In Season- Mangosteen

Mangosteen is absolutely my favorite tropical fruit. The texture is like a mix between a banana and a peach and it tastes like every delicious tropical fruit mixed together. You can imagine my delight when Hong brought me a bag of mangosteen (mangosteens? mangsgosteen?) yesterday!

This is a mangosteen. To open it, rip off the bottom half. The outside of a mangosteen is soft, so it's easy to get it open. 

 

This is the inside of a mangosteen. The edible white part is usually divided into 5-7 segments. The biggest segment has a seed inside of it. The purple part is not edible. Even just licking it gives you cotton-mouth like crazy. The purple juice also stains everything it comes into contact with.

In order to avoid cotton-mouth, squeeze the mangosteen so that the white part partially comes out, then pick it out with your teeth. You will need to make a face similar to or exactly the same as the one I am making.

In Season- Rambutan

Rambutan is one of the weirder looking tropical fruit that we have here. It's also very refreshing on these extremely hot and humid days.

This is a rambutan! In Lao it's called Mak Ngo. Mak means fruit. Ngo is the actual name. The vowel is so short. It's a very glottal sound and is still really difficult for me to pronounce!

 This is the inside of a rambutan.

 This is the part of the rambutan that you can eat. There is a white seed on the inside.

Once you're finished eating a rambutan, it seems wrong to just throw away the hilarious-looking rind. But what should you do?

Why, put them in your eyes, of course!

 Hong got the hang of it much faster than I did...

 ...but I got it eventually. Sort of.