I'm still in Myanmar. I guess i will have to get a signed statement from minister of Agriculture for you to believe it, but yes durians are grown here. I don't trust what tour operators, taxi drivers, etc. tell me completely first because often their english is rudimentary and will tend to say yes, yes, yes to everything you ask them. Also if you ask a tour operator in New York where the current apples in market are coming from do you think they will necessarily give you a good answer? Also many people in Myanmar don't eat durians because it is out of their price range, or they simply don't like it. So not everyone is an expert on where they are coming from.
I saw a lot more durians on streets of Myanmar than in streets of Bangkok, and this was very surprising to me. In that photo i posted you only see one side of sidewalk, but one vendor had many hundreds of fruits piled high and deep. In Bangkok only a few cart vendors had a few fruits. The price of durian in Yangon was not at all expensive for durian. It ranged in price depending on size from 3,000 to 7,000 kyat, which equals about $3.50 to $8. I payed about the same price in Bangkok. The really expensive fruits in Yangon were the imported temperate fruits which were also wrapped in individual styrofoam socks. I think a lot of the citrus is also imported because it is very large, shiny with wax, sold by the piece rather than kilo and quite expensive.
The statement of location on map is to show to Jaime, who preciously said he thought Myanmar was too cold to grow durians, that Myanmar has plenty of tropical areas able to grow durian.
It's true that the mangosteens in Yangon didn't look very good on outside, but they tasted great on the inside. The ones in Bangkok had same bad looking exterior. Clearly not best time of the year in either place for either fruit, but i was surprised to see it in such abundance at this time of year, especially in Myanmar.
