Today we visited the tropical fruit farm on the west side of Penang island. This side of the island has much more natural beauty compared to the east side of the island where the city center is. The fruit farm was started because Malaysia has a climate suitable to grow tropical fruits from all over the world. There are over 200 types of fruit at this farm!

The farm is on a steep hill in the countryside, so we had to transfer from the bus into pickup trucks to climb the steep grade. There were great views of the surrounding hills and ocean from the top.

An interesting thing to note about this farm is that it is 100% organic, so they don’t use any chemicals to help these fruits grow. They protect the fruit using natural methods such as covering the fruits with bags to keep bugs out. They also keep the birds away by using ultrasonic sound waves to scare the birds. Some birds are welcome because they need help with natural pollination. These sounds are not audible to humans.

Penang is most widely known for Durians. They call them the king of Malaysia. These fruits are extremely pungent, and people either love them or hate them. They are so smelly that the hotel banned guests from bringing them into the lobby. They are also extremely fattening. Rodney, our tour guide, informed us that he loves durian. When he was younger, he ate them every day for a year and he gained 6 kg! (13 lbs)

On the tour, we saw many interesting fruits and got to taste roughly 20 fruits. We got to taste different kinds of citrus fruits, bananas, and exotic apples. 

A few of our favorites were the mangosteen and the miracle fruit. Malaysia is known for the mangosteen. This is a purple fruit known for a sour and sweet taste. Unfortunately, the purple mangosteen was out of season, so we got to try a hybrid fruit, known as the yellow mangosteen. This one grows all year round but has it slightly different taste than the purple one. It was very tasty! Many of the students thought that it tasted like a sour mango that was very juicy. The last fruit that we tried on the tour was the miracle fruit. This fruit is special because it removes our ability to taste sour. Our tour guide demonstrated this by first giving us Malaysia’s most sour lime. After we tried the lime, we tried the miracle fruit. For this fruit to work, you have to peel the red skin and suck on the fruit for one minute. We then tried the lime and could not taste the sour taste at all! It gave it a very sweet taste, like lemonade. This effect lasted for about 15 minutes.

After the tour, we got to visit the souvenir shop where they had many exotic fruits and other goods such as coffee, honey, and tea. The last part of our time at this fruit farm was spent having lunch on a lookout near the gift shop. The view was good, but the food tasted even better! 

Blog by Calvin Piemonte