On my trip through the many islands in the Philippines (Cebu, Bohol, Mindanao, and Luzon), I witnessed two 6+ magnitude earthquakes, saw the tiniest monkeys in the world, and twisted the key to the door in Manila so hard that I locked ourselves out and spent All Saints Day —- a national holiday in the Philippines —- looking to duplicate a key that had broke in half.

So I will take this opportunity to talk about the time I ate a durian.

Full disclosure: I am no durian virgin. I had a little taste of it some years back but did not care for the smell. A durian smell has been described most charitably as “onions”, least charitably as “stinky socks” or “garbage”. And yet I was assured that his was the greatest taste on the planet.

My Durian-quest was powered by that most potent tastemaker of the mid-2000’s: the Travel Channel. The late Anthony Bourdain quite enjoyed it in a No Reservations vignette filmed in Vietnam where he cracked open a durian and savored it in a bamboo cabana overlooking a serene waterfront. His counterpart, Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern, famously hated it. On the food celebrity coolness scale, though, one generally wants to be closer to Bourdain than to Zimmern. It is wiser to aim for the paragon of fine living than infamy due to the savoring of bull testicles.

Thus began my years long attempt at being able to overcome the initial disgust to push toward the creamy taste at its center. The most palatable option, then, was processed durian foods. I chewed on some durian candies that retained the flavor but little of the smell. Back in Washington state, there is a Thai restaurant that regularly serves durian ice cream. You could dump that in a cup, add some boba, and also have it in a durian shake. Durian shakes became a guilty pleasure of mine, despite being massive carb bombs. The smell still lingers, but it is subsumed underneath the creamy sweetness —- which is not unlike an avocado.

What helps, too, is shifting your mindset. It you eat a durian and think “garbage”, you are already imagining rancid meat (not helped that the texture is not too dissimilar to flesh). However, think of custard or pudding. A stinky custard is perfectly cromulent!

Davao City in the Philippine island of Mindanao bills itself as the “Durian Capital of the Philippines.” There is even a large durian statue outside the airport… at least I trust my Pokémon Go app that there’s a Pokestop there. (We exited through another street, and my companions could not understand my disappointment.). It is also home to various tongue-twisty fruits, many that I had never heard of: marang. Santol. Guyabano. Caimito. Lanzones. Most are traditionally juicy, like pineapples. There is only one King of Fruits, though.

No marang got a statue made of it.

In between earthquakes and monsoons, we decided that perhaps zip lining on a bicycle was not the best option when the lines were slick with rain and an aftershock was imminent. (Had I survived a zip line collapse, though, I definitely would’ve had a more thrilling post than “El Santo eats a durian.”) Hence I was sent hurtling toward my destiny: a roadside fruit stand. To make up for our change in plans, our party of eight senior citizens, five adults, and one baby took a stop at an old school stand made of bamboo, grass, and corrugated aluminum.

And elderly Filipino woman informed us that the durian in the USA is from Thailand. The variety that grows in Mindanao is even stinkier… but that makes it even better! Note: always be careful when taking culinary suggestions from the elderly. They love to prank the foreigners. For example, they will reassure you that the dark stew you are eating is called “chocolate meat”. It’s all well and good until you learn that dinuguan is made from boiled pig blood. (I am also unsure whether the old man who bragged about eating American horses some 20 years ago —- “American horses are sweeter because they’re grass fed” —- was pulling my leg or not.)

Well, you can’t scare me, old woman! I’ve been training!

A young companion bought several durian and placed it on a table, where he whacked a cut into it with a machete. He then told me to reach in and feast on the goo inside. I was game, though. I pried through the cut with my finger. It was not unlike reaching into a dead animal to pull its guts out. Had “mucus” been in my mental palace at the moment, I would have recoiled. With my other hand, I recorded the experience live on Instagram stories. I grabbed the squishy yellow goo between my thumb and forefinger while telling the world what a brave little boy I was.

Bourdain had hit upon the key element to eating a durian: choosing the correct environment for consumption. You cannot eat it in a room of house, or the smell will be too powerful. It must be some place open air. Some place like a remote market up in the mountains with no walls. Only strings of fruit strung from the cross beams separate you from the rainy world outside. The infamous smell drifts away and mingles with the aroma of damp soil and fumes from idling Diesel engines.

As you exhale the smell through your nostrils, you reach a peculiar olfactory version of nirvana to become one with the world around you. Rural Philippines is, in fact, a land of smells. Strong smells. And the durian and its smell elevates you above some of the more putrid stretches you might encounter in the city: that of drainage and stagnant waters. Durian may be stinky, but its powerful odors elevate you into that of the ephemeral state of nature. It may smell bad, but this is nature smelling bad.

And eventually, you grow to like it.

I can’t say for certain if this durian was any stinkier than ones I’ve had before. I was certainly softer. The ones I’ve had in shakes were fleshier and more fibrous. This one had closer to the consistency I imagined for a custard. This is, in fact, how I got a fellow American traveler to try it. As a shoved my plastic glove encrusted with durian in front of her face (in the Philippines the traditional eating utensil is the hands, so stalls will sometimes have plastic gloves instead of plastic spoons or chopsticks), I saw her face go through all three stages in less than thirty seconds. 1.) Revulsion at the smell. 2.) Disgust at the textures. 3.) a gradual softening of her features, finally concluding with an approving nod and her culinary assessment: “It’s not bad.”

I can’t say I had enlisted a new convert In my durian evangelization, but at least it hadn’t been as bad as she’d feared.

Bourdain may have missed out on a crucial aspect of the durian experience, though. He’s filmed enjoying the fruit alone. It seems to me, though, that durian is a communal fruit. One person cannot eat a whole durian alone. You must share it with others, each reaching into its slimy innards and together partaking in the ceremony while chatting around a picnic table. When you’re eating durian, you’re eating with family.