Saturday, December 31, 2011

Durians, durians, and more durians!

Got to get this entry out before the new year arrives! The durian season is nearly over here in Sarawak, still see some fruits being sold by the roadsides but not many. Shot these photos recently but didn’t have the time to finish this entry until now! All photos taken with my Sony X10 Mini Pro cameraphone so not the best quality but pretty decent for a cameraphone.

durians_sarawak_market_7
This small Perodua Viva (or was it a Kancil?) was driven by a durian seller, he had unloaded some of the fruits for sale before I took this photo. His car was initially packed nearly to the ceiling with durians!! I shudder to think what would have happened had he had to slam on the brakes in an emergency. Snapped this with my cameraphone but when I got home found out the file was corrupted and couldn’t be transferred to my laptop. Ended up snapping a photo of the picture displayed on my phone which explains the really poor photo! :)

durians_sarawak_market_8
Durians for sale at the Serian Pasar Tani (farmers’ market). Lots for sale the day I took this photo but the other photos couldn’t be transferred from my phone (corrupted files).

durians_sarawak_market_2
“Wild” durians (red-fleshed) for sale at a farmers’ market. See: http://www.sarawaklens.com/2011/12/red-fleshed-wild-durians.html

durians_sarawak_market_6
Durians for sale at the Serian farmers’ market. These aren’t your regular sweet durians but are the “wild” or yellow, thin fleshed variety. I’m guessing Durio kutejensis, see photos below.

durio_sarawak_market_4
More “wild” durians sold by a different vendor (Serian market). I’m no durian expert and I’m really just guessing based on the shape of the fruits and appearance of the flesh, but this could be Durio kutejensis. 

durians_sarawak_market_5
Close up of the flesh. We did buy a few fruits, the flesh is mildly sweet and the smell isn't as overwhelming as your "regular/commercial" durian but I can understand why they're more of a novelty fruit and less popular. They're not as tasty.

durians_sarawak_roadside_sellers_3
Iban women along the Kuching - Sri Aman road selling durians collected from their farms by the roadside.

durians_sarawak_roadside_1[3]
The women were selling their durians in tamboks such as this. They refused to sell just one or two fruits but insisted we buy the entire tambok; asking price for this one was about RM45 with about 6 or 7 fruits in it.

Our own tree produced just TWO small fruits this year, pretty sad! I took some shots of the last durian to drop but have forgotten where I saved the files! LOL Oh well… I’m really hoping we get more fruits next year. I’m no fan of durian but I’d eat the fruits from our own trees as they’re very tasty!

No comments:

Post a Comment