The post I know everyone has been dying to read, the post about fruit.
I just thought our experiences with fruit in Thailand were pretty funny.
When the Karen Hill tribe couldn’t figure out what to give us instead of coffee, we got fruit instead. But like, a lot of fruit.
We got a whole bag of Mangosteen, a whole bag of Rambutan, and a whole bag of Lychee.
The Fruit Lineup
Mangosteen looks like a small purple apple on the outside, but inside it has soft white segments that taste sweet and slightly citrusy. It ended up being our favorite.
Rambutan is the one that looks like a red sea creature covered in soft spikes. Once you peel it open, the fruit inside is juicy and mildly sweet.
Lychee is probably the most familiar to Americans, as it’s a flavor used in some hard candies and drinks. It has a thin, bumpy shell and a floral, sweet flavor.
We tried one of each, and they were good! I preferred the mangosteen and the rambutan over the lychee. Chris liked the mangosteen and didn’t much care for the others.
Dome, our Chiang Mai tour guide, urged us to eat more, so we ate a bit more.
He urged us to eat more still, and well, we were fruited out!
The fruit was delicious. We just aren’t accustomed to eating such large quantities of it! Honestly I was surprised they expected it. They must eat a ton of fruit to stay cool in the heat?
The Durian Experience
After our tour of James Bond Island, before taking us back to our hotel, our EXO Travel Thailand tour guide had the driver circle around looking for a fruit stand selling the freshest durian.
There are rules in a civilized society. Thailand has some pretty strict rules about durian.
You can’t have it in taxis or other public transportation. You can’t bring it in your hotel or other public spaces. You can’t have it anywhere in public where the smell is going to linger.
We weren’t even allowed to eat it in the van our tour guide brought us in.
If we were gonna eat it, it would have to be outside by the fruit stand, with no leftovers brought back.
Apparently you can smell durian from streets away, but what we got was really fresh, so we couldn’t smell it until we got close. The smell actually didn’t even bother me, but I guess it can get pretty bad as it ripens.
Tour guide cracked it open for us. It’s like a pudding, I’d have preferred having a spoon. I didn’t want to touch it with my fingers because I didn’t want a lingering smell on them, but we had no choice. So we dipped our fingers in the creamy fruit and had a taste.
The initial taste was sweet, and I could understand why people claim to like it.
Then the aftertaste hit.
You know the smell of a skunk that just sprayed your dog, and now your whole house is uninhabitable?
Imagine what that smell from the skunk would taste like.
That’s the taste of durian.
I was happy for the experience and I’m glad I can say I tried it.
Chris not happy. Even today, if you ask him, he’ll say he wishes he didn’t try it.
Even more fruit
During our travels in Krabi, our tour guide had asked us what fruit we’d tried in Thailand so far. We mentioned briefly our experience with the Karen Hill tribe and that our favorite had been the mangosteen, though we by no means embellished our feelings about it.
After the durian experiment we headed back to our hotel. As we were dropped off, our tour guide surprised us with… can you guess? A whole bag of mangosteens.
It was stressful enough finishing off the three bags of fruit in Chiang Mai! And now we were heading home in a couple days. We couldn’t take the fruit on the plane, and there’s no way we’d finish the bag in time. But what do you do?
So we left it in our hotel room. Hopefully a staff member got to enjoy it before the heat from the room spoiled it.
The “Mother” Fruit
While we were in Thailand, we never actually referred to the mangosteen as mangosteen. We’d never heard of it before, and we only knew it by the label provided to us. When we were with the Karen Hill tribe, Dome referred to it as the “Mother” fruit.
So that’s what we called it. When we told our tour guide in Krabi about the “Mother” fruit, he knew exactly what we were talking about. No one corrected us on the name.
But when we got home to Utah, no one knows what the “Mother” fruit is. If you Google it, a different fruit, unlike anything we had, shows up. So it actually took a bit of research to figure out what this mysterious “Mother” fruit even was.
Was the experience even real? Was it a dream, or a figment of our imagination? It sure felt real having all that fruit we didn’t know what to do with!
We finally figured out the fruit is called mangosteen. And it turns out mangosteen is also known as the “Queen fruit.”
Mystery solved. I wonder if “Mother” was the closest translation Dome had?
Interestingly enough, Durian is considered the “King fruit.”
Those mangosteens really were amazing- and enjoying ONE here and there is ideal for us. Just not an entire bag at once.
Up Next
We were done with official tours in Thailand and we were free to explore Krabi on our own.
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