Saturday, October 22, 2011

Trip to Gunung Gading Lundu Sarawak (Malaysia)

Friday 21 October 2011. A short trip to Gunung Gading, Lundu (Sarawak) to see the famous wild Rafflesia flower. It takes about 1 hour 45 minutes drive from Kuching city to Lundu by car at average speed of 80 ~ 100 km/h. The first pictures show the Majestic view of Gunung Gading from the bridge of Kampung Stunggang. In the past before the bridge was built, people used to cross over the river by ferry.


The entrance fees to the Gunung Gading national park is around RM5 ~ RM10 for senior citizen and adults. Apart from that there are climber guides to leads us to the exact location of the Rafflesia flower. Pictures below depicted our encounter along the way during to the Rafflesia site.

Upon reaching the site we can smelled some kind of awful odor coming out from the flower. It is the Rafflesia's natural trick to attract insects and trap them as food. According to the National Park guide, the flower we saw was a male as it has (releases) sticky gels within the petal bowl which is actually its sperm. Otherwsie female Rafflesia doesn't have the sticky gel when blooming. Another thing we learnt about the flower is the transformation to full blossom takes about 9 months which is equivalent to human pregnancy period. That means the Rafflesia started budding around January 2011 before transforming to what it is now in October 2011.


Below are pictures of Massive rocks and strange wild plants that we saw along the way. It is very intriguing mystery to wonder how gigantic rocks got onto the mountain and where it comes from. There is also plant that grows on it feeding from the mineral contents of the rock.


After we got back down from the Mountain, there is clear stream with refreshing water. We got free foot skin cleaning spa as well from the small fish in the stream, it's really nice and enough space to swim/play around. The chalet and accommodation are well built with cleanliness is well taken care off. There few ready made barbecue pit for visitors convenience to roast whatever they want.

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