From top left, clockwise: mangosteen, soursop (and open soursop), rambutan (and open rambutan), longan (and open longan), snake fruit, and custard apple.

It’s about time I wrote a fruit post. I think it all started last year when Matt’s sister returned from a quick trip to Vietnam. She told me about how she had eaten this strange and wonderful fruit—dragon fruit. I knew I wanted to try it during Matt and my trip. During one of our first few days in Thailand I picked up a dragon fruit at a local market, but was disappointed to find that it wasn’t very fruity. It tasted more like a watery kiwi, pretty plain for its striking appearance. Not letting the dragon fruit get me down, I was determined not to give up on my quest for good fruits. Bananas and oranges are always good, but it was due time to start branching out.

Things began to pick up in Cambodia where I tried longan, rambutan, and tamarind (in a sauce) for the first time. We also tried a couple new varieties of bananas—one with round black seeds at the bottom (like b-bs) and the other so small in size that each banana could be eaten in 2-3 bites. I gained more courage for venturing out after chatting with another fruit person after hearing about the exciting fruits he’d tried during his travels. Back in Thailand I tasted water apples, jackfruit, mangosteen, yellow watermelon, and dried tamarind for the first time. Tamarind is delicious and chewy; it’s got that sweet and sour thing going on.

In Brunei Matt had a bite of soursop and raved about it, back in Malaysia I tried a soursop shake but still need to try the real thing. I decided to give dragon fruit (also known as pitaya) another shot, particularly since I’d heard the red dragon fruit is far better than the white variety, which is what I’d tried before. The red ones are indeed sweeter and juicier, about what I’d expected when I first heard of them. I also had my first crack at freshly roasted chestnuts, which aren’t exactly fruit, but they come from a plant and taste really good so it sort of counts for this list.

In Indonesia we both fell in love with the crunchy and tart snake fruit as well as re-tried mangosteens, this time ripe and incredibly amazing.

(inside of snake fruit)
The flesh of a mangosteen is very silky, soft, and juicy. It tastes fragrant like a mixture of flowers and fruit, but not too overpowering. I tried jackfruit again, this time in a curry. I don’t really care for it, but the trees it grows on look pretty interesting.

Walking past the fruit stalls at a market in Saigon, I realized that almost every fruit being sold could not easily be found at home. Since arriving in Vietnam I’ve tried custard apple, langsat (it took me a while online to figure out what the name), pink guava, and the infamous durian, which wasn’t exactly bad, just interesting (though the smell in our hotel room after a couple of hours was pretty bad). I think the thing with durian is that it has a really nasty, fleshy, almost custard-like texture.

Paired with the smell it just isn’t so good. Maybe if it was a firm fruit I would have liked it better. Langsat looks similar to a longan from the outside, except that the color is slightly different and it is not round. Once opened, you can see that it is very different.

Instead of a juicy round flesh, the langsat is divided into segments and has a more citrus taste (almost like a really mild grapefruit) than the longan, which is very floral and juicy. Once peeled, longans look similar to the inside of a peeled grape. Rambutan, like longans are in the lychee family. Though they look exciting on the outside (kind of like a koosh ball), the fruit inside has never impressed me much.

Good water apples are similar in taste to a regular apple, only, as the name suggest, more firm/watery in texture than grainy as even crisp apples can be. Custard apples don’t taste like an apple at all, but are delicious nonetheless. The trick is to buy a ripe one—the scales on the outside should be easily peeled back to reveal a white, moist, pulpy flesh.

Black seeds dot the interior, but are easily spit out as you enjoy the distinct flavor and custard-texture of this fruit. I tried a soupsop, which is in the same family as the custard apple, but it was not ripe and unfortunately not very good. The soupsop juice I had though seemed to be similar in flavor to the custard apple, only more tart and tangy.

I’m glad that I’ve been able to taste so many new fruits. It seems like I have tried a lot, but there are still so many more out there. My favorites so far have been: passion fruit (in abundance at the buffet on Embudu), mangoes, custard apple, mangosteen, snake fruit, longan, and langsat. So maybe you’ve said in the past that you don’t want to travel because you don’t care about seeing anything, but you really should visit SE Asia for the fruit if nothing else.

Here’s some websites I used to help me identify the langsat. They have some pictures of fruit I mentioned above but don’t have pictures of myself.

http://www.indoindians.com/food/indfruit.htm
http://www.bangkokcooking.com/fruits.php