Serendipity on the spice route | Bangkok Post: lifestyle

EATINGWELL

It was a sensory memory of peppercorns that drew me back to Chanthaburi. It had been 12 years since I'd last been there. Friends whose relatives owned a durian orchard had baited me with the prospect of seeing how this thorny treat is picked. In return, I was to borrow my cousin's car and her driver to take us. They had an ulterior motive that I didn't discover until I'd watched them stuffing durians into all the available space in my cousin's spotlessly clean and fairly new Mercedes: they planned to make a killing selling this much-prized fruit back in Bangkok.

Phaijit Vananunt

I do concede, however, that watching durians being harvested is indeed riveting. Grasping a small knife with a curved blade in one hand, my friend's cousin, a young man, climbed barefoot and ever so gracefully up the wide, sturdy trunk of a durian tree. He wrapped himself around the curve of a thick branch, reached for a durian that looked ripe and tapped it with his fingers before deciding whether to cut it loose. Underneath, following his every move, were two women holding a burlap sack. They, too, listened carefully to the tapping, waiting for the secret signal that only durian experts can interpret. When the right sound resonated, the man severed the stem close to the bark and the heavy fruit plummeted down, landing smack in the middle of the sack.