Rafflesia in Asia

The area's most popular attraction, the world's biggest flower, was next on our list. Although we had to cough up some dough to take a tour into the rain forest to see the Raffleasia, it was well worth it. First of all we got to ride in an old 4x4 Land Rover (Paul's dream car), then we went off- roading on an extremely bumpy and muddy path into the forest. The one and a half hour hike into the rain forest was great (although we were with 10 other people) and filled with giant bamboo, ginger plants, distant calls of the Gibbon monkey, and lots of towering trees. After crossing a few rivers, we finally arrived at this day's sighting of the giant flower. It looks like it could be a part of the mushroom family - its rubbery thick petals blossom out from a central hollow orb filled with rubbery orange spikes. They grow to be about 1 M across, the two we saw weren't quite that big, but impressive nonetheless. The flowers start as a small brown ball, and without its own roots, it feeds and grows on other vines, therefore it can be in the air, on a tree, or on the ground. It takes about seven months for it to bloom into this massive red flower, which then only lasts seven days. Because of their short life span, the tour company pays aborigines to find a flower every day for that days tour, we were lucky and saw two.