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.

The Autumn-and-Spring Tree

I went back to take more pictures of the beautiful autumn tree mentioned in this post, only to find that it had already started sprouting new leaves!

These pictures were only taken six days apart with a heavy rain in between.

My two favorite seasons wrapped up nicely in one tree!

Seasons- 3 in 1

This is such a colorful time of the year in Laos! We are experiencing the last of the cool weather and for a short period of time, we get (in my opinion) the best of three seasons:

Spring Blossoms

Something's always blooming in Laos! But this time of year is especially colorful. 

                                        Summer Fruit                                    

Though it's not the best time of the year for fruit, you get to see it beginning to ripen. These trees are in my neighbor's front yard: a Jackfruit tree and a mango tree. There is a pink hammock strung in between. (My house is the light one in the distance.)
Watermelon and Jichama (man pao = coconut potato) are quite easy to find.

Autumn Leaves

There are only a few kinds of trees that change color here, and one of them happens to be right outside of my house. I love green, but Autumn leaves are definitely my favorite kind!

Now if only we could get a bit of snow...