Sunday, November 22, 2009

Cryptocoryne sp. 'Singkep 9'

We rode towards our final destination for day 1 of our field trip, the natural habitat of Cryptocoryne sp. Singkep 9'.

It was another black water stream. The cryptocorynes cold be found submersed in this stream, with their leaves stained and covered by mud-like debris.

The leaves had greenish upper side with red main vein with pallid side veins. The under side was reddish in colour.

pH of the water was low as could be seen below. I tried to reach the substrate under the water but was not able to reach it while balancing on a rotting log over the black water stream which was rather deep, all I could grasp out was the rotting debris of the log.

My friend had found the spathe of this cryptocoryne, refer to his blog. If I were to guess the species, maybe it could be comparable to C. schulzei?
We decided to call it a day in the evening and went to Dabo town to find a hotel to stay. Unfortunately for us, there were some teaching conference held over the weekend and many of the hotels we went to were full. We were lucky that one of the hotel decided to rent out one of its reserved rooms to us.

Below is a photograph of the lobby of the hotel. There were a few detailed maps of Singkep Island and Riau Archipelago hung on the wall of the lobby and we took a few photographs of them as they were good references.

We had dinner in a simple restaurant nearby our hotel. It was housed under a wooden building and the main attraction was satay (BBQ meat on wooden skewers). We had to wait rather long for our satays as there were many people ordering large orders of take-aways. The satays were served together with pieces of ketupats (rice cake) and cucumbers all in one plate, covered with thick peanut sauce and fried shallots. Delicious and very filling! My friend's version was slightly different, the satays were served separately with black sauce and cut red chilli.

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