Why Pendolo
Pendolo is a stopover on the long journey from Makassar to Manado, a cross-roads with a few places to sleep in sort-of decent hotels for the tourists traveling from the famous mummies in Toraja to the snorkeling islands up north.
It sits on the shores of Lake Poso, a lake so big that in the afternoon winds whipped it’s waters into decent sized waves. Local tourists sometimes come here to sit on the beach or splash in the shallows.
But now – now Pendolo is turning into an epicenter for durian production. The wide flat valley is full of profusion of baby Musang King and Black Thorn farms. Give it 5 years and this place will have a crazy amount of durian.
So watch out China, Pendolo durians are coming.
Around Pendolo
On our first morning in Pendolo, we walked out from the Hotel Mulia and wondered where Pendolo City was, exactly.
There were some restaurants and convenience shops along the side of the road – most of them with one large lonely Monthong propped out front. Maybe a reject from the warehouse?
But compared to Tolai or Parigi or even Tentena it just didn’t feel like a city.
Looking for a quiet road to go for a morning jog 🏃♀️, we walked off the main highway and within two blocks had made it into open farm land.
Durian Land.
Between us and the mountains gaped vast, wide-open farmland full of baby durian trees.
We started to jog. After one mile, we had only seen durian farms.
After two miles, durian farms.
At the end of 3 miles, when we decided to turn around, we had been running through young durian farm after young durian farm in a continuous stretch of durians. The oldest trees were maybe 6 years old.
We’d seen only one palm oil tree plot, and even that had a perimeter planted with durians.
There was no shade on the road, and by 7:30AM it was a muggy blue-sky day. It was like being at the beach or on the ocean, with a wide-wide sky and mountains in the far distances.
We marveled at the sheer number of new durian farms. Within 5 years, this place would be pumping out the D in huge numbers.
But we also were struck by the incredible proliferous use of herbicides. Every farm we passed had the unmistakable brown stalks of sprayed weeds.
Herbicide in Durian Farms
When people talk about inequalities between the West and other nations, I rarely hear conversations about how many pesticides or herbicides are manufactured in the West but are not allowed to be sold there due to health and environmental concerns.
Paraquat, for example, is manufactured in the UK – but was banned for sale in the United Kingdom in 2007. The company who owns Paraquat is based in Switzerland, where the chemical was banned in 1989.
In Indonesia, the chemical is sold under the brand name Gramoxone and it is permitted for use. Many of the farmers we had spoken to admitted to using it, together with Round Up.
Durian farmers all over the world use herbicides, so we are used to seeing signs of it, but as we jogged along the road it just felt like… more.
Pendolo Durian Export Gudang
After seeing the sheer quantity of durian Pendolo had in the making, I was excited to visit a Pendolo Gudang – a durian collection point.
Luckily, we had some contacts who put us in touch with a small warehouse in Desa Panda Jaya Village, just 10 minutes south of Pendolo City.
We had arrived in the middle season – just after Musang King season, and just before Monthong peak season, so the warehouse was only about 1/2 full.
But despite it’s small size, the owner told us that this warehouse ships over 150 tons of durian every year.
For those of you who don’t do metric – that’s 331,000 lbs. It’s a lot.
The prices for Musang King were crazy this year, the staff told us – 170,000 IDR per kilo ($10.30 USD). That’s more than 8 times the kilo price of Monthong. Who bought that? I asked. Jakarta people – they replied.
Freezing Durian for Export
The warehouse does export fresh durian, but the majority of the durian here gets opened and the durian meat frozen. It had the same set-up as every other durian warehouse we had visited so far in Sulawesi.
I was struck by the rows of teeny-tiny quick-freeze freezers that could fit just 15kilograms per freezer. Some of the warehouse we had visited had up to 40 of these wee machines, as if they had just kept adding one more and then one more and then one more until it was an army of pint-sized quick-freezers.
The frozen durian is then graded, packed into 5 kilogram bags and stored in long chest freezers.
In preparation for shipment, the warehouse also makes their own ice packs out of plastic bags and tap water.
Then, when enough durian has been accumulated, they load the frozen durian into styrofoam boxes, add the ice blocks, and ship it overnight to another Durian Gudang in Palu City – a bumpy 9-hour drive away.
From Palu City, the durians go to Thailand for re-packaging, and from Thailand onwards into China and the world.
You may have eaten Sulawesi Monthong and never realized it.
Musang King Pendolo
I was very keen to see a Sulawesi Musang King farm, as I’d heard there would be a BOOM in a few years when all the trees matured.
Luckily the owner of the warehouse was willing to drive with us about 10 minutes from the warehouse to his new Musang King and Black Thorn farm.
The land was very flat, the farm surrounded by a drainage canal and the trees planted on low mounds.
This year, he said, was the first year he’d gotten Black Thorn fruits on the trees. But just 2 fruits for the whole farm.
Next year, he said, there will be a lot.
Mature Monthong Pendolo Durian
He then took us to a mature Monthong farm about 5 minutes more driving. This farm, he said, had 14-year old Monthongs.
The trees were absolutely loaded with a frightening abundance of thorny fruits.
“Do you thin out the fruits?” I asked, looking at the bunches of half-mature Monthongs hanging together.
“No,” he said. We keep them all.
But it was clear that the trees had other ideas in mind. There were plenty of young dropped fruits around the tree trunk – a self selection and thinning to help the tree survive and put more energy into fewer fruits.
I asked him if he had the same problem with the Monthong not ripening properly that we encountered in Tolai. He said no.
But even these relatively young tree’s had trunks cracking under phytophtora.
I wondered how the hectares and hectares and hectares of baby durian farms we’d seen all day in Pendolo would fare.
Jengkol (Archidendron Pauciflorum)
Along the road in front of each garden, we saw a lot of jengkol trees.
These, our guide told us, would be shipped to Jakarta for high prices.
Did he like them too? Yes, yes he liked them. But they weren’t eaten much locally, because the price for selling was so good.
It was something to think about as we made our way back to the warehouse to drop him off, and then we had the entire day free to wander Pendolo.
Desa Panda Jaya Market
Since it was a Monday morning, and we were already in Desa Panda Jaya village, we decided to swing by the Desa Panda Jaya morning market to see if we could find some Pendolo Durians to eat.
The night before, we’d gotten the tip off about the market schedule in the area, so we knew the Desa Panda Jaya Market happened on Mondays, and the Pendolo Market would be the next morning (Tuesday).
We parked outside the morning market and wandered in. It was very small, cramped, and had possibly never had Western people inside of it.
I was startled to see a cardboard box full of what I first thought were wind-up toys, but turned out to be live baby chicks dyed florescent colors.
People were equally startled to see us. The stares we got were hilarious. One woman literally fell off her low stool.
As I stopped to look at a basket of palm fruits, a middle-aged woman stood next to me and, chattering to the other women about my long braids, took one in her hand and started petting it.
Kolang-Kaling
So just imagine while I was taking this picture, a Muslim women only about as high my shoulder, in full long skirts and sleeves, caressing my braids and telling me how women here just have pony tails, not braids, while Richard looked on in amusement.
What had caught my attention were these little palm fruits in a bowl of water. They were the fruit of the Arenga pinnata tree, a palm tree that is also used to produce sugar. In Tolai, we had just filmed a video about climbing to harvest teh sugar, and I was interested to try the fruit.
But since the basket was covered in flies, I decided to wait until the next market.
Jengkol – Archidendron
Next to the Kolang-Kaling was a bag of jengkol.
I guess the farm owner was right – Jengkol was big business in Pendolo as well. We hadn’t seen them so far in Sulawesi.
Jengkol has a delicious meaty, gummy, chewy texture when boiled and then cooked into curries. It’s very delicious – but since we didn’t have a place to cook ourselves, I hoped we would find some in town for dinner.
Giant Papaya
We did not see even one durian at the Desa Panda Jaya Market. In the end we walked away with only this super giant papaya. I think it is the biggest papaya I have ever seen or eaten.
The woman selling them had 2, and encouraged us to take both. But since we are always skeptical of over-sized fruits, we just took the one fruit.
By the way she smirked and laughed uproariously with the other sellers when I handed her the 15,000 IDR, I had a feeling a papaya like this might actually sell for even less to locals. But it was hard to know. Maybe she just thought it was funny selling anything to foreigners.
Durian Stall at
Leaving the market, we were now very hungry. It was way past time for breakfast.
So we were delighted when, turning right from the market alley on to the main street, we immediately passed a large durian stall.
And while there were some Monthong durians, almost of all of the piles were Lokal.
We picked through the piles, but in the end didn’t find much. It seemed that a lot of the durian had fallen prematurely, and didn’t feel that ripe.
Too hungry and tempted, we still bought a bundle. And…. it was not that great. The durian meat was thin and while it was sweet and a little honeyed, it had a vegetal flavor that was not my favorite. We ate it because we had bought it and were hungry.
And that’s something to remember when you go out durian hunting. Sometimes you get lucky with epic durian. And sometimes you don’t. That’s what makes it a hunt.
Still hungry, and now very hot from the muggy day, we went back to the Hotel Mulia to eat the giant papaya and some dragonfruits on the patio.
A cool breeze blew off the lake, and far away it was raining obscuring the mountains in clouds.
It was a wonderful way to spend our last afternoon in Pendolo.
Pendolo Morning Market
The next morning we walked into the Pendolo morning market and noticed a very familiar looking Papaya.
The seller gave us a little wave. It was the same lady from Desa Panda Jaya the day before. Some of the sellers here must move around to different neighborhood markets.
This market however was quite a bit larger than the one at Panda Jaya, and had a large, new, very clean covered market area.
“Is this place new?” I asked one of the sellers. No, she said, it’s at least 10 years old.
Whereas in Panda Jaya we didn’t even see one durian for sale, the Pendolo Morning Market had sellers with bundled durians at their vegetable or food stalls.
There still wasn’t a ton of durian – not like Parigi or Tentena – but there were some.
Richard started hunting with his nose, smelling each bundle looking for the most exciting durian to the delight and consternation of on-lookers.
Smelling durian is apparently really funny. “It’s sweet, it’s sweet,” the seller assured us. “Fully ripe.”
Although we were definitely drawing a crowd of on-lookers, we didn’t feel quite so out of place as at the Panda Jaya market. The vibe was friendly and more relaxed – curious, but not intrusive.
We ate our one durian, and then headed out of Pendolo City – heading back north along Lake Poso to complete our Lake Poso Durian Road Trip.
Where we stayed in Pendolo
We stayed at the Hotel Mulia in the lake-front cottages with a wide view of the lake and a comfortable afternoon breeze. We spent one afternoon just out on the balcony chiling and it was great.
I both recommend the hotel and also don’t recommend the hotel at the same time.
When the wifi worked, it worked great.
When there was water, we had a decent flow.
But the electricity cut out at random, and we spent a lot of time with dry faucets that hissed and spit when the handle was turned.
We washed our hands and selves with water from the large trash-bin in the bathroom – which was empty when we arrived, meaning no bath the first night. Luckily, I filled it as soon as the water came on again, so we were fine for the rest of our stay in Pendolo.
Pendolo Durian
Is Pendolo a future durian destination for travelers? Probably not.
The export industry is already so big there that few durians make it to the local markets, and not many Lokal Durian trees are left.
But Pendolo is a place that people in the durian industry have their eye on, and will probably be a major source of Musang King and Black Thorn in just a few years. So don’t forget Pendolo Durians.
Finding Durian in Central Sulawesi
Use this map to look for durian stalls and locations mentioned in this durian article.
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