Eating Durian

Durian is pretty much the national fruit of Malaysia, which Troy and I haven’t been able to figure out why. That stuff literally smells like rotting garbage. Awful. Just plain awful. Every time we walked by it in the grocery store it just made us sick to our stomachs and we would comment that we could never eat the stuff. Yet so many people we came across extolled the deliciousness and the divinity of the fruit. The blind lady who I got massages from was constantly encouraging me to taste durian and telling me off all the different types of food made from it. They have durian ice cream, durian truffles (i tried one and the chocolate overpowers the durian, thank goodness), durian candy, durian milkshakes, durian chips, durian pastries, durian cakes, durian crepes and all sorts of other things.

The thing I can’t quite figure out is how durian came to be a staple of Malaysia cuisine. The stuff just smells awful. Rotting garbage, raw sewage, decomposing bodies. Each of these describes what durian smells like. So why on earth would someone think this was something they would want to put in their mouth? WHY????? I can understand someone starving and eating this as a last resort, but the fact that it has become so popular and desired just completely astounds me. This stuff smells like death. Why on earth would someone who is not starving to death voluntarily put this in their mouth? Seriously, why?

But, since it is so popular and it is such an everyday food in Malaysia, no Malaysian experience is truly complete without eating durian. Because of this, I made the determination that I was going to try durian before we left Malaysia. And Tuesday night, we did it. We were in Bukit Bintang donating some computer monitors to the refugee school I teach at and saw this hawker selling durian. We knew that if we didn’t try it then, we never would. This video is proof of our venture and a testament to our bravery.