Remember I mentionned that when we were in Singapore our friends Mat & Eelyn showed us a funny shaped fruit called a durian? Well we had just seen it at stalls, and it smelled….how to describe it…. not appealing (did I mention they forbid it in some public places?). You can recognise it meters away; when we drive with the moto by a street stand that sells it we can smell it. Sometimes I find it smells like propane gas. Anyway, 2 days ago, after Valerie asked me about the fruit, I thought, we really have to try it at least once before we leave Asia. I figured we’d buy a piece of it at the store or the market and if we don’t like it we ditch it.

Well this afternoon we were reading on the long chairs when the nice lady who works there came to us with….a durian! She nicely offered us some, and I took the smallest piece I could manage and Marcel did the same. But she thought that was not too much, insisted that we take more, more, please do! Smiling and thanking, we ended up with about 2 fistfuls of fruit.

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Oh my god! The first small bites were not too bad. But then it was enough to know that we didn’t like it. The lady who nicely offered it to us being not too far away, we ate as much as we possibly could keep down. I know, in a perfect world we would have taken a bite of it and said immediately “oh thank you so much but I don’t like it”, unfortunately I don’t live in a perfect world. The smell is enough to make you not want to bite into it, the texture doesn’t help, it’s mushy we some long fibers in it, and the taste is undescribable. Sweet, sometimes you taste a bitter part, another feels tingly on your tongue like pepper, the whole thing with an aroma of onion or garlic. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Closing the gateway between nose and mouth while you chew it doesn’t help, the taste stays in your mouth and throat and stomach for hours afterwards. I’m not even sure if my stomach can digest this stuff, I mean we ate it over 3 hours ago and as I write I’m still burping the gross smell as if I still had some in my mouth.

Eelyn, please tell me you also don’t like it? Mat?

And to all others: if you ever want to insult someone in a very offensive way without his noticing it: call him a durian!