To Lundu via some Rafflesia Plants

We woke to a very annoying, loud screeching sound, akin to cutting metal, which turns out just to be one of the many things in the rainforest. It even cut through the earplugs. We were eating an, I assume traditional, breakfast of noodles overlooking the sea again when the sun peeked out from behind a cloud. A bloody brilliant sight. Although I immediately regretted dodging out of the shadows, quite hot is an understatement. We had a 2 hour journey over to Lundu today, the hometown of our guide Richard. The scenery gradually got greener the further we ventured away from Kuching and, after passing many bridges and a ferry, arrived at a little traditional vegetable market. We explored this while Richard was organising lunch in the adjacent market hall. After only causing a small scene (Michelle bought some bananas and made a large group of people laugh for some unknown reason) we headed up to the market hall for a ridiculously good lunch. It consisted of rice, a black pork dish, sweet and sour fish, breaded prawns and veggies. I’ve found out I actually enjoy ice tea. I actually accidentally filled a cup of normal tea instead of coffee at breakfast the other day and didn’t vomit. The taste buds are changing, maybe a sign of old age? 

After the food hall we headed to the Gunung Gading national park. It’s massive apparently, much bigger than the Bako Park we visited a few days ago. Here we were met by our guide Antoinette (or Antony as Richard calls her). She was absolutely fantastic, massively knowledgeable, hilarious and very patient of our slow walking pace over the undulating rainforest terrain. After a quick intro to the Rafflesia flower (or fungus depending on who you ask) we headed into the rainforest itself via an unmarked track to hunt down this rare plant. On the way we saw cicadas, which look very different to what I thought, a lizard, multiple varieties of Orchid and some tribesmen fixing the fresh water pipelines that run down from the park. The government has an agreement with the tribes that they can retain their land and keep it as pristine rainforest as long as the government can run pipes for fresh water down from the freshwater sources up in the mountains. They’ve got an ingenious system of twig plugs in the plastic pipes so they can easily check whether the water is running though the individual sections of pipe. 

After trekking (a very slow, steady walk) though the beautiful rainforest we came to the very impressive rafflesia flower. I’m going to make a massive hash of these facts so don’t take this as gospel but it’s what I can remember. It’s parasitic to vines (but doesn’t kill it) so can crop up anywhere, flowers for 7 days a year and isn’t seasonal so they just crop up 7 months after they latch on to a vine, then die, decompose and sprout up somewhere else. They’re basically a 30ish centimetre wide red bulb sitting on the ground, which then doubles in size when it flowers. It’s reputedly incredibly smelly but that’s very much overemphasised. While we were there we met a very excitable botanist from Russia who was giddy when told that one of the plants we saw would be fully bloomed by 9:30 tonight so he’d be able to see it tomorrow morning. Shows just how special a plant it is I guess. 

After this fascinating insight into the rainforest we carried on to our base for the night, the Basaga Beach Resort, the nicest of the accommodation we’ve been to thus far. It’s right on the beach, which seems very popular with a lot of locals (maybe locals), with a very noisy hotel next to us (they were doing some of the worst karaoke I’ve ever heard up to 11 o’clock this evening). 

Tonight’s dinner was at Richard’s cousins restaurant in nearby Lundu. A ridiculously good feast which left us all in food comas for only 150 ringgit (basically just over £4 each). Getting to bed after this I again blessed the acquisition of the ear plugs, which just about managed to drown out the off key blaring of the neighbouring karaoke.