One of the things we are discovering about Thailand is the amazing selection of fruit. Markets are filled with both familiar and unfamiliar fruits to try. As a rule, what we’ve learned is that all the familiar fruits like mango and papaya taste a million times better than we are used to, making it seem like an entirely new fruit. We thought we would take some time to share some of the fruit we’ve encountered while here so far:
1) The dragon fruit (Kaeo Mangkon)
Here is Ligeia excited about having dragon fruit again after she fell in love with it during our trip to China. As you can see the inside is white with little black seeds:
2) Rambutan (Ngo)
3) Tangerine – believe it or not, this is a ripe tangerine! Notice it has a green skin…
…but inside is just as orange as any tangerine we’ve ever seen. They taste the same too.
4) Mangosteen (Mang-Koot) – this was a delight to try. The outer shell is rather hard so you don’t eat that part, but inside has a really nice flavorful white part.
5) Jackfruit (Ka-Noon) – this can be seen growing on trees all around the city.
6) Mangos (Ma-Muang) – the mangos here come in all sorts of sizes and colors. This one was the largest mango we had ever seen and it tasted like a mango lassi. The best mango ever!
Green mangos are also very popular here, giving a completely different flavor as you can imagine. They are harder, similar to a pear texture.
Many people help their mangoes ripen by wrapping each fruit with either plastic or paper bags, right on the tree:
7) Papaya (Ma-La-Ko) – common fruit but tastes damn good!
8) The infamous Durian! This fruit smells so bad that many hotels and public transit in several countries have banned it. Being adventurous we bought this one to try. It sat in the corner of our apartment for a couple days waiting to ripen when we just couldn’t take the smell anymore so we opened it up. How to describe the smell? Well, it’s like a combination of rotting garbage and the inside of a hockey bag at the end of the season. They say if you can get past the smell, the fruit tastes pretty good. We are still working on that one!
9) Coconut (Ma-Phrao) – numerous vendors cut them open for you right in front of you and pour the coconut water out into a glass. Doesn’t get any fresher than that!
10) Lychees (Lin-Ji)
11) Rose Apples (Chom-Poo) – We remember the name of this by thinking of “shampoo”. This is Ligeia’s newest favorite fruit. (Sorry dragonfruit!) It tastes like a pear but softer, lighter and crispier.
Aroi! (This is how you say “delicious” in Thai and as you can see there are ample opportunities to use it!)
I’m sure we’ve left out several kinds of fruit that we have yet to discover but this is not a bad first week huh?
lots of love,
Mindy and Ligeia :):)
Mike
Forget about teaching English.
Anonymous
fantastic. I have had some of hose here in Tampa… but I am intrigued by that last one….
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WUV WUV
Heart
Wow! That fruit looks amazing! So many I haven't tried.
Anonymous
With so many fantastic looking and smelling ones I would ignore the stinky fruit. Who would want to eat garbage and old socks flavored
food!
Great that you introduced so many new fruits to us that my mouth is watering.
Wishing you a great time and enjoyment of all these new adventures.
Love from Oma:-) – BE HAPPY!
Jewel xo
I saw Rambutan at the grocery store here on Saturday. I was going to try it out but I have no idea what it tastes like (yet). Did you try it?
Ligeia and Mindy
Hi Jewel, definitely go ahead and try them. They are delicious, similar to a lychee. If you like the taste of those, you'll like rambutan.
Have fun trying new things!
Ligeia 🙂
Anonymous
wow