Penang -- Week 24 -- Plant Expo

We head to the Plant Expo on the mainland.  This involves crossing Penang Bridge.  Depending on your source, it's anywhere from the sixth longest bridge in the world to not even ranking in the top 30 to the longest or third longest in Southeast Asia.  What that really means is it's a really long stretch of highway with no exits, and any minor accident will have thousands of cars stuck on the bridge for anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours.  I'd say there has been an accident on this bridge 50-75% of the times we've crossed it.  And that's with only about five trips to the mainland completed so far, so about 10 crossings.

 The Plant Expo is held at Auto City.  As you may have guessed, Auto City is mostly comprised of auto dealerships, but the Expo is at a little collection of restaurants and shops in the same area.  It's very nouveau American strip mall here; it's something that George and I often refer to as Mickey-Mousey in its obvious artifice and attempts at mimicking reality or super reality in the manner of Disney theme parks.  These fake mini cities are supposed to be a big draw to consumers, and I suppose I'm drawn to them myself, what with their clean, new appearance yet cozy, familiar feel, but I'm simulataneously sickened by them and all that they stand for.  But that doesn't stop George from cooling off under Starbucks' misted fans, then heading inside for an Iced Latte.

Speaking of theme parks...

At the Plant Expo, there is lots to see and buy, and we're excited to put some green in our place, but we're limited by what we can drive back across the bridge in our little car.  We have to find a plant store closer to us.  I'm loving all of the container gardening we see here in Malaysia and I'm eager to fill our entryway and balcony with similar containers.

There's one vendor there who specialized in air plants, and I am especially taken with the one above.  These long, hairy things hanging from rings look so cool.  There are also the typical large, tropical plants (which apparently were too boring to photograph), cacti, bonsai, and orchids galore.  Just don't plan to ask anyone any specific, plant-related questions, unless you speak Chinese.  George wanted to know all of the plant-care info on each plant we were considering, and we had vendors scrambling to find translators even to communicate price!  One thing we did get though, is that they don't expect you to put many of these plants inside.  Maybe just the miniture ones.  Many times when we asked for care for plants indoors, we heard, "Indoor cannot."
"Umm... Yeah!  Can!"

There are more plant photos from the day on the art blog if you're interested.

Next to the expo tent there was a garden with hundreds of these fabric animal sculptures/lamps like the giraffes I photographed at Northam Beach Cafe (a.k.a. International Hawker Market).  Can you imagine all of these lit up in the evening?  They're a little wather-worn though, and I can't tell if they are placed here as part of a sculpture garden, or animal lantern graveyard.

It would be cool to get some of these (smaller though) for our garden in the States.  I wonder if there is an animal-lantern store around here somewhere.

Back at the expo...

Bamboo sculpture (above) and...

Cannabis or baby Japanese Maple tree?

You know, there is an automatic death penalty for bringing drugs into the country.  Maybe it's not so harsh a punishment for those who circumvent any importation issues by growing it themselves.