### Bouquets in kraft paper in Phuket: what to look at when it arrives The dome comes first. Heads should sit at a consistent height and close against each other, with no dark gaps opening into the middle when you look straight down at the bouquet. Then the base of the collar. Paper that has been gathered and crushed into the tie, rather than folded sheet by sheet, means somebody worked fast, and it usually goes together with a bouquet that is fuller at the front than at the back. Check the height of the paper above the flowers as well. A hand's width reads as a frame around the heads, while anything much taller turns the whole thing into a parcel with something growing out of the top of it. > "Look at it from the side before you take it. The front of a bouquet is easy, the profile is where the work shows." > JFLOO florist The last thing to look for is the bottom edge. Stems should end in a sleeve or a wet wrap, sealed away from the kraft itself, because the paper and the water in those stems are not supposed to meet at any point in the journey. #### Where the material fails Water ruins it. Kraft absorbs, swells, cockles along the wet line and never flattens again, which is why hydration has to be sealed off rather than simply wrapped up. Rain is the same problem arriving from outside. Between May and October it turns up on its own schedule, so couriers here carry an extra outer layer through those months and take it off at the door. On the hill roads in the evening we add route time as well, since a bouquet sitting in traffic in an unsealed wrap is a bouquet with a stained collar. Humid air does the job more slowly and more quietly. It stays high most of the year, and kraft draws moisture straight out of it, softening until the collar loses the stiffness that holds its angle. That is why sheets go on tighter here and the crease sits closer to the tie. Creases themselves are permanent. One sharp fold across a visible panel cannot be smoothed out, and careful handling afterwards does not bring the surface back. #### The rest of the order Delivery along the west coast takes 90 to 180 minutes and covers Patong, Kata, Karon, Kamala, Surin and Bang Tao, with Phuket Town, Rawai, Chalong and Mai Khao on the same basis, while villas, marinas and airport routes keep their own windows. Matt paper reflects almost nothing, so the flowers hold the light and the wrap stays behind them. Film does the opposite and competes with the colour it is meant to present. Warm kraft also deepens anything in the terracotta and cream range, and it greys out lilac and icy pink, which is when we reach for grey paper instead. Thai orchids are the exception in this palette, holding their tone against either colour of paper. Imported roses, chrysanthemum and hydrangea all shift slightly with the background, and hydrangea shifts most. Orders start at 2200 THB, we work 9 AM to 10 PM, and payment goes by bank card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PromptPay, bank transfer or cash to the courier in baht. The island is on UTC+7 with no daylight saving. Unwrap it fully at home instead of trimming the bottom of the paper and putting the whole thing in a vase. Kraft pulls water up the inside of the container and begins to break down against the stems within a day or two, and in this humidity that happens sooner than most people expect.