Durian Days

Durians are a peculiar fruit, with a pungent smell that is a bit like sewage. Eating them is a challenging experience as you fight back nausea to take a small bite.  They are even banned from much public transport and many hotels due to their smell.

The Indonesians though, love them and on Seram it was the height of the Durian season with a continual stream of men tramping down from the forests with bamboo strung with the oversize sweet-chestnut style cases. They are then processed by women and children in the village and the empty, spiky husks dumped into the sea late at night.

Every morning an armada of the durian cases would drift out from under the stilt houses on the tide and gradually migrate around the bay, proving something of a painful obstacle when snorkelling (though not as painful as when they drop from 50m up in the forest canopy).