Note: Updated March 7, 2019. I keep adding more. Eight years into the hunt and I still haven’t found all 234 Thailand durian varieties. Many are rare to the point of extinction, thanks to Thailand’s huge commercial durian scene dominated by a single variety, Monthong. It’s a situation just asking for an agricultural plague, ala […]
The 10 Best Durian of 2017 – My Year in Review
When I tell you where I ate my 10 best durians of the year, I’m telling you a story about me. “Best durian” are deeply personal. They’re where I was and what I was doing and what was important to me when I ate them. This post, The 10 Best Durian of 2017 is essentially […]
Results of the Heaty Durian Experiment: No One’s Dead Yet
Or I don’t think anyone’s dead yet. I haven’t actually checked. Two weeks ago, 11 daring durian lovers met me at the Ministry of Durian, a shop in Singapore, to combine ungodly amounts of durian with beer in an attempt to put science to the widespread myth that combining durian and alcohol will kill you, […]
4 Varieties of Durio Lowianus in Hulu Langat
Everybody’s a special snowflake these days — maybe especially durians. These times are rift with Musang King and Red Prawn fever, where every durian eater plays favorites, but some of the Malaysia’s most special wild durians get forgotten. Here are four highly individual varieties of a wild durian species, Durio lowianus, that I ate recently […]
The History of Durian in Thailand
This is a chapter from my 2016 updated book, The Durian Tourist’s Guide to Thailand. Here’s a durian mystery: How did the Monthong variety become the most common durian in the world? It’s distinctly different tasting than the durians of Malaysia or Indonesia. Monthong is far fleshier, sweeter, milder, and has a high incidence of […]
Durio pinangianus at the Sungei Sedim Tree Top Walk, Malaysia
A hundred years ago, a nerdy botanist poking around Penang Island on vacation found a new species of durian that fruited on the trunk and roots of the tree. He named it Durio pinangianus, after where he found it, and then nobody cared. Except I guess me. Maybe there was already so much of the […]
