An enthusiast paddling deep into the lotus field, where mature leaf stalks have grown.
Here is your detailed guide to a lake trip that promises stress relief and an almost 100% chance to find a wild, natural, organic, delicious and highly nutritious superfood: fresh, raw lotus seeds.
You will find them in Chenderoh Lake near Kuala Kangsar, Perak, and this is how you can get there, recognise lotus seed pods that are best for eating, and avoid possible risks while searching for them.
From Ipoh, it is a 40-minute drive; from George Town, it is two hours; and from Kuala Lumpur, it is three hours.
So if you are coming from some distance away, consider an overnighter in Ipoh to enjoy the city’s offerings plus some pre-dawn breakfast before driving to the lake early in the morning.
A corner of this lake has a lotus field 9ha across, according to Google Earth Pro’s measurement tools, and it is only 400m from the nearest jetty by the lake.
To get to the jetty, point your GPS navigator to “Jeti Tasik Harapan”.
A Greater Banded Hornet preying on insects feeding on the pollen of the lotus flower.There is a small car park area, and it can only take seven to eight cars. It is shared by villagers, fishermen and lake visitors, so be considerate and do not go in a large convoy of cars. Try to visit on a weekday too to avoid jamming the space on weekends.
Depending on how the wind is blowing, water hyacinths might crowd around the jetty. But it’s nothing to worry about because the water’s edge around the small jetty is shallow (usually less than 30cm) with a firm, sandy bottom without any mud to give you the yuck factor.
It will be a cinch to just plonk your watercraft right on top of the pesky water hyacinths, which will simply float out of the way.
From the jetty, set out to the left, and about 100m later, turn right and behold the sprawling field of lotuses before you.
As for your watercraft, avoid using outboard engines or even trolling motors while looking for lotus seed pods because you will end up tearing up the plants with your propeller and even damaging your engine or motor after the gnarly lotus stalks jam up your propeller.
So row your boat, kayak or even paddleboard.
At the edges of the lotus field, where the individual plants are mostly young, you will not see many lotus seed pods jutting out of the water.
Toxic snails’ eggs of a bright pink hue.Paddle deeper into the field, where you see lotus stalks pushing their leaves a foot or more above the water.
Here, keep your eyes peeled for the green lotus seed pods, shaped a lot like a bathroom shower head pointing to the sky.
It takes mostly common sense to visually recognise lotus seed pods that are best for eating.
When the seed pods look developed but small, forget them. Give it a light squeeze, and you can feel that the individual seeds are not even there yet; they are still developing.
Every pod will have around 20 seeds and you can see them growing on the top of the pod, covered in green skin.
When the seeds are formed, each will look full and the top of the pod will look progressively wider.
The general rule is that the wider the pod and the more bulbous the seeds, the less sweet and tougher they will be.
They will also taste bittersweet because inside the well-developed seeds are two “baby” leaves called plumules.
Too old: The seeds are mature and ready to germinate. They are hard and bitter. Do not harvest.In China, the plumules are separately extracted and then dried for boiling medicinal tea decoctions, but when eaten, their bitterness may be unpalatable for some.
When the seeds are developed but still young, the plumules are not fully developed and the seeds will yield a soft bite texture and a mild honey sweetness.
For over 7,000 years, lotus seeds have been considered a superfood, especially in China, Japan, Egypt and India.
They provide copious amounts of vital minerals, including manganese, potassium, magnesium, selenium and copper.
They are low in fat and relatively high in protein, with essential amino acids including phenylalanine, tyrosine, leucine and lysine, making lotus seeds an important inclusion in strict vegetarian diets.
Too young: The lotus seeds in the pod that have yet to form.
Lotus seed pods emerge all year round, but depending on the month and how many people venture out to harvest them, you might get a lot or just a few.
If you get a lot, don’t waste them; peel them out of their green skin and store them in the fridge to add to salads, ice cream, or anything else you fancy.
Now for the risks you might face when harvesting wild lotus seeds.
The beautiful lotus flowers all around the watery field contain large amounts of pollen that attract myriad flying insects, which play a critical role in pollinating the flowers to ensure that they bear fruit.
You will find many tiny flying insects feeding on the pollen of every lotus flower, and with them are the Greater Banded Hornets (“tebuan” in Malay), which are more than 10 times larger.
The hornets prey on the little insects.
They can also sting you repeatedly (unlike bees with barbed stings, which can only poke you once) when they feel threatened, and their venom, while not lethal, will give you a world of fiery pain and swelling. Something like 3% of the global population is so allergic to hornet venom that they can suffer anaphylactic shock and even die from a single sting.
Just nice: The row of four seeds at the top of the pod are still small and undeveloped. But the rest of the seeds have filled out their holes. Such seeds are still tender and mildly sweet and juicy.The good news is that hornets only pose a problem for shutterbugs, who will undoubtedly be drawn to the beautiful flowers to try and immortalise them with their cameras.
If you are there only to harvest lotus seed pods, you will likely only see the hornets from afar, circling the flowers.
The other risk is brightly visible because they are coloured in a garish pink that is at odds with nature: apple snail eggs.
This is another thing shutterbugs love, especially those armed with macro lenses.
While they offer delightful photo angles of an incongruous juxtaposition in terms of colour, remember that they are highly poisonous.
Small animals such as rodents or birds will suffer from almost immediate sudden cardiac arrest if they are ignorant enough to eat them.
Do not touch them to avoid cross-contamination; their dangerous “pinkness” will also smear all over your boat, clothing and so on if you break them.
Lastly, where there are insects, there are frogs, and where there are frogs, there are snakes.
But thankfully, any snake swimming around will feel the vibration of your paddling from afar and will flee long before you have any chance of catching sight of them; it makes sense for you to paddle on noisily. Just remember that snakes are deaf (they have no ears), but they can acutely feel the vibrations, so be as rowdy as you like while paddling around in search of lotus seed pods.
No adventure can be complete without the prospect of good food, and you can get that on a lotus seed harvesting trip at Chenderoh Lake.
Just 3km from Jeti Tasik Harapan is the one-horse town of Sauk.
In Chinese, the name of the town is utterly glamorous because it translates into “Town of Life and Longevity”.
Whether or not the townsfolk really live up to the name is left to be researched, but visitors will be delighted to know that there are many restaurants here that specialise in serving river fish.
From a variety of river catfish such as baung, patin and tapah to hard-to-find sebarau (Hampala Barb), kelah (Mahseer) and lampam (Tinfoil Barb), these restaurants dedicate themselves to serving fish caught far upriver, away from human pollution, that offer culinary experiences that are hard to find in dense urban areas.
So there you have it: a simple, easy day on a lake with rewards aplenty.
