We traveled to Chiang Mai, a popular destination city for Chinese travelers and witnessed many things including a beautiful fruit market with many fruits that you don’t see in the US. We saw mangosteen, pomelos, baby pineapples, and of course, the supposedly foul smelling durian.
To start off, I sampled a pomelo and they are very similar to the same pomelo that you may find in the states. It’s a cross between an orange and a grapefruit. It’s large, rather dry and very flavorful. I love the mildly sweet citrus flavor that is reminiscent of a sweet and dry pink grapefruit.
Next it was onto a mangosteen. I had never tried one before, and I have now found out that the mangosteen is often forbidden in hotels because of the purple peel is quite messy and can cause stains. The fruit itself tasted kind of like a sweet fuyu persimmon.
The baby pineapples were not really any different from the ones in Hawaii. Standard pineapple flavor. So if you are looking for that acidic sweetness that is common with pineapple then the baby ones are nice since they are quite small.
Then lastly, I went to tasting the durian. I didn’t notice that the smelliness of the durian. I cannot understand why they are not allowed on the airplanes or in hotels. Maybe it doesn’t get smelly when they pick it early so maybe it wasn’t ripe enough to get smelly, but it wasn’t very smelly to me. Flavor wise, it reminded me of a very sweet pumpkin with a very squishy, smushy texture that I wasn’t too thrilled about. Some people love durian, but I was not one of them.
