Orchid Travel

Today, "In Search of Paradise", Kew's ninth orchid festival, opens at the Royal Botanical Gardens. Besides half a million flowers cascading from trees and clustering around rock pools in the steamy Princess of Wales Conservatory, an exhibition brings to life the journeys of the Victorian hunters. Many of the expeditions started in Singapore, which is where, in the run up to the exhibition, I was heading on my own search for these much sought-after plants. After flying into the state-of-the-art Changi airport, one of the first things I spotted inside the terminal was a display featuring the national flower, Orchid Vanda `Miss Joaquim', which had survived the fondling of many a tourist, wrongly convinced they were made of plastic. Singapore today is a modern metropolis, planted with high-rise glass and steel. However, for all its soaring skyscrapers, it is still a haven of tropical vegetation. The roundabouts are imaginatively planted with wonderful huge palms, exotic cannas and giant bamboos, which thrive in the conditions of heat and high humidity. It used to have a wild, more jungle-like feel but most trees were pruned and cleared of the wild epiphytic climbers in the Sixties. It now looks far more manicured, but is still quite a shock for a lad who's just got off the plane from cold, grey London. From Singapore I was to journey to Malaysia by boat, on a Swan Hellenic Discovery Cruise, but before we set sail for Kuching we had a brief excursion to the Singapore Botanical Gardens with Martin Sands, a botanist from Kew and our resident lecturer on board.

The warm, tropical rain teemed down, but in my role as a not-so- intrepid orchid hunter there was only one place I was going. The short coach ride through Singapore to the gardens only reinforced my first impressions of the city; the fronts of offices, schools, and shops beautifully presented in what can only be described as a visual form of national pride.

When we got off the coach the intensity of the rain increased and we were all drenched within minutes. In fact, we were viewing the rainforest section in the very conditions necessary for these plants to survive. Some of the specimens are breathtakingly huge. There were trees zooming skywards with buttressed roots bigger than a man, and ferns the size of cars.
The gardens opened up into the dramatic "palm valley", which led us to the orchid garden. It was immediately obvious why, for the Victorians, these plants were the jewels in the jungle. The array of different sized, colourful waxy blooms simply sang out of the rain and demanded your attention. There are more than 3,000 hybrids on show, displayed in incredibly imaginative ways; hanging in little wooden boxes with charcoal placed around the base of the plant, stacked in bird's nests, and the taller varieties were even grown as climbers, pinned up against a support. Martin Sands pointed out a few rarities, including a Jade vine in flower, which had huge verdigris- coloured blooms dangling down like a bunch of bizarrely shaped grapes. The botanical gardens alone could keep the keen gardener busy for a week. Unfortunately we had a schedule to keep. We set sail that night, heading for Kuching in Malaysia about 425 nautical miles away. Kuching was a regular destination for the orchid hunters, being a good base from which to explore the lowland rainforests near the equator which are host to many orchid species.

In FW Burbidge's brilliant Gardens Of The Sun (published 1880), he describes how tough it was to fight through the dense undergrowth in the heavy heat, guided by (and trusting in) the Muruts, one of the last head-hunting tribes. They thought that human skulls were the most "valuable property" and would often raid nearby tribes for their prized heads. There were other dangers too. The explorers had to face poisonous snakes, tigers and the risk of being poisoned by tribesmen who "are peculiarly addicted to poisoning anyone who may be disliked by them". Mr Roebelin, a hunter from St Albans looking for orchids in the Philippines, managed to narrowly avoid being killed by warriors after a dispute broke out. That same night there was a huge earthquake and the tree house he was sleeping in was pulled apart, with people falling to the ground beneath him. As he lay shivering he saw a giant lilac and cinnamon flowers on the tree above - the Vanda sanderianum! What a way to discover a new plant.
Burbidge's passion for orchids comes through in his chronicles. "High up overhead the most lovely orchids hold their court in the sunshine: here they are really `at home' to their winged visitors." He describes how it feels to see orchids in the wild and marvels in their diversity. "There gleaming in the sunlight, like a scarlet jewel, beneath those great leathery aroid leaves, is a cluster of tubular aeschynanthus flowers." Success in collecting the orchids was everything, as a hunter called Micholz found out. After narrowly escaping being eaten by cannibals, his ship full of orchids was set on fire and all were lost. He sent a telegram home saying, "All burnt - what do?" The orders came back: "Go back - Sander." He responded: "Too late - rainy season." But, "Go back" came the definitive reply. He missed the last boat for months, but eventually returned home on a whaling boat.

Fortunately our vessel, the Minerva, was far more luxurious than a whaling ship. The next day we spent at sea and were introduced to our four guest speakers, here to talk about their specialist subjects throughout the two-week trip from Singapore to Malaysia and Brunei, the Philippines, and the final leg to Hong Kong. As well as Martin Sands' talks on the indigenous flora, there was the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev Richard Harries, examining the religion and culture of the area; Mrs Hanne Sutcliffe, who gave a passionate introduction to the anthropology of the area; and Sir Peter Heap, whose speciality was the history of the local politics and royal family.

When I woke the next day we had arrived in Kuching and it dawned on me that a cruise is the perfect way to enjoy this kind of trip. You stay in the same room every night without having to pack and un- pack, the food is consistently good and you never have to worry about catching a plane, train or bus. Our inland trips were planned with military precision. It's not dissimilar to how the smart Victorian travellers would have journeyed, by steamer, with their huge trunks and fleets of servants.
Unfortunately, I wasn't continuing on the next leg of the trip. It was my last day and I had to fly back to Singapore, but I was determined to make the most of the time I had left. Taking a whirlwind tour of Kuching in the afternoon, I stumbled upon a small sign for "The Kuching Orchid garden", across the glassy Kuching river. A short water-taxi ride took me to the most amazing collection of orchids. There were hundreds of varieties, most of them in full flower.

For me, coming across a wonderful slipper orchid was almost as exciting as discovering it for the first time in the wild. It didn't have a label on it, so I asked a Malaysian worker what it was. It turned out that he was an orchid expert and we got chatting about the different varieties and how best to care for them. He knew of some other local gardens with great displays of orchids and asked me if I wanted to go and see them. If only, if only, but I had run out of time. He told me to call him when I go back to see his favourite gardens and handed over his business card - which seemed to suggest a rather diverse career:

The morning of my flight home left me just enough time in Singapore to go to their wholesale flower market to pick up a couple of bunches of cut-stemmed and cut-price orchids, which were carefully boxed for me. The flight home may have been a long one, but at least I had something to show for it and my cut stems are still going strong three weeks later.

TRAVELLER'S GUIDE

"In Search of Paradise" at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew (020- 8332 5655) runs from 15 February-16 March. Orchid evenings on 19 and 26 February and 5 March can be booked with Ticketmaster on 0870 160 0539, price pounds 15. Special dinner packages in Kew's refurbished orangery are available at pounds 40. For further details visit www.kew.org. "In Search of Paradise" is sponsored by Swan Hellenic Discovery Cruises (0845 3674 632, www.swanhellenic.co.uk).

Author Joe Swift was on the Lands of Natural Wonder Cruise, a 16-day trip which costs from pounds 3,870