In which Brian grossly overpays for fruit

Let’s talk about durian.

One of the highlights of this trip we’re on, for sure, has been sampling unfamiliar foods. But even familiar foods can be re-experienced in a new preparation or context. For example, eating imam byildi in Turkey made me love eggplant like never before. Other foods, we’re finally able to taste fresh, in the place where they grow.

Durian is a great example of that latter category. For the uninitiated: durian is a fruit, quite large, with a thorny rind and a soft, sweet flesh. It’s native to several southeast Asian counties including Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. It also has a very strong and bizarrely divisive odor. To wit: Brian thinks durian smells sweet and “complicated”; I think it smells like rotting armpits.

Durian, in all its glory (I wish this post was scratch-n-sniff!)

I’m not alone on this one. All over Thailand we encountered signs forbidding the eating of durian in a variety of public places: hotel lobbies and private rooms, the Bangkok metro and elevated train system, several airports. (Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of any of these signs.)

Despite the rather dire view of these public warnings, while we were in Thailand, Brian got excited to try durian, fresh, from a local stand. He’d had it only once before, back in California, when a friend brought some home — frozen and vacuum packed — from Taiwan in her suitcase. So one night in Chiang Mai he stumbled on a vendor selling durian from a card table, set up pretty far from the other food vendors where we ate dinner most nights. (That smell!) Brian paid $15 for a small section of durian, not a whole fruit. “Pretty expensive,” I groused.

“It’s delicious and unique and you can’t buy it in the US,” he shrugged. Fifteen bucks would have been OK, I guess, for a bite of weird fruit if the person who craved it at least enjoyed it. But the Thai durian was under-ripe and utterly flavorless. It barely even smelled. Brian was so disappointed! Too early, he figured, not quite the season yet.

Balinese roadside durian vendor (who provided permission for this photograph)

Fast forward to now, in Indonesia. We’ve seen small durian stands all along the road here — notably always set up a far ways from other food vendors and shops. (It’s like when you bring a stinky egg sandwich to school and you have to sit all alone, exiled to the far end of the lunch table.) So a few days ago, as we drove from Ubud to Lake Batur, Brian pulled over at a durian stand. The friendly guy at the stand spoke very little English, but seemed to say that the price for a whole durian was “three hundred”. Brian assumed he meant Rp 300,000 or about $21. Expensive, sure, but frankly cheaper than what he paid in Chiang Mai, since it was for an entire fruit. Fine, Brian figured. It’s a rare delicacy, bound to be expensive. But worth it! Bring on the durian.

He claims it’s delicious but the face doesn’t lie

Sitting there on the side of road, on a little bench provided by the durian vendor, Brian ate nearly the whole fruit, minus one bite each for me and Joe (verdict: BLECH) and by his accounting, he enjoyed it at least $21 worth. Sweet but also so aromatic and, yes, complicated, with a texture like “pudding”. Or, according to Joe: “snot”. So when it came time to drive away, Brian cheerfully plunked down Rp 300,000 as agreed. The vendor’s eyes widened in shock but he snatched up the stack of bills, nodding vigorously. OK! he said. OK! As we drove away, we saw him shaking the money in the direction of a neighboring vendor as if to say, can you believe this crazy bule? Then, he picked up the durian shell and shook that at her, like: it was even a small one!

Whoops.

As I mentioned above, few days ago we said goodbye to our beloved Uluwatu and headed north for an abbreviated road trip around Bali. First we drove to Ubud, a strange town in the center of the island where rice farmers co-exist with a hippie ex-pat community (think chakra healing crystals and vegan smoothie bowls). From the balcony of our Airbnb we watched a group of farmers threshing their rice harvest. (You can kind of see them in the photo below.) Quick back of the envelope calculation: we watched the farmers thresh and bag more than 3000 pounds of rice and transport it away from the field on that well-known farming conveyance: the scooter.

Near Ubud, we visited the Pura Tirta Empul, a thousand year old Balinese Hindu temple built over a freshwater spring. Visitors are invited to participate in the purification ritual and Joe and I accepted the invitation. It felt a little awkward to don a special “wet” sarong and slip over the wet stones as we entered the pool but as we moved from spout to spout with fish nibbling our feet, we prayed for our upcoming travel, our family, our world. It was a lovely thing for us to share.

In which Brian grossly overpays for fruit

Doi and Doi-er

Uluwatu