Again its essentially a commercial business for raising orchids and they have added a revenue side stream through tourist operations. I certainly wouldnt call it an "exciting" activity... Its more a relaxing one.
You get to see thousands of orchids in flower, all growing in pleasant tropical shade-houses. There are row upon row upon row of them hanging from a high railing and all with absolutely minimal "potting".
These orchids were mostly of the Phalaeonopsis family (there were some others but they were a minority) and they are the ones that you are probably most familiar with. They are just perfect for growing indoors in the average household, but their native habitat is as epiphytes (living in trees rather than on the ground) in shaded tropical forest environments... like here in Thailand.
So, I wandered around for a while and looked at all the pretty flowers and saw how they cultivated them. And I read some of their literature on their particular recommendations for fertiliser mix ratios etc. And I had a cup of tea in their little cafe, and looked at their touristy nick-nacks which were mostly resin encapsulated orchid flowers as paper-weights or as broaches etc... All very pleasant and unexciting :))
On the "eco" front, there is not much of an issue I think... Pretty much everyone will say its fine, though I suppose only a few people would actually want to visit the "farm".
No one worries about "cruelty to plants" and the vast majority of people have no qualms about using flowers as decoration and even discarding the whole plant once the flower has died off. You can feel free to lop the flowers off whenever, and interbreed and hybridise as much as you want... Its just not an issue.
We dont mind "abusing" little orchids and looking at their dismembered parts in our homes just for our aesthetic pleasure... Little plants are not really an emotional issue for most people.
But it becomes a bit of a different matter when its a big tree it seems...
People seem to get much more emotional about those. But the only difference I can see is that the trees are older and that seems to make us care more, though I cant really justify why... Its not just that trees take a lot longer to grow and have a lot larger effect on the local environment, and so when an established tree gets "removed" then it really effects the rest of the immediate environment, and if it turns out that removing the tree was a mistake then its gonna take a very long time to rectify!... No, people develop emotional attachments to trees.
And like the previous post, many people are happy to eat meat and virtually all people I know dont hesitate to swat at flies, and squish spiders and cockroaches, and eradicate mosquitoes en-mass!... But Ohhh its a different story if you kill a butterfly!
... Hmmm... We people are indeed a conundrum! ... Our emotions are really very rarely well aligned with our rational thoughts on any given subject are they? :))
Well, Thats it for my little eco-comparisons. And thats pretty much it too for my time in SE Asia. Ive just got a day or two more here in the tropical warmth before I head back to the frozen North, there to rejoin work in order to pay for my financial excessesof the past year.
I guess Ill try to make my remaining hours "quality time" with the warmth and the mangoes :))
