For people who don’t like words, you can see my wife’s Instagram reel of the tour.
I went on the 10 day Year of the Durian Thailand group tour in May 2024. I can honestly say it was among the best travel experiences I’ve ever had, and I’m not sure I’ve ever had so much consistent joy during a single ten day stretch in my life. This sounds hyperbolic, but I think the other people on the tour largely felt the same way.
Some of you must be wondering what the Year of the Durian tour is.
Year of the Durian is a blog dedicated to durian, founded over a decade ago by an American named Lindsay. After building a following, she started leading tours across durian growing regions of Southeast Asia along with her partner-in-spined-fruits Richard. The tours happen durian the growing seasons which differ from country to country and somewhat from year to year, but there are generally a handful or so tours in a year spread across Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, and Borneo, possibly with more to come in the future [I discovered a major spelling error in this sentence that I decided to keep]. In addition to the blog and tours, they also sell frozen and freeze dried durian and other rare fruits in the U.S., and they have more products in the works.
I only came across the blog around a year and a half before doing the tour while researching on my first extended Thailand stay in 2022. The blog is incredibly informative on all things durian, including its history in different countries (here is the Thailand durian history post, probably the best Thailand history of any kind that I’ve read, full of wonderful details) and where to find it and how to select it (see the Bangkok Chinatown durian guide as an example, and the Or Tor Kor market post, those were probably the first two I read). You can search by country (I was surprised to learn about some durian farms in India, and it’s hilarious to see how the comments on one of the India durian posts are of a much lower quality than the comments on the other posts I looked at…) and there are maps (here is the Thailand map) to help you find durian farms, stays, shops, and restaurants. There are also guides to different varieties, which contain amazing tidbits of info such as the following explanation of the variety Krathoei Nuea Khao: “Literally translates as the “pale-fleshed lady boy. ” 🤷 This durian carries the name “Lady Boy” because it has very small, thin, non-viable seeds.” [The name has been around for over a century, don’t cancel the messenger.] Or how about the variety Halukmaithuengphua: “Once upon a time a woman had 5 durians. She wanted to serve them to her husband, but the durian was so delicious every time she opened one, she ate the whole thing. The name literally means ‘5 durians none arrived to husband.’” Beyond the guides, there are many fun and interesting posts like this tour of a durian factory.
Most people probably follow Year of the Durian on Instagram or some other social media, but I subscribe to their newsletter which you can do by scrolling down on the bottom of the website.
Why did I want to go on a durian tour?
To explain, I’ll share a bit about my durian journey. This is more of a personal anecdote than I typically prefer to write, but it seems relevant to set this up and maybe explain why you too may one day love durian (and by extension a durian tour), even if that seems like a distant possibility to you now.
I first heard of and had durian on a 2010 family trip to Thailand. If I recall correctly, our Thai family friends with whom we were traveling bought a durian that we traveled with for a few days before we got around to eating it. The smell kept growing, and the smelly fruit became a joke in our group. By the time we ate it, the smell was very strong and eating it wasn’t exactly pleasant. I didn’t have it again for around a decade, and until then I thought it was a weird novelty food that made for a funny travel story, but not something that anybody would or should eat otherwise. We took pictures of the “No Durian” signs on public transportation and laughed when we showed our friends back home. This is all pretty shameful to me now, but I was a fairly typical westerner regarding durian for many years.
I saw durian again when I went to Sri Lanka in 2016 but I didn’t feel compelled to try it, and I think I only saw it once in my three week trip. According to messages I sent and pictures I took, I had durian in Indonesia in 2017, but I actually have no memory of this, which I’m embarrassed to admit. However, my messages say that I loved it. My wife thinks we tasted durian on our very brief Bangkok trip in 2019, but I don’t really recall it.
Finally, in 2022, we did the first of our annual two-month long Thailand trips (we’ve done three so far) and had durian a few different times, mostly buying it from fancy mall shops and getting free samples here and there. We really enjoyed them all and I was sort of perplexed at my dislike of the first durian I had. We began to seek out both durian and durian desserts, but the high price had us limit it to a special treat. I periodically would buy a small piece of durian when I saw it at a reasonable price, but I rarely saw it at a reasonable price, and I never had the confidence in my durian buying abilities to splurge on the higher priced fruits. I paid no attention to the varieties of what I was eating.
At some point on that trip I discovered Year of the Durian. While the blog is full of good information on buying durian, I was often too intimidated to really follow it. Despite having good taste in food and generally being more knowledgeable than average about food, I’m pretty lousy when it comes to picking produce. It stresses me out and I don’t think there’s a single variety of any kind of fruit that I can identify by look or taste, nor do I know how to tell whether most things are any good before actually tasting them. I can visually slot things into categories of “hmm, that seems fine, I guess” and “uh, I think that might be mold,” but that’s about it. Getting better at picking produce seems like a skillset that could be developed, but I really feel I have a mental blindspot here that can’t be illuminated without invoking a greater mental cost than the benefits would accrue. We all have those things. Leave me alone. It’s not like any of you will ever be able to tell the difference between good and bad movie theater projection, which is of similar societal importance.
So I didn’t use the blog much, and though I wanted to go to some of the recommended farms and restaurants mentioned on the blog, it never worked out because I primarily traveled to non-durian growing parts of the country. However, I subscribed to the newsletter and got the monthly emails that really piqued my interest in durian and the other exotic fruits that they showcased. I grew fascinated by all of the different durian varieties and the vast range of flavors they have. Most of the durians I tried had tried at this point had been pleasantly sweet, custardy, and jackfruity (I know now that they were mostly monthong), with some funky exceptions, but from the newsletter I discovered that there is a whole world of durian out there that I hoped to one day try.
I don’t remember when I heard about the tours, but after a few months of getting the newsletters I became determined to do one. The desire to do the tour was multifaceted, partly to learn about and taste a lot of durians, and also to delve deeper into Thailand in a way that I wouldn’t be able to do on my own, visiting farms and exploring rural areas. I also knew from the blog that Lindsay was vegan, which meant I’d be in good hands food-wise as I’m vegetarian. The language barrier, difficulties with transportation, and lack of easily found vegetarian food in much of the country has led me to mostly stick to big to mid sized cities in Thailand, so this seemed like a great opportunity to explore parts of the country that I may never go to otherwise. (Though the tours happen in a few different countries, we were most eager to do the Thailand tour just out of our love for and interest in the country.)
My wife and I began discussing how we must go on the durian tour as soon as we could afford it. Eventually the realization set in that it would take many years of hard work and scrupulous savings before we’d be able to afford it, and we might no longer have the lifestyle flexibility to go on the tour by the time that day comes, or the tours may no longer even exist at that point, so we should go on the tour anyway now, because the regret of not going on the tour would be greater than the regret of being broke. Writing this after the tour, I have no regrets (though I wouldn’t encourage overusing this decision making framework, it is only for experienced utility maximizers such as myself, not for the standard low impulse control civilian).
I should start talking about the tour now.
I realize I got pretty far into this without actually talking about the tour. I don’t want to say much about the tour because I actually hardly knew anything about it before going on it! I read what was on this page and didn’t know anything else. I don’t like to know much about things before I do them, and I try to grant people the same element of surprise when I recommend things. If I tell people about a movie, I like to give some sense of what makes the film special without saying anything about its plot, unlike my wife whose idea of a movie review is to describe the plot in excruciating detail. If you want to know more about the trip than I care to reveal, I guess you can go to my wife’s Instagram account to see pictures of it. But hopefully my descriptions will be enough to let you know if you want to go on this tour. (And note that the tour itinerary and details change a bit from year to year.)
The tour is mostly set in and around the world’s durian capital Chanthaburi, where most foreign tourists don’t go, and it is a mix of a durian tour and a Thailand nature/adventure tour, with both sides of it happening on each day. You eat lots of durian (and other great fruits and amazing foods) and visit an average of one durian farm a day, and you also do things that are on many people’s typical lists of things to do on a Thailand vacation. There are markets, elephants, snorkeling, waterfalls, hikes, temples, ziplining, etc. What’s great is that none of this is touristy, it’s almost all off the beaten path and surprisingly quiet for how stunning many of the places we went are. I imagine someone who wants a durian/food tour (what I was there for) or wants an adventure activity tour would be satisfied with either half if that’s all they did, but we got to have both at the same time.
I’m not going into many specifics about what we did as I don’t want to spoil things, but one of my favorite activities was visiting the medicinal herb garden founded around a century ago by the royal physician of old Siam. That was awesome. I also loved visiting all of these small family farms that don’t usually get tourists, and a number of them were really excited to have guests. We even had a homemade lunch at a few of them. I found these to be really special experiences. They mostly didn’t speak English but we could communicate with them through our great Thai guide and translator Alex who was with us throughout the tour and gave a lot of context for the things we saw.
It isn’t a tour for people who just want a relaxing vacation since there is a lot going on every day, with plenty of physical activity, heat, and humidity, but I found it balanced well enough that I was mostly not exhausted, just satisfyingly tired at the end of the day. We had enough downtime to relax and get massages and go to the pool at some of the hotels, and I got some work and reading in here and there. Still, I’m not sure I’d recommend it to very out of shape people or people who don’t want to get their hands dirty or clothes sweaty. I guess if you wanted to skip the most strenuous activities you could. I probably would have said I don’t recommend it to people above a certain age, but there were two people over 70 on the tour who had as much energy and enthusiasm as the rest of us and did everything without breaking a sweat (I mean that metaphorically, unless you have some special mutation there will be lots of sweat, it’s Thailand). I’m told the oldest person to go on one of their tours was 76, which is pretty amazing and inspiring.
The occasionally exhausting moments were alleviated by an air conditioned van that chauffeured us around and the very nice hotels that we stayed at. What I especially liked about the hotels is that they had a lot of character and weren’t just generic nice hotels. I am very much a “the place is more important than the stay” kind of traveler, but our stays were nice memories in themselves and were well integrated into the beautiful environments where we were staying. At most of the hotels we had the entire place fully booked out for the group which made the experience cozier.
In a lot of ways you’ll get out of the tour what you want to get out of it. If you want to develop a full spectrum understanding of durian, learning how it grows, the science of how its flavors develop, the influence of the climate and geography on its growth, the visual and flavor nuances of different varieties, the techniques for selecting and opening the fruit, the ins and outs of the global durian market, the history and culture of the fruit, and etc, then you totally can. This is a great tour for nerds. But it’s also a great tour for people who just want to eat great food, visit new places, and do fun stuff. Though some very unkind people like to call me a nerd, I’m not that nerdy about the topics of the tour and the sciencey parts were entirely over my head, but I was very happy nonetheless.
The food on the tour was really exceptional, to the point where it will “ruin” most future Thai food that you eat. I’ve had my share of amazing food in Thailand in the past few years, and I’d say at least half of the meals on this trip were up there with the absolute very best of what I’ve had. As much as it is a durian tour, it is also an edible plant tour, and there’s a focus on local ingredients everywhere and we got to try a lot of unusual dishes. Salad with a special tangy pink ginger flower, tofu in a curry made with sour wild mangosteen leaves, banana flower curry, unripe durian salad and curry (insanely good, cooked unripe durian is like an extra delicious sweet potato and it should be far more common than it is), stuff like that, and the food was always well prepared, bursting with fresh vegetables and herbs, and not oily (and it was usually well balanced spice wise, but it wouldn’t be a Thailand trip without a few dishes to set your mouth on fire, thankfully there’s always an abundance of amazing fruit to cool things down). It’s a tour where you pig out on fantastic food but you also still eat very healthy. Whenever I do very food intensive trips I’m kind of glad they are over because I look forward to eating lighter after, but I could have eaten like this forever.
I don’t want to focus too much on how it was a great food tour for a vegetarian because I think anybody would be thrilled with the food on offer, but I have to say that as a vegetarian it can often be hard to go beyond the basic dishes in Thailand, so this was really special. Note that it’s not a vegetarian/vegan tour and there was at least one seafood dish or meat dish per meal and often eggs, but the majority of the dishes were vegan. Most diets could be accommodated, and there was one raw vegan guest on the tour who Lindsay made special food for (we got to taste some and it was all delicious!), though I imagine the tour doesn’t make a ton of sense for somebody following a very low sugar diet (out of curiosity I just googled it, and I guessed correctly: durian is not keto).
I have never done a tour like this while traveling and have hardly ever considered doing one. Tours are expensive for my travel lifestyle and I don’t trust other people to put together a better itinerary than I would. I definitely don’t trust people to find better food than I would. I also generally assume that I wouldn’t really like the people that go on tours. I occasionally see a tour that interests me in a particular area but would inevitably frustrate me in other areas, or I see one that seems worthwhile but ultimately not worth the cost premium above what I could put together on my own.
This tour was very different on every count. There is no way I could ever come close to putting something like this together on my own. There is no way I could ever find such a great range of delicious, unique, and healthy vegetarian Thai food day after day, meal after meal on my own. And despite my general dislike of people, I suspected that a durian tour is a pretty good filter for people who are interesting and curious and that I'd probably like whoever signs up. I was correct in these assumptions and really enjoyed the company of everyone on the tour. I am happy to confirm that Homo duriens are in fact superior to other members of the genus that I have encountered thus far, and I hope I get the chance to spend more time with them in the future.
I am scared of messing up this positive group dynamic by recommending this to the wrong people, though. I considered not writing this post because they already sell out all of their tours and don’t need my advertisement which could potentially do more harm than good, but still, maybe there’s somebody out there who is a great fit for the tour but wouldn’t have discovered it otherwise, and the point of this blog is to hear the sweet sounds of my own voice, uh, I mean, to try to match people to things they may love. I would like to discourage most people from taking this tour though, because most people suck. Please consider probabilistically if you are, in fact, most people. I do think anybody who has read this far is not most people, so you should be good, but I wanted to put that out there anyway.
My enjoyment of the group made me wonder if maybe I am more social than I think I am? I like doing most things on my own or just with my wife, and having more people often takes away from experiences for me, but I realized with this tour that having other people around made everything more enjoyable. I guess it helped that we were all there for the same reason. If you read this blog regularly you will know that a lot of the things I did on this tour (the “adventure” activities) are things that I almost never do otherwise, but I greatly enjoyed them all and having the social push helped me enjoy them. As a moderately antisocial person, I found this dynamic interesting to contemplate. I still have much to learn about myself, but I believe self-reflection is overrated and it is better to focus outward, on things such as durian.
It was also great getting to know the hosts Lindsay and Richard, and I hope to remain friends with them. I didn’t know much about them before the tour but I feel some sense of being kindred spirits with them, though I’m sure they’d reject any such comparison with me. Lindsay is a hugely impressive human being, which I rarely ever say about anyone. Let’s be honest, most people are pretty disappointing even by the low standards they set for themselves, but Lindsay far exceeded the reasonably high expectations that I’d have for any founder of a durian blog and tour. She is super smart and is a good, friendly tour leader and has had a fascinating life. In addition to her knowledge of durians and the plant world, she is also an excellent resource of information on Thai and Southeast Asian history and culture, and much else. Richard is cool too, though I can’t think of much to say about him other than he is really into coffee. If you want to talk about which farms in remote corners of Thailand produce the best coffee for top notch single origin pourovers, he's your guy, and he's the dedicated barista on the tour.
I really admire people like Lindsay and Richard who have taken the road less traveled (figuratively and literally), built something that has never before existed, and have successfully lived a life that follows no preexisting formula. This is what I am hoping to do with my life, though I haven't really figured out what to do with it other than write a self indulgent blog, but it is anyway nice to have people in my life to look to for inspiration.
The best part of the tour is that it was all great and I didn’t have to plan anything, nor did I have any regrets wishing that I could have planned something better. This never happens when I cede control. While on the tour I periodically thought that I should do more tours, but my general concerns about them remain. However, I will definitely do more Year of the Durian tours, whenever I can afford to do them, or rather, whenever I can’t afford not to do them, which is probably whenever the next tour is.
But how were the durians?
So much about the durian tour but so little about the durians. But can they even be described? I mean, you were either there, or you weren’t. But if you want to know, they were awesome! We easily tried a few dozen varieties, usually having some at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and tasting sessions in between, and all in all I estimate I tasted at least a bite of 200 or so different durians from 30+ varieties. After a few days I learned to undereat by a significant margin at every meal because there would be copious amounts of durian shortly after. Lindsay is probably the world’s greatest and most enthusiastic durian sommelier. As soon as dinner ended, the real feast began as she hacked open and passed out an array of new varieties in rapid succession. She’d call out the variety and tell us how to identify it by the shape and length of the spikes and seeds, show how the color and stem indicate what stage of ripeness it is, etc… and I never really listened because I’m a bad student. But I always ate with keen attention.
Durian tasting is magnificent fun, superior to all other tastings I have done or witnessed and I am confident there is no other that compares (it is even better than chocolate tasting, as I tap out of chocolate tasting pretty quickly while I have a capacity to enjoy a much higher quantity of durian). Durians are incredibly diverse in their taste not just across varieties but also across ripeness levels and even different sections of the same fruit, and different cultures have different preferences (in Thailand the broad preference is for a mix of crunchy and soft in the same bite, while Malaysia prefers a more uniformly custardy texture). As much fun as the entire tour was, I think the most fun part was just tasting a range of durians with everybody and discovering just what durian has to offer. I don’t know how other people eat durian, but we called out flavors like we were on some crazy game show where you win a prize if you get the right answers. I guess we did win a prize, whether we got the right answers or not, and that prize was more durian.
The following is a pretty representative sample of what a normal durian tasting session sounded like: “Oh my god. This is straight up vanilla bean creme brulee. – This is like bubble gum with artificial strawberry flavor. – I think I’m eating overripe jackfruit that’s been cut with the same knife as an onion. – Brie and honey! – Vanilla ice cream! – Nail polish! – I can’t eat any more. Okay just one more. – Instant coffee! – It has a nice crunch, and then I got a burst of egg custard and red wine. – The first bite was the most delicious almond cream, and then the flavor evaporated into a void of nothingness. – This one is banana cream pie with stinky cheese and rum!”
And so on for half an hour until in the reverie of a durian high (apparently an actual thing) everybody loses their senses and decides it is time to hit pause on the party for the night.
[Was the durian tasting actually like that, or was that just me yelling those things while everybody else was just like “Ooh, this is really good”? Uh, I don’t know. You’ll have to ask someone else from the tour. I definitely didn’t make the rum and wine comparisons as I don’t know what they taste like, so evidently there were other participants, but whether they were acting of their own accord or just playing my game is uncertain.]
It was interesting to try a lot of durian because a lot of it was so insanely good in a surprising way (and it’s healthy!) while some not insignificant percentage of it was… well, not so good. I fully understand why some people are so obsessed with it, but I also understand why a lot of people think it is gross. Those people are wrong, of course, and they likely just had some bad quality stuff that’s been hawked off to tourists who don’t know any better. Whenever I ate the great stuff I felt I was let down by fancy chefs who don’t use durian enough in their cooking, as it is such a fascinating ingredient, but a) the finest durian is probably best had pure and b) most durian is too inconsistent to devise recipes around.
The most popular (and often the cheapest) variety in Thailand durian is monthong, which I knew from earlier trips seeing nearly everything durian I ate being advertised as “100% monthong.” As I understand it, this is popular because compared to most varieties it is easier to grow and transport, has more flesh, has a “safe” flavor, and I think is more consistent than most varieties. Some consider monthong to be the boring variety, and that may be true, in a lineup of durians it was never close to being my favorite, but it is still pretty awesome. A good monthong durian is better than no durian, for sure, and I see no reason to be snooty about it. It gets the job done in desserts very well, though I hope one day to have some desserts made with some of the other varieties. [Note: Before the trip and before writing this I enjoyed a number of durian desserts that I’ve had, but since writing this and sampling more durian desserts post-Durian Tour, I’ve decided that, however amazing some of them can be, they are kind of a waste of money and calories and it’s best to just spend on some nice chunks of durian.]
I had some durian varieties that really blew my mind, though I don’t remember all of them. I didn’t do a good job of noting down favorites, especially when I had one piece that was amazing and then another that didn’t stand out as much, and while there were some varieties I had countless times, there were a lot that I only had a few times so it is hard for me to recall the specifics of them. I recall three varieties that really stood out for me: Puang Manee, Kop Lep Yao, and Musang King (a very popular variety from Malaysia that is kind of like the country’s monthong in its prevalence and has recently started growing in Thailand).
[“Oh Musang King, crown you in my heart, oh Musang King, never need to part. Your flavors ring, round and round and round my head…]
If you don’t mind paying up for them, these are all definitely available in Bangkok to try at least during the season, as confirmed on a recent browse of the fancy mall food courts, and likely in other fancy shops around Thailand. These varieties were more on the creamy, custardy side of the spectrum, as opposed to the more fruity tasting varieties, and unlike some varieties I felt these were fairly consistent taste wise. I’d say my very favorite durians were creamy/custardy with a touch of cheesy funk to them, but everyone has different preferences. I’ve heard about durians that have a chocolatey taste but I didn’t get that from any I tried. I guess I’ll just have to keep trying new durian varieties. Here’s to another durian tour!
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