Durian, the king of fruit?

Everyone should try durian---once. I've now had it five times: twice as the fruit itself, once in durian flavoured ice cream, once in durian cream puffs and, recently in Bali, as a durian milk shake.

The first time was as durian ice cream at a Thai restaurant in Sydney and it was...well...okay. Actually, not bad. The ice cream part was good anyway. The next time was as the fruit itself when I was staying in Singapore. I was still neutral after this although I had to deal with embarrassing durian burps for the next 24 hours. Since then I've had durian a few more times and each time it gets more and more revolting.

Durian's spiky outer shell

Can anyone seriously claim to enjoy it? 

This is what's inside.

I've struggled to imagine why any sane person (and sane may be the key) could possibly call it "the king of fruits", as some people do. Durian defenders will admit that the smell is appalling. Hotel lobbies in South East Asia have signs prohibiting guests to bring it into the hotel. One whiff and the other guests would stampede for the exits. 

A Singaporean friend described it to me this way: "It's like sitting on the toilet and eating custard." Now if we change the word "custard" to...no, let's not.

The smell is nothing short of revolting.

Not only are there durian aficionados on the loose out there but some people will pay top dollar for it. When we were in Penang, Malaysia, last year there was a durian festival in the local sports ground. I wanted to go just ask a few people what the stink (so to speak) was about but Jill thought better of it and we visited a butterfly farm and later had our feet nibbled by little fish.

Hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

The famous naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, while collecting flora and fauna in Borneo in 1856, wrote this about durian :

The five cells are silky-white within, and are filled with a mass of firm, cream-coloured pulp, containing about three seeds each. This pulp is the edible part, and its consistence and flavour are indescribable. A rich custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acid nor sweet nor juicy; yet it wants neither of these qualities, for it is in itself perfect. It produces no nausea or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact, to eat Durians is a new sensation worth a voyage to the East to experience. ... as producing a food of the most exquisite flavour it is unsurpassed.

Here I am a year later in a different country (but wearing the same shirt) choking
down a durian milkshake while wistfully eyeing a glass of delicious guava juice.

I'm a fan of Alfred Russel Wallace. He was, after all, the discoverer of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. We would all have studied him at school but for the fact that Charles Darwin intercepted Wallace's manuscript and held up its publication so he could dash off his own tome and get it published first. Wallace could have been rich and famous, been alternately worshipped and reviled, and maybe even lived to see his book banned by educators in Tennessee.

But describing durian's "exquisite flavour" as "highly flavoured with almonds" and "wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine" sounds like he's writing tasting notes for a new release sauvignon blanc rather than something scooped out of a blocked drain. I can only think that he'd spent too long in the tropics or that he was so sick of nasi goreng that even durian tasted good. But I like to think he just had a wonderfully ironic sense of humour or that he was trying to tempt Charles Darwin to overdose on durian in punishment for his treatment.

I decided to give this a miss.
Now if they ran it through a civet first, I might be tempted.

Can anyone tell me how I've gone wrong? Should I have put sugar on it? Sauteed it with monkey brains? Maybe a fortnight-long fast would have changed my opinion of it. Anyway, leave me a comment if you think I've missed the durian boat.

I've made a "HONK IF YOU LIKE DURIAN" bumper sticker and am about to drive through Sydney just to see if I get a response. I suspect it'll be an unusually quiet drive.

Now mangosteens are another matter. They really are the king of fruit.

Poo Coffee

The idea sounds less than appetising: feed ripe coffee beans to a civet cat, collect what comes out the other end and make coffee from it. If you did this you'd be producing the most expensive coffee in the world, kopi luwak. It is expensive for good reason: it's rare and it's delicious. Having had a cup of it recently in Bali, I'm a convert. It was strong and very, well (try not to think too much about it) very smooth.

An Asian palm civet, known in Indonesia as a luwak.

Civet cats are not cats but species of mammals that live in rainforests in Africa and Asia. The coffee-makers of Indonesia are Asian palm civets. They eat the coffee berries and, somehow, the defecant, when later washed, dried and roasted has changed. Coffeeologists disagree on the reason for this. It could be the action of enzymes in the civet's gut that changes the coffee or maybe civets are just very selective about the coffee berries they eat.

The coffee beans as they come out of a luwak.

Sometime in the 17th Century some intrepid soul, walking through a forest in Indonesia where there were coffee bushes, and dying for his morning cup of java (actually it would have been in Sumatra, which is where the Dutch introduced arabica coffee from Yemen) must have spotted some civet droppings and thought (you coffeeholics will relate to this) what the hell, any port in a storm, and picked it up. The rest is coffee history.

This woman is grinding coffee beans with a large mortar and pestle.

We'd heard about kopi luwak but never tried it till we were touring an agritourism venue near Ubud in Bali. Our guide showed us various plants and trees that produce some of Bali's produce---jackfruit, longans, anise, lemon grass etc---and there, in some cages were civets. We were given cups of various teas, coffees and other herbal drinks. For kopi luwak there was a charge but at only $ 5 per cup this was a bargain we couldn't refuse.

On the left is a burner heating a copper beaker and on the right, the kopi luwak in a  parfait glass-like flask.

The coffee was brewed in what looked like chemistry equipment from Marie Curie's laboratory. I'm only sorry I didn't get a better photo before the water boiled over into the gummy mess that was to be our coffee. We drank it black with a bit of cane sugar. It may have been crap but it was very tasty.

100 grams could be yours, in Bali, for $ 50, which by world standards is dirt cheap.

Heads of state give each other valuable gifts on state visits. On his last visit to Indonesia, Barack Obama was given a sizeable quantity of this coffee. If it was a ploy to get him to come back, it worked: he'll be at the APEC conference in Bali in October, undoubtedly holding out for a bottomless cup of kopi luwak.

We have qualms about coffee. While our Balinese driver said that the world demand for the coffee had been a boon to civets because they had been endangered and now there are lots of them, the idea of consuming a product from an animal that's kept in a small cage is not for us. "Wild" civet coffee is commercially available at an even huger price and there is a movement to apply ethical standards to the trade but if it's hard to sort out which locally produced hen's eggs here in Australia are produced in humane conditions it will be even more difficult to do the same with kopi luwak from Bali or Sumatra. So, for the time being, we'll stick to
Fair Trade coffee that, we hope, hasn't spent any time in the gut of another animal. (Don't believe the rumours about Monsanto's civet breeding program.)

There are other coffees yet to try. One is monkey parchment coffee what is chewed and then spat out by rhesus monkeys in India. We might give that one a miss.

 

We had thoughts of making home-grown poo coffee but Jasper was unmoved.

Macaque Attack!

I haven't stayed in many five-star hotels so I never really know what to expect but being attacked by a pack wild and vicious monkeys in the corridors was far from my thoughts when it happened last week in Bali.

We were staying in a resort hotel on a beautiful bit of coastline right in the heart of a monkey-filled forest. We'd seen monkeys around the grounds of the hotel---they were Balinese Long-Tailed Macaques (Macaca Fascicuiaris) We'd also seen a sign warning guests not to feed them. We know monkeys carry diseases and can be extremely vicious. Last year we had a close and uncomfortable encounter with a different species of macaques while bushwalking in Malaysia. The hotel employs two monkey wranglers who carry sling-shots to ward off troublesome monkeys.

A Balinese long-tailed macaque saying g'day or maybe selamat pagi.

Our room was on the seventh floor but that didn't keep the monkeys from coming to our balcony in search of food. Very sensibly, we kept the glass doors to the balcony closed.

A family of monkey's enjoying the view from our balcony.

A grumpy monkey challenging a smaller one.

Walking across the glass screen at the end of our balcony.

Monkeys are fun to watch. I've always had a soft spot for them tempered by the good sense not to get too close. When I was nine years old, living in Alaska, I helped a friend with his paper run. Part of it took us to an army barracks where there was a monkey in a cage---perhaps the first Arctic Monkey. The owner was a soldier who had gone off to the war in Korea and the soldiers didn't know what had become of him. They didn't know whether he'd return to his beloved pet. To make the story even sadder, the monkey had recently gone blind. I'm sure there's a children's book in this but I don't think I'll be the one to write it. I never knew how it ended.

This guy could see our fruit bowl but there was no way he was coming in.

The attack happened on the fifteenth floor of the hotel.

The monkey gauntlet: where we came to grief.

Jill and I were walking along an open corridor and there were monkeys playing down below. The young ones were chasing one another through flower beds and up and down trees doing as much damage as any adolescents on a rampage. There were at least twenty of them and I took out my camera and started snapping.

Quite obviously posing for me.

Some of the rest of the troop nit picking in the hotel gardens.

Some of the young monkeys came up to the walkway and climbed around the rafters. Everything was okay till I looked over a railing, not knowing that there were two monkeys just out of sight below. One of them let out a warning screech and then they both turned around and started screeching what I can only imagine was, "Get the guy in the cheap Balinese batik shirt! Rip him to shreds! Bite him into next week!"

Climbing into the corridor to see what the fuss was about.

Screeching monkeys appeared from everywhere. I backed away quickly but afraid that if I ran I'd be covered in monkeys. Jill was further from the action and ran along with a terrified woman. I backed around a corner into the building proper hoping for monkey wranglers with sling-shots.

This is when I knew I was in trouble.

Around a couple of corners, the monkeys kept coming---maybe a dozen of them. Then I heard Jill call out, "In here! I'm in the elevator! Quick!"

The leaders of the attack pack photographed by a rapidly retreating hotel guest.

It wasn't till the elevator doors closed and there were no monkeys in it with us that we breathed sighs of relief and laughed nervously. We looked around before getting out of the lift at our floor to make sure they hadn't watched the floor indicators and climbed down to greet us. They hadn't. We were safe, unscathed and with something to blog about.

I should add that Bali was wonderful. I don't know why we left it so long to go there. Maybe it was because everyone we knew had already been there---hardly a good reason. I'm sure none of them had the same experiences we did.

Accidental Mouseketeer

Annette Funicello and I were never close. We did have one thing in common, however: we were both on the hugely popular kids' variety TV show, The Mickey Mouse Club. Well, sort of...

The death of Annette Funicello from complications from multiple sclerosis last week---a news item sadly over-shadowed by the announcement of Maggie Thatcher's death---must have pulled quite a few heartstrings in my generation both in America and in Australia. 

These days with such a range of entertainment options for kids on many TV channels and even more on the internet it's hard to imagine one TV show having the impact The Mickey Mouse Club did. When it started in 1955 there were only three television networks in the USA and little in the way of entertainment for kids. The cast of the show, the "Mouseketeers", were a group of singing and dancing kids. Annette was one of the originals and, by the end of the show's run, the longest serving of all of them. She sang and danced but it was her winning personality that came across on television that made her the darling of girls and boys everywhere the show was broadcast.

                                          Funicello vuonna 1975

I didn't know Annette. I never met her nor was I ever at the studio where the show was produced. My appearance was entirely fortuitous and exceedingly brief. I was living in Spain in those days. There was no television and, even if there had been, I'm sure it wouldn't be broadcasting a show with American kids dancing around and singing songs about a mouse. 

In the summer of 1956 I spent a month at a summer camp in Switzerland. We spent a lot of time hiking in the most magnificent scenery. On a climb up to les Diablerets Glacier a couple of outsiders came along. Al and Jerry (dubbed by us Tom and Jerry) were a two-man film crew from The Mickey Mouse Club. It was their job to come up with footage for the "Newsreel" segment of the show and we were their story for the couple of days they were with us.. 

Happy campers, camp staff and film crew on les Diablerets Glacier.

In the photo above, Al is in the back row centre (in the hat) and Jerry to his left taking a picture of whoever took this picture. (I'm next to him with my face in shadow.) 

Me on the right with friends Michael and Danny.

I spent a part of two summers at this camp and fell in love with the mountains. On another hike (pictured below) we got a taste of rock-climbing, a sport that I took up seriously a few years later.

With Michael and another friend on the Swiss-French border.

But back to Mickey and Annette: A year or two after the les Diablerets climb I was back in America and happened to be channel surfing when I came across The Mickey Mouse Club in time to hear Annette say, "And now to some news from our Mouseketeers in Switzerland". Hardly breaking news but there we were -  a group of great friends looking happy and fit in a fantastic setting. Sad as it was to hear of the death of Annette Funicello it brought back wonderful memories.

Editing "The Yodeler", the camp newspaper, and, as always, struggling to find the words.

A digression of footnotes:

Footnote 1: I confess that I don't remember whether it was Annette who narrated the Newsreel or what whoever it was said but I think that our band of happy campers were dubbed "Mouseketeers".

Footnote: 2: I've spared you the story of the light plane that crashed on the glacier just before we got there and our watching the subsequent rescue of the injured pilot by another daredevil pilot.

Footnote 3: On the far right in the photo is Tom, the only one I had any contact with after that summer. He was a Harvard student at this time but later worked as some sort of secret agent and died in mysterious circumstances. The girl in the middle of the front row with her hands on her knees was my girlfriend, Robyn.

Goodbye Colosseum

Hurry, last days! If you want to see the Colosseum before it's dismantled at the end of February then now's your chance. This isn't, of course, the Roman entertainment centre of old but its brilliant re-creation, the "Legosseum" of Lego-master Ryan McNaught of the City of Melbournium. 

The Legosseum is at the Nicholson Museum at Sydney University. Entry to the museum is free and, if you can find your way to the Quadrangle, it's just inside the southern entrance.

I can't imagine how much time it must have taken Mr McNaught to create this marvel. It certainly wasn't built in a day. On four or five trips to the Museum (Did I mention that it's free?) I spent hours poring over the detail and discovering things I'd previously overlooked. There is so much to see both in the building itself but also the people, ancient and modern.

The "Legosseum" of Ryan McNaught at the Nicholson Museum...

I did enjoy seeing the real thing on a trip to Rome a couple of years ago but I think the enjoyment came more from imagining how life might have been in the year 80 AD when the Colosseum was completed than admiring the ruin itself. And it really is a ruin: over the centuries every bit of decoration that could be carried off was looted and, when that was gone, the site became a quarry and much of the original stonework also disappeared.

...and it's Rome counterpart.

To stand in a place where emperors and popes stood and where countless people and animals met their deaths for the enjoyment of the people really was a buzz. And so it is too with McNaught's more politically correct creation.

McNaught cleverly recreated not just the ruined Colosseum as it exists today but the Colosseum as it would have looked in its heyday, complete with gladiators and Roman soldiers and also modern day tourists..

The old with the new.

Next to the Legosseum is a re-creation of the Arch of Constantine, built a couple hundred years after the Colosseum on orders from the Emperor Constantine the Great after his troops won a decisive battle, a battle  which---had it been lost---might have hastened the end of the Empire. A good enough reason to build a triumphal arch. 

The Lego Arch of Constantine.

There's a bit of Lego-licence here as real Arch isn't immediately next to the real Colosseum.

The pre-Lego version of the Arch.

Not everyone loves Lego. Most parents have spent endless hours searching for pieces under carpets and furniture and retrieving them from over-filled vacuum cleaner bags. And Lego bits are the bane of bare feet. More than a few parents have had "bricks" and helicopter rotors surgically removed from their person. But who isn't impressed with some of the Lego creations we've seen on the internet? Have a look at the Lego recreation of Barack Obama's first inauguration. (Click here)

Lost to Lego: two young Legomaniacs contemplating their next creation.

Along with the Legosseum, the Nicholson Museum has lots of displays---static and video---of Roman antiquities as well as their collection of other ancient relics so, even after the Lego is gone, the museum is well worth a look. Despite its small size, the museum it prides itself on having "the largest collection of antiquities in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere."

Check with the Museum for its opening hours and then hurry on down.

Arnedillo: the Perfect Writers' Retreat

Do you have a refuge, a quiet place you’d retreat to if you suddenly had an important project and wanted to avoid life’s daily distractions? I don’t mean an upstairs bedroom or a friend’s granny flat but a totally different hidey-hole, in a different country. I have a few possibilities.

In my fantasy inspiration would strike and I’d come up with a cracker idea for a novel, an idea so good that I’d auction the publication rights and pocket a huge advance. Now all I need to do is write the book away from harassing phone calls from Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson who would be after the film rights. Where would I go? High up on my list of hideaways is my own Spanish Shangri-la: Arnedillo.

Arnedillo, La Rioja, Spain

Arnedillo (arnay-DEE-yo), population 477, is nestled in a valley high up in the mountains of La Rioja in northern Spain. Arnedillo is dry, bitter cold in winter and very much off the beaten path. And it’s picturesque. Why work in an ugly and depressing place? The town doesn’t have the sort of UNESCO-listed historical attractions that would draw mobs of international tourists so it’s a quiet place. It’s also crime-free (according to the locals) and it’s a long way from a beach. In short, the perfect place to settle down for a few months to work.

Spanish tourists do go there but these are Spanish tourists, mainly from nearby Logroño. The shops aren’t filled with souvenirs: no “Arnedillo a Noche” postcards, Chinese-made castanets or even miniature bagpipes with “Requerdos de Arnedillo” printed on them. (Forget the flamenco---this is flute, drum and bagpipe country.)

In addition to being a beautiful town, Arnedillo is steeped in history. The Romans were there when Spain was a part of the Roman Empire and since then the Vandals, Visigoths and Moors came and went. There are a few remnants of these conquering peoples but it was in the High Middle Ages that the town took the shape it has today. The town is protected by heritage orders and the valley itself has been declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO.

That tower is the little that's left of the 10th C castle of the bishops of Calahorra.

Okay so while I want to get away from major distractions I will need a few things to do to break up the boredom of writing. I like to walk and there are some lovely walks along the valley and up into the surrounding hills. There’s a tiny bit left of a ruined 10^th century castle and there are three hermitages up above the town that can only be accessed on foot. These date from the 10^th to the 16^th centuries and now look more like miniature churches than the hovels or caves the hermits would have lived in. No skinny bearded men raging against the evils of the world.

Vultures nest in the peaks around the town.

A bit of bird watching helps to break up the writing routine and Arnedillo has a colony of Griffon vultures that nest in a rocky crag above the town. The population of Griffon vultures in Europe had been diminishing but has come back thanks to public awareness interest. There was a bit of a hiccup a few years ago when the European Commission banned the leaving of carcasses out for the vultures because of the danger of spreading of BCE (Mad Cow Disease) but their numbers are growing again. These are magnificent birds.

Looking back along the Cidacos River to Arnedillo.

Still struggling with Chapter One and out of ideas I need another break. I think I’ll take a walk up to the town’s nevero artificial. No, I’d never heard of one either but some friendly people took me to see this one and explained its use. A “snow well” is the best translation I’ve found. It’s a stone-lined hole in the ground that neveros filled with snow in the winter. In summer the compressed snow and ice could be taken out though a bottom entrance---a source of ice all summer long. These apparently were common in Europe and the Middle East from at least 2000 BC. Where I grew up in New England, USA, you just waited for a lake or pond to freeze, sawed it into blocks and packed it in sawdust in a shed. Needless to say, industrial ice-making factories in the 19^th century and, later, fridges put the neveros out of a job just as happened with the ice-harvesters of New England.

There’s another walk to see dinosaur footprints but I’ll save this one for when I’m really stuck.

Iglesia de San Servando y San Germán

There are a couple of churches in town, both unlocked and generally people-free when there are no services. The grander of the two is the 16^th century Iglesia de San Servando y San Germán. This is just across a tiny square from the entrance to the lovely little boutique hotel where I’ve stayed and would stay again while I work on the novel. This is the Hospedería LasPedrolas.

17th Century organ in the Iglesia de San Servando y San Germán

Jill outside our hotel, the Hospederia Las Pedrolas.

Arnedillo does have three festivals dotted around the calendar and their own peculiar customs to celebrate them. One of them, in November, is la fiesta de San Andrés in which the streets are filled with smoke of burning rosemary and he (or she) who breathes is will be immune from sickness such as colds or the flu all winter.

It is also a gathering place in autumn for mycologists. One of the restaurants, Casa Cañas, hosts the annual Jornadas Micológicas de Arnedillo. For mushroom and funghi aficionados there are lectures, guided mushroom collecting walks and the restaurant serves mushroom degustaciones for those mycologists who have a gastronomic as well as scientific interest in their subject.

photo:  Casa Cañas

photo:  Casa Cañas

Arnedillo’s main attraction is its hot springs. At one side of the normally-icy Cidacos River, which skirts the town, water comes out of the ground at 52.5 degrees Celsius. The town has built a series of pools, one flowing into the next. By the time the water reaches the lowest pool it’s not too hot to get into so the usual procedure is to work your way up from the warm pool to the almost-painfully-hot one. Once in the hottest pool it’s very hard to move a muscle, even to get out, but somehow you feel good afterwards. There is a big hotel and spa on the outskirts of town with mud baths for those who believe in the medicinal benefits of the water and have a bit of loose change.

Arnedillo's thermal springs.

Anyway, Arnedillo would be one of my perfect retreats: good restaurants, good accommodation and just enough to do to kill the boredom but not enough to not so much that I couldn’t get my work done. At least that’s my fantasy.
I didn’t just happen upon Arnedillo by taking a wrong turn between Barcelona and Bilbao. 

Many years ago as a teenager living in Madrid, a young woman came to work for for my family. Charo---diminutive of “Rosario”---was not only an excellent cook and tireless house-keeper but she soon became a well-loved member of the family. Much of what we learned of the Spanish language and Spanish customs we owed to her.

Charo on the right and another friend on a picnic in the 1950s.

Charo had grown up in Arnedillo and moved to Madrid to work. We lost track of her for years after we left Spain but eventually found her living in Logroño in the Rioja region. She'd lived in England, been married and been widowed. To make the story short, I met up with her a couple of times on trips from Australia to Spain. She was still the lovely, intelligent woman I’d known all those years ago and the two of us were as close as ever. 

Jill, Charo and me in Arnedillo a few years ago.

Later, Charo's sister, Juli, contacted me to say that Charo had had a stoke and that she was looking after her back in their pueblo, Arnedillo. We visited her there a couple of times. Charo has since passed away but Jill and I have now been adopted by Juli, her husband, Roberto, and all their relatives and friends. Spaniards being the social animals that they are, on our last visit we were almost killed with kindness. 

Some of our Arnedillo family.

Roberto and I check the wine in his bodega and declare it ready for drinking.

At this point I'm having second thoughts about whether Arnedillo really would be the ideal hideaway. Maybe I'd better start thinking about hideaway No. 2 before inspiration strikes. But more on that at another time.