The King of Fruits?

We were so lucky to have my little brother, Dave, here for a week and a day. He was in town to speak at a WWF conference about the proposed third runway at Hong Kong airport, and stayed the rest of the week. Although I wish we'd been a little more knowledgeable about the city and local culture for his sake, our blind-leading-the-blind experience led to quite a few laughs.

Joseph and I have been trying local desserts every night, and as you'd expect, sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. One day, we brought home a pint of green tea ice cream to find that it tastes EXACTLY like green tea. Not sweetened or anything, just frozen green tea. The lack of sugar in some of these desserts has been a shock to our American palate - what's the point of dessert if it isn't going to be sweet? Anyway, we're almost to the Mid-Autumn Festival here, so there are lots of mooncakes around, both regular and an ice cream version. The ice cream ones were in our local grocery store in two-packs, so Joseph got a bunch for us to have to celebrate the end of Dave's conference. There's no English on the packaging, so we had no idea what flavors we were eating. The first night, we had two different kinds and they were delicious. The second night, it looked like we only had one kind left. Dave and I shared one two-pack, while Joseph had one from the last package. Dave and I were raving about the ones we were eating, which tasted just like frozen cheesecake. Joseph was strangely silent while eating, but cut the last remaining mooncake into thirds so we could all have a little more. As soon as we bit into it, we knew something was terribly wrong. It tasted disgusting; familiar, but we couldn't put our finger on it. After another cautious bite, we knew what it was - the mooncake tasted exactly like the wet market smells in our village. We didn't know what flavor it was, but it was definitely not good! Dave and I threw the rest of ours away, and laughed about how Joseph had been eating the awful one while we were eating the cheesecake versions and waxing rhapsodic about how delicious they were! We couldn't believe that he didn't say anything, and that he ate the whole mooncake.

A few nights later, we decided to get some ice cream cups in a new flavor we had never tried, durian. We didn't know what that was, but it was made by Kowloon Dairy, and we had had their mochi ice cream before and liked it. One taste, and the mystery was solved! The terrible flavor of the mooncakes was durian, which is a fruit that is well-loved in southeast Asia. Some call it the "king of fruits," but its smell is so pungent and offensive that it is banned in a lot of public places, such as subways and hotels. Our local store doesn't sell the actual fruit, for obvious reasons, but the wet market does, which is why it smells so bad in there. Maybe one day we'll try the fruit itself to see what all the fuss is about, but it will have to be out in the open. I don't want to have to de-durian our apartment!

Durian fruit

Warning sign in the Singapore metro

Dave and Evangeline on the Peak (not a clear day, unfortunately)

Dave drinks a yuan yang, a mix of coffee and milk tea. Surprisingly good!

Dave and Evangeline lounge at the pool