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Tropical Fruit Fantasies on Your Oriental Vacation
By RomanticHeart | July 6, 2009
The exotic land called Thailand has become very popular as a vacation destination. When youthink of an Asian vacation you may perhaps imagine white sandy beaches, crystal clear warm water, underwater adventure watching dolphins and rainbow hued fish swimming around coral reefs.
There is so much more to an Asian vacation, though.
An Asian vacation is healthy. You can relax on the sand , you swim in the sea , and you take in lots of vitamins, minerals and other trace elements when you refresh yourself with a variety of exotic fruit. You can eat them cut up and peeled, or you can endulge yourself with a mixed fruit shake that brims with goodness and health. and it is excellent value for money .
We all probably know tropical fruits such as bananas, oranges, limes and watermelons. There’s also a wide range of fresh fruit that may not be as well known to you.
Take the custard apple as an example. It resembles a small green hand grenade and is filled with a sweet scented white flesh. It’s delicious consumed ripe with coconut milk or made into ice-cream.
The guava is a greenish-yellow fruit with a pale aromatic flesh. I’ve eaten it as jelly, and it’s also a different experience when it’s unripe and hard, with a spiced dip of salt, sugar and a few freshly chopped chillies.
The jackfruit is the largest of all cultivated fruits. The outside is rough and green, and inside sit the pieces of yellow-orange flesh which is succulent and wonderfully scented. Normally it’s eaten raw as a snack; and often the green parts are also used in cooking.
The longan is a small fruit with a durable but thin skin. The sweet and mouth watering flesh is white or pink and has a distinctivearomatic taste.
Mangoes come in many varieties, and they are unique from those in Hawaii or tropical America. The Asian mangoes are oblong in shape and have either dark green or golden yellow skin with whitish or yellow flesh. In Thailand mango is eaten with sticky rice topped with sweet coconut milk. They can also be pickled, made into chutneys or juices, or even used in traditional medicine. For an unforgetteable eating experience try green mango dipped in a mix of chillies and sugar. It’s crunchy and not unlike some of the apples we get in the west.
Sometimes called the queen of the tropical fruits: that’s the mangosteen. To reveal the sweet white fruit simply peel the dark purple skin. It’s usually eaten raw, poured into drinks as juice, or even added to seafood curries, depending on where you are. And apart from its delicious taste, it has a variety of healing properties and is therefore sought-after by alternative medicine, although, as far as I know, it hasn’t been successfully grown yet in temperate climates. So, the mangosteen may be one of the reasons you would want to have an Oriental Vacation.
The pomello or is one of my favourite tropical fruits. It’s the largest of the citrus fruits, weighs up to one kilogramme, and is sometimes referred to by the name of “ugly fruit”. Larger than a grapefruit and sweeter too this fruit is used for making salads in deserts or used to create fresh fruit drinks.
There are so many other wonderful tropical fruits, like the well-known pineapple that is so much sweeter here in Asia, or the lesser known rambutan with its succulent white flesh within a bright red hairy skin, or the sapodilla, an oval-shaped fruit with sweet, succculent reddish-brown flesh in a brown skin. Many Thai curries and soups use the paste made from tamarinds as a key ingredient.
Remember to check out all of these wonderful tastes when you’re on your Asia vacation
Topics: Romantic Getaways | 1 Comment »
July 8th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Hello all, I read you wonderfull articles on “Romantic Getaways” which reminded me of a little getaway I had with my husband just recently. We were going to Austraslia to visit my sister and as it was our anniversary at the time we booked a Romantic getaway in a litle place on the Murray River in South Australia called Riverview Rise Retreats. It’s about an hours drive from Adelaide and it’s a real surprise. We travel extensively, hence my reading your articles planning our next trip, and I must say that of all the places we have stayed, Riverview Rise Retreats stand out like a beacon for their innovative quality and service. Pitty we are not heading to that part of the wold any time soon but for those of your readers that are, I say, do yourself a favour and visit their website at least. You will find them at:
http://mannumaccommodation.com.au
Best of luck from
Pat Dawson.