Oink oink!

The stamens of this Aeschynanthus species (lipstick plant) make for a funny pic! The anthers look like some kinda mutated alien pig half grinning half sneering at you.

Lipstick plants grow in great abundance in some places that I've been to, especially along riversides on large trees with branches overhanging the water. Take a boatride down the Melinau river in Mulu for example, and you'll see lots of them hanging from the branches. Saw a lot of them on a river walk not too long ago, take a look at this blog entry (click here) for some photos of Aeschynanthus species in their natural habitat.

Poisonous but yummy! Pangium edule

See also: Pangium edule

Highly concentrated in cyanic acids but really nice! YUM YUM YUM! LOL All joking aside though, this nut (seed actually) obtained from the fruit of Pangium edule, local name buah kepayang, is highly poisonous and must be thoroughly cleaned, boiled for a few hours and soaked overnight before consumption.

If not prepared well, too much of it and you'll feel a bit woozy (if you don't die!). It's where the Malay expression "mabuk kepayang" comes from (usually used to describe someone high and drunk on love; mabuk means drunk).



Sarawak natives call it buah empayang (buah means fruit, by the way). The poison contained in the seed is used to taint dart tips or arrows for hunting.

If you try it raw and unprepared, it is extremely bitter, and will knock you out with its hydrocyanic acids if you chow down anyway. But cooked and carefully prepared, it is very nice especially with a pinch of salt, has quite a crunchy nutty taste but unlike peanut. This is the only way I have ever eaten this seed. It's the only way I know how to. However, a quick net search reveals that it is also used in many fish and chicken dishes especially in Malay and Indonesian cooking.

Google the species name to find photos of the fruit, tree and unprepared seeds. I didn’t bother taking any photos of them before they were cracked open, chopped up and thrown into boiling water. :D

Trekking on muddy trails (part 2)

Updated, text filled in! To read more about this place, be sure to check part one too (click here).
Will fill in the text later. Too lazy after a big New Year’s family dinner. Feel so bloated, urrrghhh!


I fell! Didn’t get hurt or injured, thank God! But my poor beat-up dslr almost turned into a mud encased camera. Don’t think I can ebay it now, it’s too beat-up from my treks. Will keep it as a backup cam if I do get  the new Pentax KX.


Many parts of the trail were very muddy. So why not walk on the sides you say? Because this is a cut path through the hills, both sides are hard to walk on either because it is a steep fall down one side of the hill, or a steep bank up the other side. Very slippery in my hopeless Crocs anyway. I didn’t know the trail was this bad!


So in the end I had to take off my shoes and walk barefooted if I was to have any chance at all along this mud trail! I will have to take Zentel tabs some time, just in case!


Crocs won’t do! This is a job for the kampung adidas! Repeating this photo from part one.


Finally walked through some of the worst parts of the trail. And what’s this? A bamboo trough to channel water off a natural spring? Good, time to clean my muddy feet, legs, hands, elbows, knees and shoes.


The trail leads through vast farm land planted with various fruit trees, rubber trees and hill paddy.


Bees visiting the flowers of grass.


A young couple, each carrying a small child. The wife is carrying their baby while the father, also walking barefooted along the muddy track, is carrying a bigger boy. Barefoot is probably best on this kind of trail, he can’t risk a fall while carrying his child.


Two village women in kampung adidas nimbly negotiating the muddy track while carrying two basketfuls of durian on their backs. One of them also has a walking/hiking stick to aid her. I too picked up one, it was too hard without!

End of part 2.

Vanda Pachara Delight

Here’s another dark blue vanda in my collection. This color is high in demand in Malaysia, as far as I know. The nurseries that I went to in KL, some were selling them for RM100 or more. In Kuching, they are even more expensive, with nice sized blooming plants sold at up to RM200 or more. Even tiny seedlings are expensive!

View the updated post with a new photo here (click).


Click for larger size

I bought this expensive Vanda middle of last year from LC. It was tagged at RM80 but I bargained a bit and got a more reasonable price. The machine printed ID tag on this one has only two words: "Pachara Blue" - lazy labeling! It should correctly be Vanda Pachara Delight. Together with this, I also bought three small seedlings of the same in 1" pots and they have doubled in size since.



This is its first flowering and there are 8-9 flowers and buds. Not too bad for a first time bloomer! I've always wanted a blue vanda (still searching for a true V. coerulea) and now I've got two! The other one is my compact-sized Vanda Pakchong Blue (click this link).


The tag on the seedlings is correctly labeled. Vanda Pachara Delight.

I am glad I didn’t refuse the offer to buy some seedlings of this clone, even though at the time, they were very small and I wasn’t even sure if they would make it. Well, they have grown nicely and doubled in size. Hope they’ll continue to grow well.

The other seedlings you see in the above pic are of different crosses and hybrids such as Robert’s Delight, Gordon Dillon, Rasri Gold etc. Bought my first batch of vanda seedlings in early 2008 and in 2 years, some have grown quite a bit into nice healthy young plants.

V. Pachara Delight is a cross between V. Karulea and V. Gordon Dillon, another one of my favorite large-flowered hybrids.

Trekking on muddy trails (part 1)

I took a fall during this long 18km hike (total distance on foot) in an area that will be lost underwater in the future. There is a big dam being constructed here, the Bengoh Dam. The purpose, on-paper anyway, of this dam is to provide water to the city of Kuching. But the area that is destroyed is huge! I cannot even begin to estimate how large is the area that will be flooded, but the valleys we saw were wide and long and we walked for 9 kilometers from the dam and that was only to some waterfalls along the river. There are so many beautiful waterfalls here too, it's hard to imagine all that beauty will be lost when the dam is completed.

Most parts of the trails we walked on were extremely muddy! When I fell, I nearly dunked my whole slr into the mud. It was just impossible to walk in my Crocs so I opted to take off my shoes and walk barefooted, using my toes to prevent slipping in the mud. Many in the party fell too, except those wearing kampung adidas! In fact, after about a 7km hike, we reached a small village shop and there were some kampung adidas for sale so a few switched shoes. See this photo for a description of kampung adidas.

I enjoyed the exercise I got, 18km is by far the farthest I have ever walked in one day (I think! As I didn't have any way to know the distance covered before the past year). But some in the party were not really nature lovers who littered and gave the candid response of "Seriously, I don't care." Selfish people like this do not deserve to enjoy the beauty of nature! Just stay home!

View part two here (click this).