For the love of Jackfruit

In the town of Hue, Vietnam, I was reunited with my American friend, Ember, whom I met in Thailand and traveled through Laos with for 10 days. I was beaming when I found we would cross paths once again in Vietnam! Seldom do I find a travel partner that I'm able to travel with for more than 3 days without wanting to go my separate way. With Ember, I didnt even come close to being annoyed of her. I found a keeper!

Her laid back, down to earth personality is exactly what I look for in a travel partner.


After catching up with what each other had been up to in the last month, we ventured out into the city.

There's really not a whole lot to do in the town of Hue, but me and Ember could have fun practically anywhere.


Almost every city in Southeast Asia has their own local market. Some cities have a lively night market, some have better day markets. They sell everything from food to handicrafts.


Ember and I decided to browse through Hue's local market and pick up some fruit for dinner.


In Hue, it's impossible to walk 10 feet with getting harrassed by a local motorbike or rickshaw driver, annoyingly offering a ride by yelling at you from across the street. It can be very tiring after awhile.


They use the same tactic as I did as a child: beg until you get your way.
"Mom, will you buy me this toy?", I would nag.
"No",  my mom would respond.
"Mom, will you PLEASE buy me this toy? Pretty, pretty please!", I would whine. Eventually, my mom would be so annoyed, she would just buy me the stupid toy so I would shut-up.


On the long walk to the market, Ember decided the best way to shun the nagging from the locals would be to pretend like she didn't speak English. Soon enough, she was able to try her scheme out when a rickshaw driver approached us, "Excuse me, where you going? You need ride?" the driver started. Ember countered this by speaking French to him. I burst into such violent laughter that a group of locals stopped to stare at me. The rickshaw driver was confused. He wasn't sure what to do. So he continued to follow us relentlessly.
Succumbing to our failure, we decided to have fun with him. We spoke nonsense words to him, making up our own language and laughing wildly at it. "Ning chung choy." we would say straight faced to him. "waddy hotty ho." We couldn't contain ourselves and soon exploded into uncontrollable laughter. The rickshaw driver was also laughing and finally decided to leave us silly girls alone. Success!

When we finally arrived at the market, we were perplexed when the Vietnamese ladies tried charging us absurdly high prices for the fruit, even more than we would pay in the US! We had our eye on jackfruit, but the ladies adamantly refused to compromise on a price. They automatically think that all tourists are rich.


After failed attempts to achieve a reasonable price, we gave up and strutted over to the local supermarket next door. Here, we found a plethora of fruits, all for a fraction of the price of the market! The best part was that there were actual price tags on the fruit, which meant no more exhaustive, headache-producing bartering!
Hallelujah!


We found that our beloved jackfruit was available only as a whole fruit. Shucks.

It usually comes nicely cut up. This wasn't going to stop us! We'll buy the whole dang thing and cut it up ourselves! In case you didn't know, jackfruit is VERY large and heavy. It's the over-grown child of fruits. Ember hit the nail on the head when she said that jackfruit tastes like bubblegum.


We found a smaller jackfruit that weighed 5 lbs and paid next to nothing for it. We smugly walked out of the supermarket and lugged our spiky green fruit all the way back to the hotel, laughing about how we had out-smarted the uptight locals when we took matters into our own hands.


On the way back to the hotel, we stopped by the post office so I could mail a package home. Ember waited patiently with our precious jackfruit. She mentioned that our jackfruit was beginning to get really smelly. I gave it a sniff and concurred. It definitely had an unpleasant smell to it. Did we buy the wrong kind of fruit?! Dorian is a similar looking fruit that smells like stinky feet (it's also delicious). But I was confident in my knowledge of these exotic fruits. I assured Ember it was indeed jackfruit that we were carrying.


When we got back to the hotel, we borrowed a knife from the front desk. We couldn't wait to cut it open. Was it really jackfruit, or was it dorian? The suspense was killing us!


I performed the cutting procedure on the balcony of our 4th floor hotel. We had a bet going if it was jackfruit or dorian. After a large incision, I peered into the dense yellow fruit and proudly declared "It's jackfruit!" We cheered and celebrated by noshing on our sweet "bubble-gum" fruit, watching the city flowing below us.

I'm going to come out and say that jackfruit is the most delicious fruit I've ever tasted. But when ripe, it can have the unpleasant characteristic of being extremely sticky, I'm talking glue strength sticky. We laughed at each other as strings of stickiness trailed from our hands to mouth. Even after scrubbing our hands harshly, we couldn't get the goo off.


Eating this jackfruit, laughing with Ember, I couldn't have been happier. Messy hands and all. It was so nice to be reunited with Ember. A familiar face in an unfamiliar world.


It was a relief to socialize with another American again. We fully understood each other as we bounced our traveling gripes off of each other during our girl talks. It was exactly what I needed at this stage in my trip. When I travel, I feel like I'm constantly losing and finding myself, turned upside down and inside out, I'm perfecting the human being I strive to be. After a trip like this, it's impossible to return home as the same person.


We commented on how our present lives were so different from our friends and families back home. As they go to work in an office, we occupy our care-free days with things like deciding which exotic fruit to buy and warding off pesty rickshaw drivers. We both agreed that we are very lucky girls.

The sky was grey and thunder rolled in the distance. We had been seeing reports on the news of a typhoon off the coast of Vietnam, which would explain all the rain lately.


Sitting on our $12/night hotel balcony, I stopped to remind myself of where I was. I'm in Vietnam! It can be so easy to forget this when I travel for such long periods of time. I have to remind myself to embrace these moments, because soon they will only be memories. I am so grateful....