Thailand’s tasty tropical fruit temptations 

Pick your favourite fruits or explore Thailand’s vast array of tropical fruits seriously with a full blown orchard tour.

By Terri Roamer

If you guessed that the pineapple chunks gracing your plate in a posh London restaurant came from Thailand, you would probably be spot on.

Thailand is the world’s leading producer of pineapples, all 3 million tonnes of it, mostly canned for export and shipped to supermarket shelves around the world.

But Thailand’s success in fruit export goes far beyond canned pineapples to a wide variety of fruits that exceed an annual export value of more than Bt5.8 billion.

We tend to take it all for granted when we stroll around a typical fruit market in any of Thailand’s 76 provinces. We pick and choose from the colourful display, like veterans. We may even have the audacity to ask the vendor to peel the fruit and often they are sold with condiments a pinch of salt or a chilli dip. 

Sweet or sour we take all in our stride. If we spare a thought for its net value to the Thai economy, it will conjure up images of 10-wheel trucks packed with fruit destined for daily cargo flights to the consumer markets of Asia – Hong Kong, Japan and China’s eastern seaboard cities.

Busy minds in the tourism industry have coined the phrase agro-tourism and while we might think that involves a trek to a paddy field to plant rice, it could also point to a pit stop at one of Thailand’s fruit orchards. If there was ever a close second to wine tasting it has to be a fruit tasting tour.

This is the best time of the year to visit fruit orchards, or embark on an odyssey to fruit festivals many of them held in provinces close to coastal resorts like Pattaya.

I must admit I have never met a visitor who was in Thailand just to study or taste fruit. Slurping on a fresh tropical fruit tends to be a supporting theme. We conclude an exhausting tour of Bangkok’s temples with a chilled melon or mango smoothie without a second thought on how it made its way from tree to blender.

You would have to be very serious about your fruit to head off to far northern provinces to study the vast orchards growing longan fruit trees. A native fruit of China, the longan tree planted its roots in Thailand generations back and has prospered ever since to the point its fruit is now a major export item to its original habitat China.

Named after its sweet pink flesh, the most popular variety is the pink longan grown in Chiang Mai valley. Early in the morning, visitors head for the town’s fruit market next to the River Ping to snatch up boxes of this prized fruit for the trip back to Bangkok.  It is picked at orchards April through to July. 

The lychee (Linchi in Thai) also originated from South China and is now grown extensively in North Thailand and exported to cities around Asia. The season is April to May.

Websites that monitor Thai fruit rank the top five best sellers. The durian (thurian in Thai) leads the field possibly driven by its high-value export to Asian cities where consumers have taken a shine to the Thai varieties of this famous tropical fruit.

Other top ranked Thai fruits (by annual sale value) are the longan (lamyai), lychee (linchi), mangosteen (mangkhut) and mango (ma-muang).

You are not likely to forget your first encounter with the durian due to its pungent smell that mysteriously disappears once you are hooked on the fruit’s creamy texture and taste.

I recall a Malaysian Airlines captain refusing to fly his plane out of Hat Yai. He believed a durian had been smuggled on board and it took a 15-minute patrol up and down the aircraft aisle, before a sweet elderly lady admitted she wasn’t pregnant after all. It was durian under her sarong.

My first durian was the not-so-expensive Cha Ni. I found it easy to remember the Thai name so it was always my choice. I got to like it, favouring it over the much superior and pricy Monthong that durian lovers believe is the only choice for fruit connoisseurs.  The durian season runs from May to June.

The humble banana is an entirely different story. You might think this is a simple straightforward fruit, until you realise Thailand has a least 21 very different variations of what we thought was the common banana. When you think you have the banana business sussed, there is an even longer line-up of sub-varieties to mesmerise you for an entire holiday. But that fits the agro-tourism category an activity for the serious fruit fanatic.

The obvious banana choice for foreign visitors is the species identified in Thai as kluai hom. It’s the biggest, most robust and grows year round and is usually the choice for a hotel’s fruit baskets, delivered to room compliments of the management. 

It is always the first choice for blenders that turn out the traditional backpacker’s milk shakes, or those ice cold smoothies that freeze your brain.  But if you ask a Thai they will tell you the smaller Namwa banana is much tastier with a higher nutritional rating.

Whatever, bananas are a lifesaver for sports tourists who jog, cycle, swim and generally wreck themselves on a variety of extreme sports that runs them ragged.

The simple banana saves the day, replenishes energy and keeps them powering on to the next challenge. It can be found in every village market, at roadside stalls and if you fancy a fried version, a fritter Thai style, then check out the stalls at any of the night markets in provincial towns for this crispy snack.   

Another lifesaver for the active sports tourist, visiting Thailand, is the water melon (taeng mo). You can be parched, hot and dying for a soft drink, but the smart side of you tells you to pull off the highway at one of the stalls selling huge green watermelons. They quench the thirst and are sold everywhere year round.

Usually, the stall vendor will take a knife to the melon and cut into manageable slices. Then down to business as you sink your teeth in the red flesh slurp the fruit to reenergise for the rest of your journey.   

The first fruit I tasted in Thailand was the papaya (malako) served at breakfast with a squeeze of lime. The fruit is an import like me, but over the 200 or more years, since it was first transplanted from tropical America to Thailand, it has thrived to rank as a national staple fruit available year-round.

Eventually, every visitor discovers the pleasures of mango and sticky rice covered in sweet coconut cream. This is the all-time favourite that stands high on the dessert rankings next to strawberries and ice cream. In Thailand, the mango ( ma-muang) is eaten both ripe and unripe .The unripe version is usually covered in nampla wan sauce. The fruit is in season March to May.

The list of delightful tasty fruits in Thailand appears endless. We tend to focus our attentions on just a few mainstays that appeal to our taste buds, but for those who like to explore the country’s fruits in more detail, then head for the morning fruit markets. They are a hive of commercial activity and the fruits will differ according to the region you are visiting or the season.

Provinces on the eastern seaboard Rayong, Chantaburi and Trat have earned a reputation as the country’s top fruit growing region. Their success in exporting fruit, prompted some orchard districts to try their hand at agro-tourism. 

The first orchard tours were introduced with the support of the Tourism Authority of Thailand offices in the three provinces to broaden the scope of sightseeing tours for visitors to Pattaya and nearby resorts 

Orchards on tour

Suphattraland has both a fruit orchard and vegetable farm in Baan Khai district in Rayong province about 90 km from Pattaya resort.

Established in the 70s, it was not until the late 90s that it opened its fruit orchard to visitors. Today, it is open year-round and provides a study tour of around 25 tropical fruits so there are always some varieties that are ripening or being picked for export. The tour closes with fruit tasting, or a fruit buffet, where visitors can taste some of the fruit they helped to pick.

Oriental Garden is a community based project in Trat’s Khao Saming district, about 17 km before the provincial town. It is the site for an annual fruit festival, April to July, introduced just three years ago.

The festival’s star fruits are durian, mangosteen, southern langsat and rambutan, all grown for export by various orchards in the district. Agro-tourism has developed into is a side business based on fruit tasting at the orchards, the annual festival, home-stay options and study tours. There are several orchards that make up the Oriental Group, but at any one time the choice for study tours will usually involve possibly two or three of the members. Tours are welcomed personally by the orchard owner, who explains the various fruits and offers tips on choosing fruit for the dining table as well as how to pick the fruit off the trees. Visitors get a chance to pick fruit and taste it at a buffet spread. Facts on all the fruit picked that day are on display. Soft drinks are served and the orchard owners are great entertainers. It’s the closest you will get to a fruit orchard’s grower’s version of a wine tasting party, without having to decide who gets to drive back to the hotel after it is over.

Even if we are not agro-tourism experts, or about to embark on a thesis on tropical fruits of Southeast Asia, taking a closer look at the magnificent display of fruit at village markets or signing up for a tour of a fruit orchard adds value to the Thailand experience. It might even prompt you to buy a blender and embark on a new career creating exotic thirst quenchers.