This may be the last Valentine’s Day Onsirin Saenyakul ships her roses to vendors at Bangkok's famous Pak Khlong Talat flower market. Her two-rai plantation in Chiang Mai’s Mae Rim district has been the only source of income for her family for the past 12 years, and 80% of the roses are shipped by truck to Thailand’s largest fresh flower market.
What’s wrong, petal?: More than 1,400 vendors will be forced to move out of Pak Khlong Talat flower market by the end of the month to make way for pedestrians.
“It’s terrible. This is usually a busy place the week before Valentine’s Day, but now it’s all quiet,” said Rung, one of Ms Onsirin’s customers.
Some 80-90% of the flowers grown in Thailand, including roses from the northern provinces of Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and Tak are shipped to middlemen in Pak Khlong Talat, which are usually sold in bulk to vendors across the country.
By the end of the month, over 1,400 licensed and unlicensed vendors will be forced to move out of the area to make way for pedestrians as part of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration’s clean-up campaign. More than 14,000 vendors have moved out of 39 public areas in 21 districts to new places provided by the city.
“My customers who used to sell at Tha Phra Chan and Saphan Lek were already forced out, and now they are complaining they don’t have a place to sell,” said Rung, who asked to be identified only by her nickname. “Everyone is adopting a wait-and-see approach [in terms of purchasing] because they are afraid that they will be the next ones [to be targeted by the BMA].”
The flower vendors were notified on Feb 2 about the BMA’s decision, which is part of the government’s policy to “maintain order” in society, according to the BMA notice seen by the Bangkok Post Sunday. The clean-up campaign will ease traffic and enable pedestrians to make use of public space, as Pak Khlong Talat was one of the venues in Bangkok that the BMA received the most complaints about, said the notice. Vendors are invited to attend a meeting with the BMA on Monday and Tuesday.
News of the eviction has somehow caused fewer people to visit the market, say the vendors, with some visitors thinking that the place had already been closed down.
While Rung usually sells her roses at 50 baht each, sales are slow even at the current price of 30 baht.
The vendors are not only frustrated by the short notice — they were given less than a month to move out — but also the practicality of the BMA’s decision, which they say could be solved by reorganising the stalls at the market instead.
The BMA had prepared new locations at the newly renovated Yodpiman flower market and two fresh markets nearby that have been prepared to accommodate street vendors who relocate.
But licensed vendors say they are unable to shoulder the rental cost for stalls in the Yodpiman market, which allegedly cost over 100,000 baht per year, excluding additional tea money. The nine-rai market, operated by Yodpiman Group, sells flowers, vegetables and fruit, mostly for wholesale. But vendors say the space that is being provided is not sufficient to accommodate all of them.
Pak Khlong Talat has long been a leading agricultural and flower market in the country and is listed as a tourist attraction on the website of the Tourism Authority of Thailand. It is open all day, with fresh flowers from jasmine and roses from the north to tulips from Europe.
“Now you get some people who come here not to buy flowers but just to keep the old memories intact. What they’ve seen 40 years ago, now it’s all gone,” said Sommai Chomtawee, who has sold garlands at Pak Khlong Talat for 40 years.
Thanapon Chainork, who owns more than 1,000 rai of marigold and roses in Tak province, now mitigates his risk by selling to supermarkets. Roses wrapped in foam are shipped by truck to Pak Khlong Talat, where the wholesale price the week before Valentine’s Day was 20 baht per rose.
Mr Thanapon lost more than 16 million baht when Wat Dhammakaya abruptly ordered the postponement of its planned pilgrimage walk last month. The 30-day walk, which includes the showering of marigold petals on the carpeted route by the temple’s followers, uses a million flowers per day from Mr Thanapon.
However, he played down concerns regarding the dying flower trade following the shutting down of Pak Khlong Talat, saying flower growers will end up finding a new market. “There’s always a demand for flowers, and if you can’t find them here, then it’s not Thailand,” he said.