Thailand: land of something, anything other than avocado

I think I mentioned this at some point in the past, but the idea of Thailand as the “Land of Smiles” is overblown. I don’t mean that as an insult. It’s just that the reality is Thai people are human beings and like all human beings they are living lives that are rooted in reality. Some days are good, some bad, and not every moment warrants a smile. Do I encounter more smiles on a daily basis in Thailand than I do in, say, Japan? Of course, but that’s not saying much. This is the land of Thai; not the land of Disney.

While Thailand may not exactly be the land of smiles, it’s absolutely the land of fruit. There’s so much fruit here some of it doesn’t even look like fruit, much less edible. Take a look at this:

Fruit? I thought it was potatoes but it is long-kong. After you peel the skin off this is what you eat:



Does these look edible?



Maybe if you’re a wizard. After you peel rambutan here’s what you’ve got:



I knew lychees existed before I got here but I guess I didn’t know what they really look like:



After peeling this is what you eat:



And then there is durian. Purportedly a fruit, it’s so controversial you’re not allowed to bring it on the metro, in cabs or in our apartment building. I do not have a picture of durian because I won’t get close enough to take one. In short, durian stinks. Spectra tried ordering a durian ice cream once and they wouldn’t sell it to her until she sampled it first. She did not finish the infinitesimal sample scoop. Durian: the fruit so funky they won’t even sell it to you when you ask for it.

I tutor a kid across the street and every time I work with her she sends me home with a bag of fruit. Her name is not Pomelo but that will do. The fruit onslaught is in part because her family knows I’m vegetarian and, as is so often the case with meat eaters, they can’t imagine I eat enough food to be full and healthy. So this fruit attack is their plan to keep my stuffed. It’s appreciated because without their insistence Spectra and I would never have tried many of Thailand’s more alien fruits. Man, I've got to tell you, the fruits above--and many others not pictured--are all ridiculously delicious. Fresh lychee might be the most delicious thing I've ever eaten. Seriously. It's surreal.

Despite the endless array of fruits in every size, texture, odor, and flavor; one fruit that is not so popular in Thailand is avocado. Pomelo had never tried avocado and found the idea off-putting. She had the sense that avocado is a powerfully strange fruit: funky smelling and tasting. I assured her that’s not the case. That avocado actually has a mild taste and very little odor. Pomelo was skeptically. No she’d never tried one. No she’d never knowingly been in the presence of one. And yet, somehow Pomelo knew I was wrong.

A couple days later I walked into the grocery store and what did I find front and center in the produce department? Of course. Maybe the avocados have always been there and I hadn’t noticed because I wasn’t primed to. In any event, I bought an avocado and perhaps stumbled upon the first reason they aren’t popular: one avocado was about $3. Whatever, I wasn’t making guacamole.

I need to step aside and set a scene before I continue…

Pomelo’s grandma lives across the street from our apartment building and her family runs a little open air restaurant in, what’s in effect, the walled front yard. The restaurant seats perhaps a maximum of 35 people. This where I tutor Pomelo and whenever we’re working together there’s a swirl of a family bustling around. Pomelo’s mom, dad, grandma, and at least two aunts. There are also two  adult women (ages… impossible to determine, maybe 30 and 40) who work at the restaurant; one of those women has two kids aged 12-ish and 10-ish who are often there; and on top of all that there's a steady stream of neighborhood folks flowing in and out. In other words, I tutor Pomelo in a touching  coming-of-age dramaedy coming to an independent film festival near you. I’ll let you guess which character I play. For the record: this restaurant is my hands-down favorite place in Thailand. Its absence from my life will haunt me.

Not a great picture, but this is the pretty much the whole restaurant.

 So that’s the scene I walked into with an avocado in hand.

Pomelo spotted the avocado right away and her reaction was unabashed repulsion. She brought a plate and knife and then watched on with morbid curiosity as I cut the avocado and startled at the point I whacked the seed with the knife to extract it. I cut the avocado into nibble sized pieces so everyone could get a little taste.

Pomelo went first and based on her reaction you would have thought I’d offered her a plate of living, squirming maggots. It was hysterical. She tried to refuse so I pulled the classic parent modeling correct behavior by eating a piece and exaggeratedly saying, “Mmmmmm, so tasty!”

The first thing she clearly wasn’t ready for was the texture. As soon as her fingers hit the avocado her apprehension skyrocketed. Again, based on her reaction you would have thought something truly terrifying was happening to her. Like a kid at a halloween party who just plunged her hand into a bowl of “eyeballs.” If I hadn’t been sitting there goading her she would not have actually tried it.

Pomelo was holding a piece of avocado about the size of her fingernail. Did she pop the whole thing in her mouth? Oh, hell no. She didn’t so much take a bite as smear the piece against her front tooth. Her reaction was melodramatic horror. A frozen scream slowly spread across her face as she inferred the taste through her front tooth. She looked up at her mother across the room and pathetically croaked out a description of the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

That was my cue. I picked up the plate and walked across the room to her mother who vigorously shook her head. To an American a strenuous refusal is really just an indication that a more robust invitation would be appreciated. [Footnote: In some ways I am super American.] So I pressed on through effusive pantomime until she trepidatiously took a piece. To her credit, after a couple moments of contemplating the reality of this abhorrent thing, she actually ate it. Her reaction was pretty much the same as her daughter’s though. I’m guessing she thought it was the worst thing she’d ever tasted.

At that point panic broke out as everyone else in the place realized I was going to force a piece of soylent green on them as well. When I’d turn the plate toward someone she would scurry away alternating between saying “mai, mai, mai” and “no, no, no.” Again, as an American I took this as a challenge, hunting each person down until she was cornered and had no choice but take a piece of the accursed thing.

The two ambiguously aged ladies got cornered at that same time and bickered with each other nonstop as they took their pieces. Then they fought with each other about who would try it first. One took a atom-sized nibble and seeing her reaction up close the other refused as though she’d just been handed the gun in game of Russian Roulette.

One of the aunts took a piece and just held it, staring at it, as though I’d just given her a piece of actual kryptonite. If she ever got around to tasting it I missed it. The only person who ate the avocado without fuss was Pomelo’s dad but, in true Thai style, he tried to smother it with sugar.

Puzzled and amused I tried to get Pomelo to explain what was so offensive about avocado. The look and texture are weird, sure, but the flavor and odor are so mild. After several rounds of attempted and failed explanations Pomelo summed up the experience as, “Like durian for you.”

I have to take her word for it. This strikes me as bizarre, and if you’ve smelled durian I’m sure sure you’re puzzled too. Whatever the root cause of their aversion I promise you this: when face-to-face with a piece of avocado none of these Thai people were smiling.