15 Roses in Bali

Fifteen roses in Bali: the car, the path and the two seconds at the door

A bouquet this size travels lying down, on its side, with the heads supported and nothing resting on top of them. Stand it upright in a footwell and every corner rocks the heads against the paper. Most of what goes wrong on a delivery goes wrong between those two positions.

Heat is the other enemy of the journey. A parked car in the sun cooks a bouquet faster than a warm room does, and the petals go limp before anything looks obviously wrong.

"A bouquet lies flat in the van and comes out flat. It goes upright once it is already standing in water."

— JFLOO florist

Then comes the handover, which is worth picturing in advance. The bouquet is passed roughly horizontally and taken in two hands, so the first thing the recipient sees is the top of the dome. If it changes hands on a path, in a doorway or on steps, decide beforehand where it goes next. Fifteen stems in paper cannot be tucked under an arm and should never be stood on the ground.

Someone should also know where it goes after that. A bouquet taken at the door and then held through a conversation ends up on the nearest flat surface, which is usually the one already holding a drink. Deciding that in advance costs a sentence and saves the outer ring of heads.

What that means on this island

Seminyak, Canggu and Sanur come in at 90 to 150 minutes, while Uluwatu, Tabanan and remote villas run up to 3 to 4 hours. The long runs are where lying flat earns its keep, since a bouquet standing in a footwell for that length of time arrives with one side pressed. We deliver from 9 AM to 10 PM, and placing a long run early in the day leaves room for everything the road adds to it.

The rains run from November to March.

In those months the last stretch is the difficult one. A courier crosses a garden path and a set of steps with an armful that cannot be set down anywhere dry, and paper that got damp on the way loses its shape within a minute. Above 30 °C and in high humidity we use firm wrapping and a cooling element, and the same build handles rain as well as it handles heat. The drier season, roughly April to October, makes all of this easier. It does not change how the bouquet lies in the car.

Nusa Dua hotels are the easier end of this, since the last minutes happen indoors on a level floor. Everywhere else the risk sits in the walk.

An ocean villa is the address where the handover most often happens outdoors. A dinner in Ubud puts the flowers on a table with other people around them, and a wedding venue in Jimbaran keeps them standing for the whole evening. In each case the recipient's hands stay full until somebody decides where the bouquet is going.

The catalogue starts at 650000 IDR, and payment goes through QRIS, GoPay, OVO, DANA or cash to the courier. Imported roses arrive at 60 to 90 cm and Ecuadorian stems reach 120 cm, so the longer the cut, the more careful the car has to be with it.

Ordering 15 roses in Bali for an address in Berawa, Kuta or Legian works the way it does anywhere else on the island: give us the hour and the exact door. If the flowers are meeting someone outside, say so, because a box crosses that last stretch better than an armful of paper does. We would rather build for the walk than straighten the bouquet at the gate.