The Night Market

The weight of words is still bothering me so am letting the pictures describe itself better. (Warning! This post is image-heavy!)

Anyway, several nights ago I accompanied [identity-protected] and her sister (plus one other) to Dangwa on Dimasalang Street in Manila to buy flowers.

I'm not sure if everyone knows this but Dangwa is the drop-off point of flower shipments from the provinces and is one of the main sources of flowers for all of Metro Manila's flowershops. As deliveries go, the shipments only come around midnight so this is best time to go there to get flowers cheap. Any later in the morning and the flowers all get snapped up quick.

Personally, I first heard about this place from my friend, Ryan, who once told me he bought two dozen roses for 500 bucks (while a dozen normally costs twice that in yer regular flowershop). And that's no surprise. Upon getting to the place (a long strip of walkway crossing two streets and lit by fancy lamplights), one immediately gets overwhelmed by the sight of flowers everywhere.

Aside from the pictures I got here, flowers-- roses, chrysanthemums, baby's breath, etc-- were also stacked like cordwood everywhere. This wasn't Holland with its famous Keukenhof Garden but then again, I felt the urge every now and then to make a running jump onto the bundles and bundles of flowers like they were raked piles of autumn leaves (not that I've ever done that).

Of course, after a while, one would notice that the choices were limited: mostly roses and mums, but here and there daisies and lily-of-the-valleys, birds-of-paradise and orchids, bluebells and carnations. Likewise there were places where they sold eucalyptus branches, what looked like long aloe vera leaves, and even plastic flowers.

Oh, did I mention that some shops there also specialized in doing customization? That's what we got: a bouquet of lilies done up like it had been bought from a flower shop. Likewise, we also got a bouquet of mums (12 stems or so) for ten bucks. Now if that ain't cheap, I don't know what is.

(Of course when I sorted the mums out for the vases-- hey! I like doing that!-- I found the stems were a bit wilted and brown already. Eh.)

All in all, an interesting place to check out when midnight rolls in and you want to drive around while the city sleeps.