Forbidden Fruits

It's 5:25am and I'm sitting on the floor near my gate at Bangkok's international airport a tupperware open on my lap. With quasi clean hands I'm picking at juicy pieces of mango and gobs of sticky coconut rice, a travel snack Visra sweetly packed for me before I headed away from the Vichit-Vadakan house. It was the perfect end to a perfect trip peppered with moments distinguished easily by the fruits we were eating at the time.

I arrived in Bangkok fiending for Rambutan. It is perhaps my favorite tropical fruit and not terribly easy to come by in the U.S. (outside of a can-- which I've never actually tried). When I arrived at Visra's kitchen at midnight there was a bowl brimming with my gems- which at their freshest look like ruby and lime colored Kushballs. Their skin is leathery; in more patient moments easily punctured with a fruit knife but in my excitement a blunt fingernail did the trick. I dug into the middle, split the skin into two halves and popped out the fruit. The interior of a Rambutan looks like a large peeled green grape and it has a dark seed, resemling an almond in it's center. The skin of the seed is a little bitter but the fruit is translucent, succlent, faintly sweet. I inhaled one then another and then exhaled a deeply. It felt like I'd been subconsiously waiting for this moment for a lifetime. Yet only five years had passed.

Over the course of the trip we indulged in fruit daily. Some were the basic basics: cantalope, watermelon, and honey dew. Some were still easy to come by anywhere but tasted better there: papaya, lychees, pineapple, and mango (made better by coconut sticky rice). Then there were the lesser known wonders: mangosteens that look like perfectly round golfball sized eggplants complete with the darling green leaves and stems. The skin is woody and when punctured seeps a deep crimson juice. The secret to mangosteens is on their underbelly. Turn one upside down before cutting into it and a flowerlike bellybutton reveals how many sections the fruit will contain. Inside the flesh is white and pulply and sweet with little hard dark seeds studded throughout. Rose Apple which is spongy like a quince and has the look of a pear from the skin but whose inside resembles an apple. It's crunchy with very citrusy notes. I had forgotten how much I loved eating these. A plate of slices were kept in the fridge and the cool pieces were refreshing. Custard Apple has a knobby exterior, like a cross between Durian and fish scales. The inside is white, sweet, pulpy-- really pulpy-- it is aptly named. The inside does in fact resemble custard. I ate Durian twice, which was one more time than I ate it on my first trip. Durian is sort of a mystery to me. I did an art project in college about it. The assignment was to do a study of something that challenged you. Durian challanges me. It's smell is so jarring that it's illegal in some places. Importing is very difficult. There is lots of lore about Durian. College students whose roommates called the building manager because it smelled like there was a gas leak. At it's best it smells like onions and papaya mixed together. At it's worse it smells like sweat and socks and vomit. You need to eat it at the right moment. It's skin looks like an armadillo and it's about the size of a full sized human's head. If I lived in Thailand I think I could learn to love it. For now I'm happy tasting it once every five years.

Then there were the fruits that I had for the first time: Long Kong's that look similar to a lychee, with the same sandy colored outside with a round whitish fruit in the center. I'm not sure what to compare it to. It wasn't overly sweet, it's flesh was more sturdy than pulpy. Elephant's Ear fruit which I can't say too much about because we found it in our path while hiking in Kaoh Yai. Our guide picked it up and split it open before I saw what it was. It came in two sections (like ears) was whitish, with seeds, it had a woody flavor. I didn't love it, but that might of had to do with it carrying a lot of jungle flavor from the nearby leeches and elephant tracks. Salas were another first time fruit. The are reddish and a very peculiar shape. If a red two inch snake ate a two inch goat it might look like this fruit. It has two tapered ends and a fat middle section though not the least bit symmetrical. And the skin has a very pungent odor. The fruit again is white, pulpy and has dark seeds. A lot of hand washing was required by this fruit. I had to wash my hands after opening each one because the scent distracted from the flavor, which interestingly enough was unrelated. It could be argued that the fruit itself was dirty, we did buy it at a street market at a table next to the pig's head table. The pig's head looked a little defeated by the heat and the vendor was lazily waving at the swarm of several hundred flies that was hovering about the pig's facial orifices.

I love Thailand for many reasons: the people are friendly, the country is beautiful, a surprise storm can hit as you step onto a pier and as you run it will soak you entirely yet only on your left side. The food you buy for $.15 is often better then restaurant food (Chumpohn street market vs. Emporium Food Court or Chinese Business Man restaurant). But I think of the fruit, just the fruit, and my mouth waters.

If someone can figure out how to import rambutans legally (and getting them won't require going to New York City) -- call me.