aikimbeh

The participation of these outings was real good. I brought a bas of students to Sepang and Tanjung Sepat. These places are in the countryside. Our first destination was to the longan fruit orchard. We were welcomed by the owner’s son. He showed us around his orchard explaining the whole process of planting the fruit trees. From the information which was given by him, I came to know that the longan plants take two and half years to produce fruits; it takes 40 days for a flower to grow into a fruit. Normally there are 6 harvesting seasons in a year. There are 2 big seasons which fall in March and August. A healthy longan plant could last for 50 years.

They grow pineapples too as their side income. Each pineapple plant produces a fruit once in their lifetime and it takes 18 months to harvest. Just imagine that to grow vegetables it needs only 40 days. So I do not think that RM2 or RM 4 for a pineapple is too much to pay! I consider it cheap taking the time factor into consideration.

Bats like longan. During the fruit season, the nice smells of longan fruits will attract bats. Even bats from as far as 70KM or more will fly over here to eat the fruits; it would fly back to their origin places in the same night. To prevent fruit s from being eaten by bats, nets are suspended over the fruit trees. Longan plant needs a lot of sunshine. It would produce less fruits or not at all if they do not receive sufficient sunshine.

Our second destination was to the dragon fruit farm. The owner gave us a warm welcome. We were served with dragon fruits. From the information given by the owner. I learned that dragon fruits have flesh available in 3 colours, there are red, white and yellow. This farm only plant red dragon fruit because it is more nutritious even though the plant produces less fruits compared to the white ones. Yellow flesh fruit has no commercial value due to its size. It has the smallest fruit among the three. I have never seen the yellow species yet. The leaves of the dragon fruit trees can be eaten by making salad, juice or soup. I wanted to buy its big leaf for planting but the owner insists on giving me free. The owner is such a nice person. Though he was not paid, he was not selfish for sharing his knowledge.

The following schedule was to the tapioca cracker factory. There was a small road leading to the factory; tapioca plants were planted along the both sides of the road. A few workers were peeling off the tapioca skin with a long knife. Then it is being washed and is cut by machine into very thin slices. Those slices are then put into hot oil to fry. They were then given different flavours, such as chicken, spicy or peppery…

The next destination was to a coffee powder factory which is famous in this area. It has a 40 -year history of making coffee powder. It is run by a small family. They are still using very traditional way to produce coffee powder. Wood was being used to fry the coffee. Therefore it needs manpower to control the fire. It took 4 hours to roast the coffee beans. So each day they could only process twice.

Later, we left for the mushroom farm. They grow all kinds of mushrooms. These mushrooms are quite common; we can easily get them in supermarkets or hypermarkets.

We stopped at a beautiful beach for lunch before leaving for school. These eco-touring was so much fun and yet students gained some knowledge from it. Oh! I was overjoyed that I had forgotten to snap more photos for documentation.

Dragon fruit plants

Longan fruits

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Longan orchard

Roast coffee beans

A few workers were peeling off the tapioca skin with a long knife

mushrooms