It's not so much what you do get with the VIP taxi - DVD, Karaoke, and vibrating? chair. It's what you don't get - dogs, smoking, alcohol, and most importantly, Durian, the native Southeast Asian fruit with a vomit-inducing smell.
(See the symbol 3rd from the left)
I've tried durian only once in my life. It was during my last days with the Peace Corps, while I was making the rounds, visiting friends, co-workers, and students who wanted to wish me farewell.
One class of seniors had invited me to their village, where they wanted to make me lunch. I got there a little early, so they gave me a seat outside underneath the house. While some of the students were busy cooking, the others joined me outside to chat about what I was going to do once I got back to home, would I miss them, would I ever return, etc...
They also brought me a Coke (to help start the process of re-assimilation) along with some ripe durian (to remind me of where I still was). When they cracked open the durian in front of me, the first whiff was enough to tighten my stomach and contract my throat. To make things worse, it was a particularly ripe durian with the consistency of an unpeeled banana that had been floating in the pool all afternoon. It's the first time I had ever seen a smell, as it slowly wafted through the moist air.
Doing their best to be good hosts, the students served me up a full plate that no normal Thai would ever dream of eating in its entirety, and then, sat there eagerly waiting for me to get started. Someone's grandmother had also joined and told me to eat it, it's good.
Not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings, I resigned myself to my eminent fate and picked up a piece. As I watched my fingers slide through the fleshy, yellow dermis, I held my breath to avoid the acrid smell, and took a bite.
I tried to swallow, but the glutinous fibers clung to the back of my throat, and then, in front of everyone, I started to dry-heave. Using every ounce of effort to keep the durian and my breakfast from coming back up, I hacked endlessly with eyes bulging like a cat, who had just lick-cleaned a herd of woolly mammoths in June. I was fortunate enough to keep everything down, but needless to say, that was my first and last bite of Durian.
Some people claim to like durian. Others, like myself, are of the complete opposite persuasion. Here's the Wikipedia description of Durian.
"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."
Wallace cautions that "the smell of the ripe fruit is certainly at first disagreeable"; more recent descriptions by westerners can be more graphic. The English novelist Anthony Burgess famously said that dining on durian is like eating vanilla custard in a latrine. Travel and food writer Richard Sterling says:
"... its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public transportation in Southeast Asia."
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