There are 15+ durian carts close to our house on Street 60.  We see buses of people stop everyday along the road and get durian.

Durian smells like someone put a lot of fresh, sweet fruit into a big pile, and then topped it with a lot of rotten fruit and manure.  Sometimes I can smell the sweet part and it will quickly change to rotten, and back and forth.

The ones we see here are typically between the size of a bowling ball and football.  Durian flavor is everywhere here. Chips, crackers, popcorn, gum, candy, ice cream, shakes.

Here is a picture of durian I grabbed from the internet.  A spiky fruit with pods on the inside.  It looks similar to jack fruit, but the inside is much different.

This is our durian. Doesn’t it look delicious?!!

The yellow outside is a thick, firm layer that has a bit of a sweet taste.  It’s not terrible.  Then you get the inside. The mushy middle is white, and has the texture of soft cream cheese  or lumpy custard… a boiled onion, a soft rotten apple.  The taste is shocking.

Phaedra tried it first and she didn’t like it. So then we got the phone out to take a picture of Annika trying it.  She made a audible gasp like she had been hit in the stomach – it never made it to her stomach, she spit it out.

“It tastes like completely rotten mushy onions.” —Andrew Zimmern, Host of Bizarre Foods

So then they decide to video me trying it. I took a bit of a big bite… Because surely Annika was being a dramatic teenager.  The initial taste is not bad, since you are tasting the outside fruit before you hit the burning, mushy, rotten, mouth coating, custard like inside.  My reaction was the same.

The taste lingers for a while as well…