After Eating 30+ Durian Varieties in Penang, My Least Favourite Is Musang King

As a durian lover, I have long heard that Penang, Malaysia, has hundreds of different varieties of durian. This year, I joined a durian tour and ate more than 20 different varieties of durian, and while accompanying the farmers at work, I also tasted the day’s randomly fallen “durian blind box” — the variety unknown, a once-in-a-lifetime encounter.

In recent years, a particular way of travelling in Penang has become popular among Chinese tourists: going up the hills to eat durian. It is less like buying fruit at a traditional fruit shop and more like a private flavour exploration — whatever falls from the trees that day is what the tourists eat. These durian tours did not originally start as tourism products; they were a way for local food connoisseurs to seek out old-tree kampung durian. Later, as it spread on social media, more and more Chinese tourists made the special trip to Batu Maung.

An “old durian tree” refers to a tree more than 30 years old; “kampung” is a transliteration of the Malay word “kampung” and means indigenous or local.

This experience truly gave me the thrill of eating durian in Penang — like opening a blind box: a blend of bitter and sweet, creamy aroma, peanut-butter flavour, floral scent, cheese flavour, a tingling, numbing sensation, whisky flavour, and even, for someone, a cockroach flavour… You never know what the next durian will taste like.

Every year, May to July is Penang’s durian peak season. Tree-ripened fruit is ripe the moment it falls, has a short shelf life, and must be sold as soon as possible; afterwards, its flavour begins to diminish. Countless diners fly in, naturally, because a seasonal gift like this cannot be missed; this year, even more so, because after the famous varieties supplied to export markets across the country ripened, output surged, causing local durian prices to plunge. According to the British BBC, Malaysia normally produces about 550,000 tonnes of durian a year, but 2026 has brought an exceptionally abundant harvest: Musang King and Black Thorn, the two benchmark varieties, are in oversupply, prices have fallen to their lowest in three or four years, and the quality is excellent while prices are only half those of previous years.

This is also the B-side of the “surprise blind box” — for local durian orchard owners, the recent “Penang durian boom” has both rewarded years of quiet hard work and meant that the local durian market has had to absorb the damage caused by fluctuations in the export-dependent, large-scale durian market. As one orchard owner said: “Lower prices are a good thing for consumers, but they also expose a deeper problem that Penang’s small farmers must face.”

Why Do Food Connoisseurs Shun Musang King?

Travelers who arrive in Penang specifically for durian season are mostly from China. Now that fresh fruit of famous varieties such as Musang King, Black Thorn and Red Prawn can be bought in China, why fly all the way to Penang, and even bother travelling from the city to Batu Maung in the southwest to eat durian?

An older man who has had diabetes for many years, yet still comes to Penang every year to eat durian (not something to imitate), told me: “People who come to Penang to eat durian are definitely not coming for the famous varieties! They are coming for old-tree kampung durian!”

Having grown up picking only lychees straight from the tree and eating only free-range chicken, I very well understand diners’ devotion to “kampung durian”. In addition, there is a local tradition in Malaysia of eating “tree-ripened durian” — unlike Thailand or other regions that rely on large-scale cold-chain transport and export, where durian is cut from the tree when it is only about seven-tenths ripe, the fruit is left to ripen fully on the tree, with flavour accumulating to its richest point, before it falls naturally. Today, Penang still has many of the old-tree durian trees from those early days — trees more than 30 years old, and even ones over a century or two centuries old.

Because of that uncertainty, in Penang, the best way to eat durian is not to judge it by how many compartments it has or whether its sugar content meets the standard that advertising businesses like to promote, but to return to a mode of interaction rooted in personal connections: become friends with the durian orchard owner, and one day, when a good durian from a tree old enough to have a rich flavour falls naturally, they will save some for you first.

One early morning, I stepped into a kampung old-tree durian orchard. The female orchard owner was briskly opening durians and picking the flesh into a bucket. “These are all being thrown away; someone will collect them to make durian pulp.” The male orchard owner teased with a smile, “They are probably sold to China.” I curiously picked one up and ate it. It was clearly lightly sweet and tasty, and tasted very fresh — why was it being thrown away? Seeing my puzzled face, the people in the orchard kept teasing me: “If you eat too much rubbish, you will have no room in your stomach for durian later!” It was not until I tasted their real signature that I understood why durians whose flavour was not as richly layered were so casually dismissed as “rubbish” by them.

That day, our group tasted 15 different durians in total. The orchard owner would arrange the tasting order according to the number of people: from the introductory ones that are lightly sweet and floral, all the way to the strong-flavoured old-tree ones with cheese, numbing, and spicy notes, and the diners’ flavour spectrum was gradually broadened.

Another durian orchard owner also explained from a historical perspective why Penang has so many and such a mixed assortment of durian varieties. This area is in northern Malaya, close to Thailand; in earlier years, fruit farmers often travelled back and forth between the two countries. At that time, grafting was not yet mature, and many people planted durian seeds brought back from Thailand, only to find that some inherited the parent plants’ traits, while others developed entirely different characteristics. This uncertainty, on the contrary, gave rise to Penang’s rich and distinctive flavours. For example, locally there are more than 200 different durian varieties.

However, while diners enjoy an ultimate flavour experience, they must also accept the uncertainty of the fruit’s flavour; some see it as fun, while others, feeling that what they ate did not match the description on a certain platform, write a big “avoid” post.

What is telling is that a friend from Thailand, accustomed to mass-grown Monthong durian with a uniform, lightly sweet flavour, also completely failed to appreciate this Malaysian kampung durian — whisky-like aroma interlaced with bitter-sweet and numbing notes, moist, soft and slick, even sticky in the throat.

A connoisseur in the durian tour knew well which orchard and which tree was better. At her guidance, we went to an orchard famous for “XO” (a kampung variety). The durians that were opened were blackish-green — this colour often indicates a more intense flavour and is a favourite of those who love strong flavours. The whisky-like aroma and bitterness are intense; XO lives up to its name. The orchard owner was peeling durians barehanded, and around him there was no shortage of diners who had come from far away and gathered to photograph him. “Why is my XO better than others? Because I water it more diligently!” The orchard owner was very proud of this treasure of the orchard.

Eating durian in Penang is interesting not only for opening a great-value durian blind box — about 70 Malaysian ringgit (the equivalent of 116 yuan) is enough to eat until you are stuffed, and it includes 10 or so different durians — but also for coming into contact with capable, hard-working durian farmers. Just by looking at how fresh the stem is, the colour of the husk and the shape of the hard spines, gauging the weight, and then shaking it to listen to the sound, they can roughly judge a durian’s variety, tree age, whether it is a dry or wet compartment — i.e. whether the flesh has more or less moisture — and even its approximate texture. This whole body of experience relies solely on spending day and night “getting along” with the fruit trees, with no textbook to follow.

When you go to Lin Brothers’ orchard, the most eye-catching feature is a black wooden house — this place, renowned among durian diners everywhere as a gourmet paradise, has a history of over a century. The building uses not a single rivet; the black wall paint can deter insects and fire. Together with the dozens of century-old durian trees in the orchard, it has protected three generations. Walking through the orchard, you can see all kinds of insects, birds, and snakes, as well as mangosteen, nutmeg, rambutan, and white cardamom — fruit trees that predecessors also planted. The orchard owner cannot name all the durian varieties here either, but he knows which tree they come from and how they taste, after all, he has lived here for more than forty years.

Following these devoted connoisseurs up the hills to look for durian, I could not help but reflect: In Penang, durian is like a dictionary — endless to learn, and endless to eat.

Terroir: Why Batu Maung

Batu Maung lies in the southwest of Penang, covering about two-thirds of Penang, and is named for being surrounded by a continuous range of mountains. In 1764, the British East India Company opened a port here, and since then it has remained a town mainly based on agriculture. Penang’s three famous products — durian, nutmeg, and cloves — are all grown in these hills. Many Chinese immigrants in earlier years cleared land here and ran orchards, and a number of durian orchards have already been passed down through three generations.

Uncle An (a pseudonym), a durian orchard owner, has been growing durian for 30 years. He tends a kampung durian orchard the size of eight football pitches, where the durian trees are at least 50 years old, and two of them are more than a century old. He told me that the secret to Penang’s delicious durian lies in “high mountains, steep slopes, and lots of stones.” Durian trees need a great deal of water, yet they are most afraid of waterlogging and root rot. Most orchards in Batu Maung are planted on hillside slopes of over 45 degrees. The soil is fine black soil formed from weathered granite, with good water permeability, and the large stones scattered across the hills help the roots avoid standing water — a terrain that lets durian roots drink their fill without becoming waterlogged.

Different altitudes, temperatures, and light conditions favour the growth of different durian varieties. For example, Red Prawn durian prefers high-altitude areas. Batu Maung lies on the side nearer Sumatra, and the sea breeze that blows here year-round carries salt that keeps the leaves dry, reduces pests and diseases, and helps build up the durian’s flavour. Every year, May to July, when the durian ripens, is exactly the window of the year when temperatures begin to cool; this cooling period helps retain the polyphenols in the flesh — especially the anthocyanins in red-fleshed durian, which dye the flesh that touch of reddish-orange.

It is for this reason, too, that I heard many times in Batu Maung the line orchard owners often say: whether business goes well is entirely up to Heaven.

A Blind Box for Consumers, or a Risk for Farmers?

At Uncle An’s orchard, the greatest pleasure of eating durian is “not knowing”. Unlike commercial orchards, where you book in advance, after making the journey over hills and ridges to get here, you simply ask: “What fruit has fallen today?”

For Uncle An, however, this unknown is not the kind of surprise tourists expect, but the uncertainty he has to face every day.

After we had got to know one another, I worked for two days with Uncle An and his wife, Auntie Bi. Uncle An used to be an office worker, and only after retirement did he come back to inherit the orchard his mother had left him.

Uncle An works all year without a day off, leaving the orchard for only two days on the first and second days of the Chinese New Year. When the durian season peaks in June, his handwritten diary is filled every day with guest arrangements. He gets up at 5 a.m. every day to collect fallen fruit, doing so twice a day, in order to open it at the best time. As well as collecting fruit, he also has to reply to tourists’ messages and welcome diners who come up the hill.

During the durian growing season, he is busy weeding by hand and catching insects — he says that tending durian is harder than tending children, and if he does not come for a month, the durian trees will die. The orchard is large, and they have always stuck to traditional methods, believing that using pesticides would make the fruit starchy (the trees are too tall to spray anyway). They also insist on not using herbicides, believing that manual weeding preserves the temperature and moisture in the soil, keeps the roots cool, and allows the microbial community in the soil to survive.

Auntie Bi said her last rest was last year, when she injured her hand from opening too many durians. She says that, with over a hundred different durian varieties in the orchard, the ways of identifying, sorting, and opening them are all different; if they hired someone to help, “I suppose they would want to run away before they had even learned”. Indeed, here I could only help with purely physical tasks, such as collecting fruit and sweeping dirt, dust, and leaves off the fruit. Even lifting a durian or using the opening knife was a struggle, but Auntie could, with practised ease, score an arc into a durian and open one in two or three minutes.

This year the weather has been unseasonable; nearly 80% of the fruit in the orchard fell within the month of June alone — fruit that should have been gathered slowly over several months crashed down all at once, causing heavy losses. Auntie Bi has to open hundreds of fruits a day, and cannot keep up, so they can only sell some less well-known varieties off in piles: a pile of about 20 kilograms for 28 Malaysian ringgit, about 45 yuan — the fact that they are tree-ripened has instead made the old kampung trees “lose out”. The couple only sell fresh durian fruit that has fallen on the day; kampung durian kept overnight becomes “waterier” in texture, and can only be thrown away or sold more cheaply to the durian pulp factory. Meanwhile, famous varieties such as Musang King and Black Thorn often fall when nine-tenths ripe and can be kept for a further two or three days. This is a fatal difference in timing.

Some durian stalls and durian orchards still serve overnight kampung durian to customers; after all, it is only slightly more “watery” in texture, and customers may not notice.

Sometimes, Uncle An shares the joy of other customers with me: “You have no idea how happy that customer was today, just happening to encounter an old-tree Zhujiao (a durian variety) that had fallen! The moment he saw it, he took it away immediately!” So I asked Uncle An, do you like growing durian? He answered frankly: “I am especially regretful about growing durian; it is too tiring!”

When talking about these working routines, the phrase that is always on Uncle An’s lips is: “Our food depends on the weather.” For example, during flowering, extreme weather is the most feared; too much rain or too little is no good. “Over the decades, there have also been years when it rained day after day during the flowering season, causing an almost total crop failure,” he says.

Meanwhile, a set of flower-induction methods has become common in the industry — judging the tree’s growth state by leaf size, first supplementing calcium and then phosphorus before the dry season, restricting water and lowering temperature to stimulate flower buds… These methods are mainly found in orchards of grafted trees, because only grafted trees with uniform genetics can be judged against “standard leaf size”; each old kampung tree has different genetics, so the standard itself is very difficult to apply.

In addition, storms can knock nearly ripe fruit down prematurely; squirrels and monkeys come to steal the fruit; and insect damage can sometimes gnaw half a tree to death — in the orchard, some trees survive being gnawed by insects and continue to grow, while others cannot hold on.

Why continue when it is so hard? He says: “Do you know how poor my family was when I was a child? My mother planted durian seeds, but had no money to buy water pipes, so she carried water up to water the trees bucket by bucket. How could I bear to cut the trees down?!”

This reluctance to part with them is being worn away little by little by reality. Many farmers have chosen to cut down old trees and plant famous varieties that seem more profitable — Black Thorn, Musang King. By propagating through grafting — attaching scions from superior varieties to rootstock — these famous varieties can bear fruit in five or six years, with fruit shape and taste highly consistent, stable and controllable, with a higher degree of commercialisation and immediate economic returns. Trees grown from seeds may take ten or twenty years to bear fruit; Uncle An even still has trees that have not borne fruit after fifty or sixty years.

On the other hand, old kampung trees still retain the advantage of flavour. Famous varieties need to be fertilised seven or eight times a year, whereas old kampung trees need fertilising at most once or twice a year. An orchard owner told me that the fruit of these famous varieties looks better and is larger because of the use of pesticides. By comparison, old kampung trees usually produce fruit that is not large in shape, which means more nutrients can be absorbed and the layers of flavour are richer. “The Durian Kingdom” (“liulian” is the spelling of “durian” used by Malaysian Chinese) states that the root systems of old durian trees, having endured decades, have long since gone deep into the ground and are more vigorous; they can even reach the underground water table, absorb more minerals, and also contribute to flavour. In addition, such roots may also be better able to withstand waterlogging, whereas grafted famous-variety trees, such as Black Thorn and Musang King, have relatively shallow root systems, are much shorter-lived, and are more sensitive to weather fluctuations. [1]

Sources?

One day, I brought a cake to share with them. Auntie declined at first; I teased: “You have been here opening durians since six in the morning — if I did not bring it, when would you have time to eat!” Auntie accepted it, and we talked about the small details of life — for example, there is no time at all to clean the house during durian season, and after July, when you go home, you find it as messy as a “pigsty”; her son works in Kuala Lumpur and can hardly help out with the durian orchard. I half-joked: why don’t I inherit the orchard? Uncle laughed out loud: “You could manage for a day or two, but you can’t even stand mosquitoes!”

A pang of guilt came over me — indeed, that is true. Farming is not easy; all I can probably do is eat a few more kampung durians.

The Durian Tsunami: Behind the Price Crash

This year’s large-scale drop in durian prices has been dubbed the “durian tsunami” — a vivid description, since when a tsunami arrives, almost no one is spared.

The source of the tsunami must be traced back a decade. At that time Malaysia’s economy was booming, and the Chinese market’s enthusiasm for Musang King had only just begun to take off, so many farmers felled their rubber and oil palm trees to plant durian, especially Musang King and Black Thorn, which recouped costs more quickly and enjoyed stronger market acceptance. Ten years on, the batch of trees planted then is now entering peak production all at once, and huge volumes of fruit are flooding the market.

For example, Musang King and Black Thorn are famous varieties, and their prices directly affect every other variety. Farmers growing less well-known, even nameless varieties have had no choice but to sell their fruit to middlemen at sharply reduced prices. But costs have not fallen by a cent, and smallholders say it is becoming harder and harder to make a living.

There are further problems. The Musang King and Black Thorn trees planted ten years ago are now entering peak production all at once; these young trees have had less time to establish their roots and be fertilised, and are more prone to producing defective fruit such as empty pods and underripe fruit. Much of it fails to meet the export standards required for China and is left stranded in Malaysia, to be sold cheaply.

Chinese demand has directly affected export-oriented producing areas in Malaysia such as Pahang, Raub, and Kuala Lumpur. Between 2020 and 2024, the total value of durian imported by China tripled. In 2023, nearly nine-tenths of the durian from Vietnam and Thailand was also exported to China. Although Malaysia still accounts for only 4–5% of the Chinese market, by now places such as Pahang have developed a complete system covering fruit shape, sugar content, and export standards, and some orchards have even begun using IoT fertigation systems for standardised, data-driven management.

In Penang’s Bukit Mertajam, the plots are fragmented and mostly run by family smallholders; the geography has never suited large-scale expansion, and durian output is far smaller than in Pahang or Johor. Yet Penang is not immune — when prices fell, it was affected all the same.

Affected by this export-market-driven price crash, Malaysian famous-variety growers are still arguing over one question:

“Should Malaysia insist on tree-ripened durian?”

Malaysia’s signature has always been the richness and complex layers of flavour in tree-ripened durian. But many growers are now seriously discussing whether they should follow Thailand and Vietnam in cutting the fruit early: the fruit’s shelf life can be longer, it suits cheaper transport routes, and the sales window is longer.

Those who insist on tree-ripened fruit believe this is almost Malaysia’s only differentiating advantage in the Chinese market — in 2024, Malaysia had only just opened fresh-fruit exports; that year, of the durian imported by China, 52.6% came from Thailand and 46.7% from Vietnam. If they cannot compete on volume, they can only compete on the “different” flavour profile. They are also worried that Malaysia has already lost its global leading positions in rubber and palm oil, one after the other; if it also abandons the distinctiveness of durian, the same story may repeat itself.

The side that supports cutting the fruit early is more pragmatic: cutting it early transfers the risk from growers to fruit buyers, farmers get paid sooner, and they do not have to watch the fruit on the tree crash into a market that cannot absorb it. Moreover, most Malaysian orchards are already made up of old trees; even if the fruit is cut early, as it ripens slowly over two or three days after leaving the tree, the flavour can move from sweet and creamy to deeper, with a slight bitter note, and the quality is still higher than that from Thailand’s younger, hormone-dependent trees.

This dispute is currently taking place mainly on the battleground of famous export varieties such as Musang King and Black Thorn; Penang’s old kampung trees were never part of the import-export chain, so for now they remain outside it. But if “tree-ripened” one day ceases to be what people take to be the standard of “good durian”, will the Penang experience of “eating whatever falls from the tree” be forgotten?

A Penang durian orchard, Bahang Terraces, is not only growing kampung durian but also running farm tours, hoping that more people will come to understand the terroir stories of Penang’s kampung durian. They say that, as farmers switch to the higher-priced Musang King and Black Thorn in order to cope with market pressure, Penang’s kampung durian will become increasingly rare. If we do not become aware of the problem, some varieties may disappear. This is already happening.

“Penang’s durian should not be just Musang King; Musang King actually comes from Pahang State,” a durian enthusiast from Penang told me.

IV. Conclusion

In late July, Penang’s durian season was drawing to a close. I asked Uncle An what fruit was still around. He said there was not much left — just eat whatever comes.

Whether in the off season or the high season, eating durian here is really a matter of “leaving it to chance”. You ride a motorbike through the noisy city, over a stretch of mountain road, and after all that fuss, come to the orchard and ask: what has fallen from the tree today?

You do not know what you are about to eat, but you are still willing to pay for this gift of local produce.

For the durian orchard owners here, this “uncertainty” has never been a romantic blind-box game. It is decades of living by the weather, day in and day out, and, with China’s durian boom and the crop surge, an increasingly unfavourable market climate. Whether the fruit will be knocked off by a storm just before ripening, whether it will fetch a price, whether their sons and daughters are willing to take over — none of this is within their control. All they can do is continue tending the trees that grow old alongside them.

– This is Foodthink’s 829 th original article –

Editor: Pei Dan

Layout: Xiao Shu

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