Seven days into the 92-day showcase and visitors do not need signposts to locate public conveniences.

"Just follow your nose and you'll find it," one young girl was overheard telling her mother.

Amid as many as 2.5 million individual examples of than 2,200 species of plant and flower, the smell of 700 toilets has started to win the olfactory race. Many of the public toilets are at capacity, just a week into the event. But the organisers are taking action and turning to nature to help ease the unpleasantness for visitors - of whom as many as two million are expected before the end of January.

The Office of Agricultural Research and Development in Chiang Mai is trying to pump waste from the toilet collection tanks. But they have found between 300 and 400 sanitary pads clogging things up, according to director Chaiwat Wattanachai.

He blamed the waste-management teams for not installing rubbish bins in every cubicle and claimed not all the ground tanks had removable liners installed.

These would be fitted at all toilets. But more needed to be done, he added. So effective micro-organism - or EM - technology has been called upon to deal with human waste and the smell it generates.

A private company hired to keep the site tidy has now been employed to maintain toilet hygiene.

Pennapa Hongthong

The Nation

CHIANG MAI