Funky Smelling Fruit | National Geographic

here in Malaysian Borneo a seasonal
invasion is underway
staff at hotels watch nervously for a
food that is putrid wretched and loved
by millions meet the durian fruit their
smell is hard to describe
sounds like rotten fish and custard a
rubbish dump blue cheese butter dead dog
like private parts other cultures love
foods that smell strongly cheese a
favorite in the West is actually rotted
milk a stench people in Asia find
intolerable like cheese and France
durian is precious in Southeast Asia
some believe it’s worth killing for
durian trees don’t bear fruit until
they’re 15 years old a single variant
can cost as much as $50 America
here in Kuching the capital of Malaysian
Borneo hotels are on the front lines of
the durian war when the fruit is in
season hotel managers maintain a
constant vigil to keep it out for them
the taboo is really about the bottom
line one funky fruit can scare off a
hotel full of customers goes into the
curtains it sticks into the carpets
sticks into the bed spreads that doesn’t
stop people from trying to smuggle it in
we can immediately smell it and always
deny it but we know that they’ve got
them every Hotel has its own method of
dealing with a durian alert there’s only
two methods of getting rid of the smell
what we found
one is chocol chocolate zorb the smell
and the other that takes quite a long
time and the other one we’ve got an
ionizer that it’s an industrialized one
and within three hours we can pull this
matter through
please no dreams here not in the hotel
outside in the fresh air you can do it
but definitely not here in Borneo
visitors can decide for themselves if
the durian is delicious or just plain
disgusting as long as they do their
taste testing outdoors