My last Durian Trip to the Mekong Delta was 12 years ago. Since then, I’d dreamed of returning to the same areas to see them again with fresh eyes. As I cobbled together hazy memories of where I had been before, it became clear that I wanted to stay in Chợ Lách District in Bến Tre province.
I remember that 2012 trip being a struggle. We stayed in My Tho, and took day trips out to Chợ Lách. I remember the transport was difficult and hot, finding the right bus was confusing and took a long time (in one instance we went several hours in the wrong direction, despite having written directions in Vietnamese for the bus driver). I remember struggling to find a translator, and that everyone who spoke a foreign language spoke French.
I really wanted this second durian trip to the Mekong Delta to be better.
Getting to Chợ Lách
The homestay suggested we take a bus directly from Ho Chi Minh City to Chợ Lách. The buses leave from Xe Ðai Ngân Bus Station every hour on the half hour, from 5:30AM onwards, and the price was just 110,000 VND ($4.40 USD) per person.
But on this trip, I didn’t want to miss anything. It’s the saddest feeling in the world to be trapped on a bus rolling past durian stands and wondering what’s down there.
Since Vietnam doesn’t allow foreigners to rent cars, we decided to book a taxi with Công Ty Cho Thuê Xe Miền Nam for 1,300,000 VND ($52.00 USD), so that over the 3-hour drive we could holler “stop!” anytime we spotted a fruit stand (spoiler: we didn’t spot any fruit stands).
The Ferry Crossing
Chợ Lách is a on an island in the Mekong estuary, meaning we had to take a car ferry. I never figured out how much the car ferry costs, since it was included in our taxi fare.
The ferry was casual. We rolled on along with 20 or so motorbikes and had barely come to a halt when the boat’s ramp scraped off the cement and we were chugging across the Mekong. When a motorbike loaded with jackfruits parked next to our taxi, I took it as a sign that this trip would be glorious in fruit discoveries.
Arriving to the Jardin du Mekong.
As we approached our destination, the driver turned down a narrow alley along the canal and slammed to an uncertain stop. There was no way the taxi was getting through.
We reversed to the street, and called the homestay.
After a few moments, Van appeared on a motorbike, followed by another man hauling a wooden wagon. Richard hopped in the wagon with our bags, and I rode behind with Van.
We waved goodbye to the taxi driver and set off down the beautiful, shady road overhanging bamboos, bananas, and plenty of durians swinging overhead. It was clear we’d found a durian goldmine, there were durian trees everywhere.
Just 400 meters from the main road, we turned into the magenta bougainvillea-lined driveway of the Jardin du Mekong.
Jardin du Mekong Homestay
I had chosen the Jardin du Mekong Homestay primarily for its location smack-dab in the middle of durian farms. There were durian trees on all sides.
I was also hoping we’d get to learn more about local culture, local foods, and other edible plants by staying with a family in the middle of farmland.
And just as I’d been secretly hoping for, they had a local durian in the kitchen to welcome us. Score!!
Durian 6Huu
It was a local variety, called a “Sau Huu” – which is the short name for Sầu riêng Huu (Durian Huu).
I was confused at first when Van wrote the name for me and abbreviated it as 6 Huu, until I realized that it’s exactly the same as with another type of Vietnamese durian, the Ri6.
The full name would be Sầu Riêng Ri, abbreviated to Ri-Sau, and then written as Ri6 because the word for six in Vietnam is also “Sáu.”
So now you also know how to pronounce durian names when they have the number 6 in them.
It was at a perfect stage of ripeness, the stem still gummy with sap. I really wasn’t expecting to get a tree-ripened durian, as I know that Vietnam also cut-harvests durian the same as in Thailand.
But this is one of the benefits of staying at a homestay in the durian-growing region. Anything that is too ripe to sell at the market gets eaten at home, so the chances of getting tree-ripe durian is much better.
The texture was thick and fine, pillowy like a milk dessert, and it had the lightly sugary taste of drinking sweetened soymilk or eating a custard pudding.
The seeds were shockingly tiny. All of them. There wasn’t a plant-able seed in the whole durian, and some pieces had seeds so small I could have accidentally swallowed them.
It was a decadent, exciting start to our Mekong Trip!
The Rooms
Van led us to our private wooden cottage in the garden.
The garden was just as beautiful as advertised. The winding paths were lined with jasmine bushes, gorgeous variegated plants and ornamental palms. There were jackfruits, bananas, wax apples and more in the garden.
We noted there were at least 3 other cottages in the garden, all inhabited. We were curious to see who would turn up for the cooking class at 6pm.
The room was beautifully-made of carved dark wood and red tiles. The table and chairs looked antique, and the tea set included two delicate porcelain china cups with blue ink. The room had no air-conditioning and felt stuffy even when we turned on a fan with the roaring power of a jet streamer. we sprawled on the cool tiles of the patio to wait for the cooking class and dinner included with our homestay package.
At 6pm we wandered over to an extremely large outdoor kitchen, where Mama Hai Phàng was cooking dinner for a crowd.
There we met the other guests of the homestay – all of them French.
It seemed that not only all of the guests, but everyone in the homestay household spoke French – but not a word of English.
Van told us that his brother Vinh was a French Tour Guide, and this crowd of French people were on a tour package and would leave the next day for Can To.
Only we were planning to stay multiple nights in Chợ Lách, and it appeared that Van didn’t quite know what do with us.
The homestay package included a morning boat tour of the Mekong, so we suggested that we go visit neighboring durian farms in the afternoon. Van agreed.
Mekong River Tour
At 7AM the next morning we hopped into the motorcycle wagon and charged the snaking, careening 1.5km to the Mekong riverside, where a private boat had pulled up to a verdant green riverbank choked with invasive water hyacinth.
Every house we passed had durian trees in the front, in the back, on either sides.
Durians crowded the tree branches overhead of the cement path, the branches so heavily loaded I wondered if they would break as we whipped underneath.
We were awestruck at the magnitude of the season coming.
I knew we were a little bit early for the main durian season, but with this quantity of durian present, and our lucky tree-ripe durian at the homestay, we hoped we might get lucky at the local morning market.
Chợ Cái Gà Market
From the Mekong River, our boat motored down the Cái Gà canal to a tiny morning market on the riverbank. There were several other boats tied to the pier.
I was quickly realizing that although Chợ Lách is located on a fairly large river island, the island itself is bisected by numerous canals, separating the neighborhoods into their own tiny islands only reachable by bridge or boat. Clearly people here still find boats pretty convenient.
I would certainly keep a boat if I lived here. There’s something really pleasant about stepping off the water into a bustling morning market.
The market was shadowy and dark. A group of men sat on short red chairs, smoking and drinking tiny shots of dark coffee.
I assumed that the homestay brought people here on their regular route, but it seemed like people in the market were not really accustomed to foreigners wandering in to buy local fruits and foods.
The boat driver hovered by the pier, maybe expecting us to take a few photos and come back to the boat. He hadn’t said a word to us since we stepped on his boat, and we didn’t really know his plan.
Once he realized we were intent on going into the market, he tied the boat and gamely followed us in.
When I visit a market, I always check out the traditional little cakes and snacks.
Often you can find backyard fruits mixed with sugar and spices, added to sweet soups, or used as dyes or food flavorings. Using Google Translate, we managed to score some cool stuff here to take back to the homestay for lunch (scroll down to see what we found!)
The market abounded in mangoes, but not many other fruits.
We bought a few kilos of the mango, as well as a melon that turned out to be very mealy, and got back on the boat.
I thought we would go straight back to the homestay, but we actually had one more destination.
The Island
The boat moored at an even smaller island in the middle of the river. Motioning us to follow him, the driver set off at a fast clip down a narrow cement path. The sun was getting high, and the path had little shade. The cement looked white in the glare.
At this point in our travels, I’m accept following people around without really knowing where we are going or why. It’s kind of normal. So I wasn’t worried at all.
The air was sweet and thick with the aroma of pomelo flowers. The smell alone made the stop worth it, although the sun was climbing in the sky and the open road was getting really hot.
At first I thought the whole island was just pomelos and jackfruits, but as we wound deeper into the island’s interior, we started seeing durian trees as well.
We stopped in the shade of a small house, where a woman with a patient dog glued to her feet sat with a plate of cut pomelos, a small bowl of chili and salt, and cups of plain green tea.
As she took two steps to put the pomelo on the table, the dog shuffled with her, and shuffled back.
The driver got out a cigarette and sipped his tea, chatting with an older farmer in the house. Not really knowing what to do, we just looked around.
Across the cement path, we noticed an older durian farm.
A man in a soaked blue shirt wandered through garden with a hose, spraying the trees.
He was wearing a face mask and gloves, but the spray misted everywhere and when he turned the nozzle upward to catch the higher branches, the spray rained down on his head and shoulders.
I don’t know what he was spraying, but I assume it was a mixture of fertilizers, insecticides, and fungicides to fight the rampant phytophthora infections we saw on his trees.
We sat in the sweet-smelling shade eating the pomelo and watching the spraying in the durian farm until the driver put out his cigarette and signaled it was time to go.
Lunch: Hủ Tiếu Chay
When we got back to the homestay, we had lunch waiting for us in one of the garden gazebos.
Van had ordered a soup for us from the local vegetarian restaurant, called Hủ Tiếu. I was surprised to find out that even here, in this rural village, there was still a vegetarian restaurant.
The soup comprised an umami-salty broth with thin rice noodles and topped with herbs, daikon radish, fresh bean sprouts, lots of herbs, fried tofu, peanuts, and a piece of boiled corn. It was really good!
Tasting Mủ Trôm & Monthong Durian
After the soup, Mama Hai Phàng brought us coffee and a huge slice of Monthong durian as dessert. I figured it was a good time to pull out my market snacks and ask questions!
This was the whole point of staying in a homestay – to be able to ask questions.
In particular, I was interested in finding out what Mủ Trôm was. At the market, I’d inquired through Google Translate, but the seller had only been able to tell me it was “tree blood.”
In fact, Mủ Trôm is made out of the tree resin of a Sterculia foetida. I’d definitely seen the trees around – they have striking red fruits that gape open to show small black seeds arranged like teeth – but had never known what people do with them.
The resin had a gummy texture and a flavor almost like peaches or nectarines, and since it’s believed to be “cooling” on a hot day, I drank it down.
The Neighbor’s Durian Farm
In the late afternoon Van sent us around the corner to visit his neighbor’s durian farm. We walked there by ourselves, a short distance of maybe 2 minutes, after a few minutes he followed us on his motorbike.
The farm had trees as old as 40 years, but many had been re-grafted with skinny arms to grow Musang King.
I was interested to see canals sluicing the orchard into long rows, criss-crossed with narrow cement bridges. It was the same style as the ancient durian gardens of Nonthaburi.
They were growing Monthong, Ri6, 6-Huu, Musang King, and of course, new grafts of Black Thorn. The trees were full of fruits, but none seemed quite ready.
But as we trooped past the farmhouse to head back to the road, someone opened the kitchen door. She had Ri6 durian.
Ri6
Ri6 is the main commercial variety in this region. She charged a high-ish price, but since she’d let us wander all over her garden (and we really wanted the durian 🤭) we didn’t feel like haggling.
The Ri6 was sweet and nutty, with a good rounded flavor, but a slightly uneven texture. Pieces of the blackened skin flaps also signaled of water distress. But overall, not a bad durian for early in the season.
And delicious enough to get excited about exploring around the region more on our own!
Summary: Jardin du Mekong Durian Trip
We stayed for 3 nights at the Jardin du Mekong. We spent one day hanging around the homestay. The second day we borrowed Van’s motorbike and headed out for a day’s adventure.
The homestay was a comfortable, serene place to come back to after a day on the bike. All the amenities functioned, and there was good food on the table for us at every meal.
Clearly, if you come at the right time there is also easy access to durian from the neighboring farms, and Van could definitely hook you up.
However, as I’d remembered from my first trip, it wasn’t that easy to communicate in English. Most people spoke French as their second language. So on my next trip, I’ll definitely plan to find an English-speaking guide beforehand so I can learn even more about the region, the culture, and Mekong durian.
Vietnam Durian Hunting Map
Want to explore Vietnam for durian? Here’s some of the places we’ve been:
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