And For My Next Great Feat of Courage...

It had been almost 3 months in Malaysia, and time to start checking things off of my "to do in KL" list.  Close to the top was: try durian!

I mentioned this in passing to some coworkers, who surprised me by organizing a durian and bak kut teh (Malaysian Chinese pork dish) evening.  Cool!

We went to Durian BB, a friendly-looking chain that served all things durian.

It was like a big open-sided hut with tables and chairs, quite cute.

On the table were some bottles of water, wet naps, and plastic gloves - which you can wear if you don't want your hands to smell of durian.

Here, our fearless leader is having the restaurant hostess walk him through the durian selection process. There were two different kinds on offer - XO, which tastes more bitter (and is cheaper), and something-fox (can't find the name online now) which tastes sweeter, and has exploded in popularity - and price - since the Chinese have developed a taste for it.

We had an option to get a durian tasting platter, which featured a variety of different types;  but we opted to get one full fruit of each of the two varieties on offer, which they said would be a good amount for the 8 of us.

While we were waiting for all of our group to gather, I noticed that they also were selling mangosteens, which I had also never had.  So we got a bunch, and I was taught how to eat them.  I was extra curious, as many hotels have signs in them "no durian or mangosteen".  I know that durians stink (boy, do they!), but mangosteens?  Apparently they stain a lot, like beets.  

However, I didn't notice any of this staining action.  To open a mangosteen, you press on the stem to pop it off, and then press on the fruit to crack its outer "shell" open and get at the inner flesh - which is delicious!

Our durians arrive!  Little gushy alien pod-brains.

My first taste... haha!  It was actually interesting - mushy in texture, and the taste wasn't an immediate "eew", it took a little while to process it and have my brain be like "good, or bad?  good or bad?"  Landed on "bad!".  But I can totally see how this is an acquired taste!

Everyone chowing down.  I did good, and tried both types, could tell the difference, but yea, not for me...

Afterwards we went for bak kut teh - the two bowls at the top are the "wet" and "dry" versions and at the bottom is just a regular-broth soup.  These were served with individual bowls of rice.  The taste of the broth was a bit medicinal (as I was warned in advance), not bad;  but as a spoiled American I had a hard time with the various meat types - not used to eating intestines and various other animal parts and wasn't quite feeling up to trying...  But the bits of regular pork meat were pretty tasty.

This trip fell on a Thursday, which for Akhil is a vegetarian day - here he's not too pleased at his veggie and tofu meal option (which, btw, was quite tasty - I had some of that :)