolasid Dam. Unfortunately we could not get any closer to the train tracks which are one of the scenic views Lopburi has to offer.

Quite cool how the reservoir area has been converted into a recreational/tourism area with a few photo opportunities and attractions.

We took the risk of driving all the way to Lopburi and managed to catch the sunflowers. That’s a great way to start our #BengkangBangkok holiday 🙂