The Park is just 5 minutes' drive from Lundu town or about 1 hour drive from Kuching. Visitors can choose either day-trips or overnight stays when visiting the park. As accommodation facilities in the park are limited, hotels in Lundu Pandan and Siar Beach Resort offer alternatives. Beaches at Siar and Pandan are scenic and provide swimming spots.

Gunung Gading is home to the world's largest flower, the Rafflesia, which can grow up to one metre in diameter. When in Bloom, the flower gives off a nasty smell which attracts flies and other insects. The Rafflesia has no specific season, taking nine months to mature and flowering for only 4 or 5 days before dying.

Among the dozen species of Rafflesia in the world, only the Rafflesia Tuan Mudae species is found in Sarawak. It was discovered by the 19th century Italian botanist, Odoardo Beccari, and named in honour of the second White Rajah, Tuan Muda Charles Brooke.

Its colour a brilliant saffron, the magnificent Rafflesia (Bunga Pakma in Malay) battless in more ways than one. Its bud resembles a cabbage and it blooms as a single flower with in root, stem or leaves.

Each flower produces just one seed which can only germinate if it succeeds in lodging itself in the tissue of the Tetratigma vine, which creeps around the rainforest floors. Hence, the Rafflesia is usually floor-bound, feeding from the vine by extending thread like filaments into its tissue. Ecologists theories that animals like wild boars which roam the forests pick up the Rafflesia seed on their hooves and implant it into the tissue of Tetrastigma vine.

The best place to view this floral wonder is the Gunung Gading Forest Reserve in the Lundu district. Along the designated trails are a few Rafflesia sites where one can see the flower in the various budding, full bloom and post-bloom stages. The Forest Reserve provides local guides to bring visitors to these sites for a small fee. According to these guides, the best time to see it in full bloomis during the rainy season.

Jalan Siar/Pandan, 94500, Sarawak

Office: c/o Sarawak Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Lot 4.12B, Level 4, Wisma Satok, 93400 Kuching

Tel: 082-572300, 019-8869478 Fax: 082-237186

http://www.siarbeachresort.com

E-mail: dlpw@streamyx.com, siarbeach@yahoo.com

Pitcher Plant grows in the nutrient poor tropical heat. These plants have special pitcher-shaped leaves, which are designed to trap and digest unwary insects, to make up for the poor soil nutrients.

Pitcher Plants are found in the rain forest around Gunung Gading National Park, Lundu.