It's Good to Eat the King
One great thing about Southeast Asia that I will surely miss is the royalty here. Sure, America has the Pitt-Jolies, Burger King, and Budweiser (the King of Beers), but their crowns are all newly minted. If you want some royalty that you can really look up to, you need to go East. Without further ado, I give you:
Durian - The King of Fruits
After my encounters with Durian, I found a new credo to live by: only show interest in things you're prepared to eat. If you pay attention to anything in this country and it's even remotely edible, it'll only be a matter of seconds before someone chops it up and offers you a steaming plate of it. I thought I was pretty safe looking at Durian. People don't usually try to eat things that would kill you if it fell on your head, are impossible to carry without imposing reckless, widespread acupuncture on the hands, and smell like a full port-a-potty. If that's not nature's way of saying "do not touch," I don't know what is. And yet, people do touch it, with their tongues, in an admittedly ill-advised effort to taste it. You might be asking yourself, "if something smells like toilet, shouldn't that be a good reason not to introduce it to another one of your senses?" Yes, gentle reader, it would be a good reason, but apparently it is not nearly enough to deter millions of people from eating it at every chance they get. Like all royalty, the Durian, though in many ways repulsive is still strangely alluring. I have tasted His Highness, the Durian, on three separate occasions.
1. Bought from Mydin, the Malaysian Walmart. It was already out of the spiky husk and Anna and George got it. I haven't exactly forgiven them for that. It tasted like some previously undiscovered animal with severe gastrointestinal problems ate a lot of raw onions and then defecated something roughly the consistency of butter. If this description sounds terrible then it isn't bad enough. The aftertaste also clung to my mouth for the next several hours like the death throes of that same defective animal.
2. From Ellie's Foster Mom's house. She grew it herself. Not many people would willingly plant a tree whose sole purpose is to produce potentially lethal balls of spikes that smell like melons and raw sewage, so she is a rare and special woman. She was actually fantastically warm and kind to us, but then we made the mistake of looking at the durians in a pile on the ground. Quick as a flash she chopped one (comparatively tiny) Durian over with a meat cleaver and we were off again. The truly terrifying thing about this experience was that it tasted much better than the last one. I hardly gagged at all and after the first layer of skin, the pulp was actually kind of enjoyable and sweet. I still tasted it in every burp I had for the next several hours, but it was a marked improvement over the store-bought onion-butter pods.
3. From the cooks at my school. I really shouldn't have looked at the durian. But even more disturbing than not being able to follow a simple and obviously vital rule was the fact that eating this durian was... dare I say, enjoyable? It was like eating fruit out of the compost pile, and I consider that high praise, all things considered.
Why do people follow King Durian, sometimes even to certain doom? Durian is a rebel king. As a fruit, it's unabashedly weird. It smells strange, looks strange and tastes strange. And you know what? It doesn't care what you think about it. It's not going to make things easy for you, and if you don't like it, that's your own damn problem.
Durian - The King of Fruits
After my encounters with Durian, I found a new credo to live by: only show interest in things you're prepared to eat. If you pay attention to anything in this country and it's even remotely edible, it'll only be a matter of seconds before someone chops it up and offers you a steaming plate of it. I thought I was pretty safe looking at Durian. People don't usually try to eat things that would kill you if it fell on your head, are impossible to carry without imposing reckless, widespread acupuncture on the hands, and smell like a full port-a-potty. If that's not nature's way of saying "do not touch," I don't know what is. And yet, people do touch it, with their tongues, in an admittedly ill-advised effort to taste it. You might be asking yourself, "if something smells like toilet, shouldn't that be a good reason not to introduce it to another one of your senses?" Yes, gentle reader, it would be a good reason, but apparently it is not nearly enough to deter millions of people from eating it at every chance they get. Like all royalty, the Durian, though in many ways repulsive is still strangely alluring. I have tasted His Highness, the Durian, on three separate occasions.
1. Bought from Mydin, the Malaysian Walmart. It was already out of the spiky husk and Anna and George got it. I haven't exactly forgiven them for that. It tasted like some previously undiscovered animal with severe gastrointestinal problems ate a lot of raw onions and then defecated something roughly the consistency of butter. If this description sounds terrible then it isn't bad enough. The aftertaste also clung to my mouth for the next several hours like the death throes of that same defective animal.
2. From Ellie's Foster Mom's house. She grew it herself. Not many people would willingly plant a tree whose sole purpose is to produce potentially lethal balls of spikes that smell like melons and raw sewage, so she is a rare and special woman. She was actually fantastically warm and kind to us, but then we made the mistake of looking at the durians in a pile on the ground. Quick as a flash she chopped one (comparatively tiny) Durian over with a meat cleaver and we were off again. The truly terrifying thing about this experience was that it tasted much better than the last one. I hardly gagged at all and after the first layer of skin, the pulp was actually kind of enjoyable and sweet. I still tasted it in every burp I had for the next several hours, but it was a marked improvement over the store-bought onion-butter pods.
3. From the cooks at my school. I really shouldn't have looked at the durian. But even more disturbing than not being able to follow a simple and obviously vital rule was the fact that eating this durian was... dare I say, enjoyable? It was like eating fruit out of the compost pile, and I consider that high praise, all things considered.
Why do people follow King Durian, sometimes even to certain doom? Durian is a rebel king. As a fruit, it's unabashedly weird. It smells strange, looks strange and tastes strange. And you know what? It doesn't care what you think about it. It's not going to make things easy for you, and if you don't like it, that's your own damn problem.
Comments
Thanks for your confidence in my ability to not slack off. As far covering roti with cream cheese, sure, you can do it, just like you can lick a tray of ice cubes... as to whether it's advisable, well, proceed with caution. Next time you come visit I'll let you give it a try :)