Today we did a boat tour of the Salak River, which feeds into the South China Sea. It's a wonderful mangrove ecosystem and the students really applied their knowledge from lecture. There, we were fortunate enough to see a pod of Irrawaddy dolphins feeding amongst the local fisherman. These dolphins look a bit like beluga whales but are grey and measure only 1.5-2 meters long (how cute!). We also saw juvenile and adult female saltwater crocodiles. They are real man-killers in Sarawak so all limbs remained within the boat!
Note: not my photo
The rest of the afternoon was devoted to studying and a lecture on ant-plant co-evolution. For dinner, we went to a local Chinese-Malay open food court and finally tried the famed durian fruit! Alfred Russel Wallace dubbed it the king of fruits but almost all of the students hated it! Some comments:
"It smells like rotting trash in sewage!"
"Ugh it's like fruit that rotted in a gym locker!"
"What on earth....?!?"
"I will never get this stench off of me!"
"It's delicious!" (only me and Meredith)
Oh well...at least everyone gave it a try. Or as the students say, YOBO (You Only Borneo Once)
The students have their midterm tomorrow morning then we'll go explore the Wind and Fairy Caves before ending our stay in Kuching with some souvenir shopping, dinner, and strolling along the Sarawak River waterfront.
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