Manggis Dubai

i don't really like manggis (mangosteen). but today i'm writing about manggis because i saw this at waitrose dubai marina, and it's aed15.50 a packet. lebih kurang rm15.50 jugak.

i think there's only 10 bijik inside. 15.50 dirham.

okay, i'm not a manggis expert, but i'm sure you can get way more manggis with rm15.50 back in malaysia, right? i read somewhere that in kelantan you can get sekilo manggis for as low as 80 cents!

sekilo dah berapa manggis kan!


the morale of the story : buy, eat and enjoy local fruits when you're in malaysia.

hihi. hey, though i dislike manggis, i do love other local fruits. my favorite fruit happens to be banana! and yes, my boys share the love, hihi. other than banana, i also like mango and rambutan!

in fact, there was a mango tree right outside my old house in ipoh, where us sisters used to climb and make 'tree house' out of newspaper and cardboard boxes!

i don't like tembikai or betik because i think they're 'messy' fruits (go figure). and i also don't like langsat and ciku coz they taste funny. haha.

yah yah picky, picky!

parts of a manggis

anyways, though i don't really fancy manggis, i'll share what i found out through the magic of googling :

• it has no connection with mango!
• to open up the fruit, you have to twist or press the fruit until it breaks apart
• each manggis contains a type of “flower” at the bottom of the fruit, indicating the number of segments/slices the fruit contains
• while durian is 'king of fruit', manggis is said to be the 'queen of fruit'
• the manggis dark purple skin contains coloring/getah which is difficult to clean off if it stains your clothes
  
• manggis has cooling effect - so you often see durian and manggis sold side by side, because durian is heaty - so you can neutralize the effect of heatiness by eating the cool manggis
  

i found packets of rambutan too. sedih betul tengok. it's just that it looks so NOT fresh; with lebam-lebam and blackish.

also, because back in mr. khairul's kampung, there's a whole orchard of rambutan! there would be a LOT, and i mean a LOT of rambutan everywhere you look - up in the tree, or down on the grass, even up the steps leading to the house! click here for the entry i wrote about the glorious red rambutan invasion!

there's so many that mr. khairul's mom would make jars of rambutan jam. really!

so, when i see a small bunch of rambutan sold in packets like this, i feel really blessed that i could just go balik kampung soon, and eat rambutan as much as i want to, whenever i want to. just a petik away!