King of fruit (or 'More encounters of the taste buds *durian* my stay in Malaysia')

I can confidentally say that there is very little that has passed through these lips that I haven't enjoyed, but dear friends, I think we have found a winner in the 'oh no you don't, you're not coming back here' stakes.

I tried durian for the first time last year, just to say I'd done it, and was really really not keen. Despite that, tonight somehow I went back for more. 'If all your friends sat around giant silver platters sucking on durian fresh from the shell like it was the most delicious thing on earth would you??' Apparently yes.

The first tase was awful, sweet, peppery, off-tasting, making my throat feel sore and my tongue complain. My tongue told me it was bad but I kept hoping that it was only a matter of time that I broke through some acclimitisation barrier and it was transformed into some wonderful flavour. So I kept sucking at the same battered chunk, looking at the others hacking into new fruit with big knives and liberating the custard looking globdules. I asked lots of questions like "did you like it the first time you tasted it or did it take a really long time to get used to it?", "does it actually smell nice to you? nice, like you like the smell?", "so it tastes nice does it?". (And part of me thinks they must be lying, that no tongue could like this, is it a joke?)

Remember those 3d puzzles where at first you felt like everyone was making shit up when they could see an underwater scene and all you could see was coloured dots? Same deal.

Puzzling.