I didn’t know that my post about red coloured durian will be the most popular post of all time for Kinabalu Blog!
It started when I wrote about red coloured durian couple of years ago, after a suggestion from one of my good friend, Cikgu Ismail from Kulai, Johor (an avid mountain climber).
Red coloured durian is actually a rarity, in which only few parts of the world have it. After publishing that post, I received 2 emails from two different place, asking me to send them the seeds…
The search begins
Last month (February 2009), while I was doing my usual weekend groceries shopping in Sunday Tamu (market), Putatan, I saw with my own eyes, the red coloured durian. It was nicely tide up with ‘tali rafia‘ (a type of rope). It was a surprise for me as I have been looking for it for the past few month in few different places.
Knowing that it will be difficult for me to find the seeds during off season, I grabbed the opportunity to buy it. I bought it because of the 2 special request email, from Thailand and US separately – asking me whether I could mail them some seeds for their garden.
It cost me RM30 for 4. I was lucky because I noticed that it was the last bunch of durian fruit in the whole ‘tamu’ (Sunday market). I could not find it anymore the following weekend.
Personally, the red durian is not as smelly as the one that I used to eat when I was young in my hometown, Bakri, Muar, Johor. Those days the durian cost only 50 cents each, and most of the time my mom will make a ‘bubur’ (porridge) out of it because we could not finish them all. The red coulored durian is also almost odourless and tasteless. I personally think that it taste horrible. Very bland indeed. I could not even finished a single bit of it!
Anyway, after bringing the durians back home, my wife (who hate durians) barred me from keeping the durians inside the house. Although I told her that this kind of durian is almost odourless, she insisted that the durians stayed outside the house. And it stayed there until it ripens and cracked opened by itself.
The journey begins
After getting all the information and suggestion on how to make sure that the seeds will not dies off in the journey across the earth, I started to process the seeds. As it taste horrible and my wife don’t eat durian, I have to manually remove the fleshy part of the seeds out.
I didn’t know that the durian was so ‘powerful’ until I chat with one of the local elderly here, after I felt giddy the next morning after I ate a piece of the red durian. To my surprised, he said that it’s a known ‘adverse reaction’ of this fruits. It’s very usual for people to felt a bit sick after eating that durian. Luckily I did not finished the whole bunch. Otherwise I could not even stand properly…
Following the suggestion, I packaged all the seeds properly, dividing all the seeds equally. You can see it how I processed those seeds…
Few days after sending those seeds, I received an email from the friend in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Apparently, the seeds arrived safely. Some of those seeds were already germinated!
A week after that, my friend from Florida also emailed me that the seeds arrived safely with some of them were germinated! The photos below were sent by my friend from Chiang Mai, Thailand!
I hope that the seeds can live happily ever after in their new soil…
