Fruit paradise

Fuit vendor

After lunch, it is our routine to stroll over to the fruit vendor to pick up our dessert. We choose what we like and come back to the office with small plastic bags of fruits like pineapple or mangos for a fruit party. It has become my favourite part of the day, trying out new exotic tropical fruits.

Every street corner in Bangkok offers an inviting display of freshly sliced fruit, exhibited in a glass case on top of a vendor’s reconfigured motorbike. The options will include pineapple, guava, green mango, yellow mango, papaya, yellow watermelon and red watermelon – all cut into bite-sized morsels. It is very cheap too. Each slices cost about 10 to 20 baht. If you go to a fruit market, you can find an even wider variety – dragon fruit, durian, langsart, banana, rambutan, pomelo, jujube, jackfruit, longan, lychee…  and so much more that I haven’t tried yet.

Guava looks very much like green apple, but has a bumpy skin and a unique taste; its flavour is a bit blander than green apple but it’s juicier and has got more texture. I had only ever tried guava juice in Korea, and never tasted the actual fruit before. Now my breakfast always features a high-fibre and vitamin C-packed guava.

I also never knew you could eat ‘green mango’ – the fruit before it ripens and turns yellow. It’s actually really nice this way too; it has more texture and tastes less succulent and a little bit sour, but very fresh. Thais like to dip it in a spicy mix of fish sauce, shrimp paste, chili paste and sugar.

My latest passion in fruit is the mangosteen, a small round purple fruit with a delicate skin. You rip open the purple rind with your fingers and inside are six or seven small pieces of white fruit with a heavenly sweet and juicy taste.

Undoubtedly, I’m living in a fruit paradise, which I aim to explore to the full. In fact, I’m already looking forward to trying out a new surprise Thai fruit at lunchtime today.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDZRcgmIvBg[/youtube]

Emma Lee