fit for a king
from Jgirl14’s journal
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Years ago I had a durian lolly. It was bad enough to be spit straight out and put me off durian and all things related forever. Today, with Mr Lim’s expert guidance, this changed.
We met Mr Lim at a fruit stall where we were unsuccessfully trying to buy half a durian. He came over and tried to help the stall owner, who spoke no English, understand we only wanted half.
Asking Kboy11 if he’d eaten durian before, our helper discovered that none of us children had. Upon hearing this, Mr Lim, who insisted durian is the king of fruit and that if you like it you are a king, told us, “I’ll go halves with you. I don’t want this boy to miss out.”
While we waited for the fruit to be cut up we learned that Mr Lim, who was born in Vietnam, lives in Australia and has an office in Auckland, New Zealand, just near the airport. He also has six children and loves durian, especially Thai durian. According to this self-proclaimed expert, Malaysian durian is sticky and bitter, whereas Thai durian is drier and sweeter.
When the first piece of yellow flesh had been extracted from the spiky outer armour, Mboy6 was urged to try it. Cautiously he sniffed the somewhat slimy surprisingly-not-overpoweringly-smelly fruit and then nibbled part of the flesh off a large brown seed.
“Do you like it?”
“Yes, I really like it,” M6 answered enthusiastically.
“All right, I’ll give you the whole thing,” insisted a very generous Mr Lim, who refused to let us pay anything at all.
Fears that a whole durian would have been excessive were ungrounded – we polished this one off, with only the very biggest and two smallest girls not being particularly fond of it (that biggest one was Mama, not me; I quite liked it….) And Dadda would happily eat Malaysian or Thai durian, and is happy that now he can legitimately buy whole (somewhat expensive) ones, knowing there will be no waste.
We are LOVING the abundance of tropical fruit…everything from pineapples and oranges to papaya and mango, from green native-to-Cambodia little morsels to bright pink dragon fruit, from longans and mangosteen to rambutan and guava, from pomelo and bananas to jackfruit and……I think I’d better stop!
Tags: children, food, health, postcard: Cambodia
rayres
Wow, look at all that delicious fruit! What does the pink dragon fruit taste like? And what sort of texture does it have…….it looks like it might be soft and spongy? Thanks for sharing the wonderful descriptions J14.
come on Mama – you surely don’t want to be the odd ‘man’ out?
Once you have eaten some durian, the smell magically turns from offensive to attractive – a strange trick of our make-up (I think our Creator has a sense of fun!)
A great article J14, and the pics are absolutely mouth-watering. (The only fruit I can afford over here are bananas!)
ps three cheers for Mr Lim!
Mr H’s favourte fruit in Cambodia was the dragon fruit. Imagine a kind of very mild and semi-flavourless ripe kiwifruit, with a similar texture and you are just about there. It is quite soft – the outer red skin peels off like a rubber glove. It would be superb in a fruit salad, and OK on its own… altho give me a durian anytime 🙂 FadaBear
all that fruit looks delicious! 😀 good on you for sampling the durian! i had a uni tutor (unitec performing arts school 😉 ) who was ecstatic whenever he managed to get some 🙂