When winter comes again, various seasonal flowers spring into bloom in Northern Thailand, especially in Chiang Mai, where the annual Flower Festival is organized to show off the amazing beauty and incredible variety of the flowers. The Flower Festival in Chiang Mai is recognized as an important tourism activity and has been going on for 30 years. This year, it commenced on February 3, going on through to February 5, with huge crowds of tourists, both Thai and foreign, lining the streets to see the parade of flower decorated vehicles, with beautiful Thai ladies sitting gracefully on them. These floats make an incredible sight and are the result of hundreds of hours of hard work and amazing artistry by both government and private sector organizations to prepare for the festival.

The Minister of Tourism and Sports has chosen Chiang Mai to be the pilot province to introduce the new concept of Street Soccer. The purpose of this project is for 256 teams to compete in a soccer championship throughout the country, the teams being for males under 16 years old and 18years old. The first match of the project was between two teams of VIPs made up of ministers, MPs and senators and VIPs of Chiang Mai province.t>

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World class musician to play in Chiang Mai to help AIDS sufferers

Payap University, together with University of Ulsan, Korea, is to organize a classical music charity concert with one of the world’s top pianists, Prof. Ting Il San together with musicians from University of Ulsan, performing in the Chiang Mai Classical Music Festival during February 18-26, 2006. The Korean musicians will travel to Chiang Mai for the purpose of meeting other musicians and exchanging musical education with the School of Musical Arts, Payap University.

The Hillside Rooftop party in January raised, with the help of many Chiang Mai citizens and businesses, 766,000 baht. As agreed by the committee, no cash was given out to the recipients of the largesse, but goods or items needed were to be purchased instead.