Post-lunch Durian adventure

Just a quick note - today (yes, I'm actually posting on the day something happened for a change!) after lunch, one lovely guy from Eoin's group named David was pointing out where durian trees were planted on campus, near our walk back to our offices. For those who don't know, durian are the stink/taste monster fruit that many South-East Asian people love, while most Westerners think smell like rotten-onion/fruit chutney. They are heavy bastard spiked cannonball things that grow high high in order to be able to inflict maximum skull damage when they ripen and fall off. So when David asked us if we wanted to go check them out closer... of COURSE we said yes!

Stinky death machine. And a durian.

And we scored a jackpot - these trees are frequently scavenged by off-scholarship PhD students, but a fruit must have fallen not long before we arrived, so there was a beautiful not-too-stinky weapon of mass destruction for us to play with. We found a rock, and ended up opening it and trying some durian right out of the shell.

The look on his face says it all, really.

It was... not good. It was really hard and not very sweet at all - not like the normal durian experience (but also nowhere near as stinky!). It tasted slightly meaty, and had a texture like a very under ripe banana with surprise sneaky creamy bits. But smashing a newly-fallen durian open with a rock and eating the flesh with our fingers while standing on sensitive grass with the army practising a live-fire drill in the grasslands next door was probably one of the most authentic, non-constructed Singapore experiences I've had so far.

David, durian hunter.

Thanks, David! And thanks for not making us take the leftovers home (we plead inability - you aren't allowed to carry durian on public transport, and they have bag-checkers at each station to make sure you don't stink bomb their rail systems).