Fruitful Journeys
By: Daylia Lian (CAS ’28)
GRIP: Sustainable Development in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
If I had to pick one of the most unexpected joys from living in Vietnam for 2 months, besides the delicious coffees, beautiful cafes, and scrumptious food, it would have to be hoarding my fruit for the week.
Starting off my fruit journey midway through the 2 months with our cohort’s trip to the Mekong Delta, I got to experience the best (or some would say stinkiest) of Vietnamese fruits: Durian. On a little wooden boat on the Delta, our group indulged in the beautiful yellow durian fruit. Each picking our own pod off a huge durian, we cheers’ed before we all took our bites, many of us trying the fruit for the first time. I consider myself a brave eater, yet I had somehow never ventured towards durian at any fruit stand. Once I bit into the fruit, I understood why it there was an extreme of people who loved the fruit (but also many who didn’t). To me, it was delicious, creamy, and rich, and I quickly snatched up another piece.
Thus, this set me off on my remembrance of my love for tropical fruits, something I had yet to explore the true potential of in Vietnam. For a place known for tropical fruits, I was surprised I had yet gone to the market to buy any fruits.
I ventured to the Farmers Market, a chain fruit store, across the street the next week to pick up some fruits. I grabbed a kilogram of dragon fruit and a kilogram of rambutan, a red spiky fruit sort of like lychee, for only the cost of $4. Compared to the US, where prices would likely be 3x more, I may have gotten a little too much fruit, forgetting just how much a kilogram truly is. No matter, when I cut open the dragon fruit and took my first bite, I was ready to go back and buy more tropical fruits.
I even tried food delivery fruit, having 3 kilograms of mangosteens, rambutans, and oranges delivered to my apartment. The freshness of the fruit, combined with the speed of the food deliver (only 20 minutes), truly amazed me.
As you stroll markets in Vietnam, you will see all kinds of different fresh fruits sold by the vendors. The next time I’m in Vietnam, I will have to go back and indulge in many more of the tropical fruits I rarely see here.
Falling in love with Vietnam’s fruit culture, from the market stands, to the streetside stalls, to the grocery markets, to the fruit farms, means falling in love with a fruit culture built upon family, abundance, and affordability. To me, my newfound love for Vietnamese fruit will always remind me of my time there.