Last year’s flower festival at National Kandawgyi Garden featured numerous colourful displays.

THE hilltop town of Pyin Oo Lwin in Mandalay Division is expected to draw big crowds this month with a series of festivals and new attractions, event organisers said last month.

National Kandawgyi Garden will celebrate its 76th anniversary with a flower festival from December 12 to January 12 – which will be highlighted by the opening of an international-standard orchid garden – and with a music festival from December 14 to 16.

Kandawgyi supervisor U Maung Chit told a press conference on November 21 that during the flower festival more than 5 million flowers representing 15 local species and 65 foreign species will be displayed throughout the garden in colourful patterns.

“Special displays will include a giant snowball decorated with flowers, a giant rainbow pattern formed using rows of vivid flowers and other flowers that are rarely seen in Myanmar,” he said.

“This year we will also have tulips and lilies imported from Germany and tree roses from the Netherlands. Tree roses have never been shown in Myanmar. We have 17 of them and the smallest is 6 feet tall. They will all be bearing flowers during the festival,” he said.

The highlight of the festival will be the opening of Myanmar’s first international-standard orchid garden.

“The garden will be 4.9 acres and showcase over 10,000 orchid pots with 304 native species and six hybrid species from Australia, Vietnam and China,” U Maung Chit said. “Many tourists who visit our garden are interested in orchids so we want to show all the native species in one place.”

The concurrent music festival will feature more than 60 singers and performers, Moe Aung Swe from Event Master, the festival organiser, said at the same press conference.

“The first day will be for pop music lovers, the second day for hip hop and the last day for rockers,” he said.

“We are also trying to organise additional attractions for the festival including poetry readings and a book fair where bookshops from Mandalay will display their stock,” he said.

U Maung Chit said attendance was expected to far exceed the 300,000-plus visitors who came to National Kandawgyi Garden’s Diamond Jubilee festival last December.

“This year there are more attractions, including double the amount of flowers on display including the new orchid garden,” he said, adding that the entrance fee will double this year to K1000 a person.

Among the other events in Pyin Oo Lwin this month will be the opening of a new amusement park built by Htoo Trading Company near the National Landmark Garden, as well as the opening ceremony for a new teleport building at Yadanarbon cyber city about 16 kilometres from town.

U Aung Zaw Myint, the president of Myanmar Computer Industry Association, said the opening of the teleport building in mid December will be followed by the ICT Week exhibition organised by the Ministry of Communication, Post and Telegraphs.

He said the event will include 120 exhibition booths where local and foreign ICT companies, cyber cafés and bookshops will showcase products such as software, hardware and electronics, while the Myanmar Computer Professional Association will organise network gaming, programming, web design competitions.

“Eighteen foreign companies including communication technology giants like ZTE Corporation have already reserved booths, and some government ministries will showcase their e-government projects,” said U Aung Zaw Myint.

He said it was the first time the annual ICT Week will be held outside Yangon.

“Despite the new location we expect big crowds because the timing coincides with other festivals in Pyin Oo Lwin,” U Aung Zaw Myint said.