asia - malaysia (sarawak & sabah) Stamen of a rafflesia.

:)

Looks cool. Can you eat it?

The "edible issue" is a "don't ask, don't tell" sort of thing in Indonesia! It has a mushroom-like texture, is about 8 to 10 inches wide and to me looks like a designer quiche. I'll provide link below to photo of entire flower which can get up to a meter wide.

 

This center section is 8 - 10 inches wide. The blooms are apparently sporadic and infrequent. The local villagers in the jungles outside of Kota Kinabalu, Sabah apparently know where these relatively rare plants reside and keep an eye out for blooms. When there there is a bloom fairly close to the main highway leading out of KK, they ring up the tour guides. Then, during the course of your day trip to surrounding parks, your tour guide will offer you the option of taking a sidetrip to see a bloom adding that you will have to give the villagers a wheelbarrow full of rupiahs to be escorted to the bloom. Actually, it is all handled in a very civilized manner and the rupiahs only amount to a couple of dollars before you add tips for your guide, your driver and the villagers. To me, it was one of the better bangs for my tourist dollar that I've ever gotten as it is a remarkable work of nature. I think you can also arrange day trips out of KK that focus entirely on seeing several of them, some in treacherous terrain.

Actually in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah or in the whole of Malaysia for that matter, we do not use the Rupiah but the Ringgit instead, which converts at about 3.6 to the US dollar.You have got us confused with Indonesia where the official currency is the Rupiah. We are quite a different bunch of people mind you, much more different than between the Americans and the Canadians.

 

Greg Matanjun

Thanks for catching my error on the name of Malaysia's currency. I went to Indonesia after spending 18 days in Malaysia after coming from India, Burma and Thailand, then going on to the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan. By the end of the trip my head was spinning with all the currencies. There are definitely differences between Malays and Indonesians, each delightful in their own ways.