duku-langsat galore at lim chu kang

they came on foot. they came on bicycles. they came on motor-cycles. they came in cars. they came in taxis. they came in trucks. they came in lorries. they came to invade the duku langsat on the trees along some of the roads in lim chu kang. for some, it was like a family weekend outing. armed with plastic bags, long poles and nets, they had a field day picking the ripe and big ones from the heavily-laden trees.

i tend to get duku-langsat mixed up with long kong, both fruits are available from sheng siong supermarkets. the long kongs are slightly bigger, juicier and sweeter, and almost seedless. some langsat can leave a slight bitter taste in your mouth. it is easier to tell duku apart from duku-langsat because of the duku's thicker skin and the fruit is also sweeter than langsat. as children, we used the skin of the duku as ammunition to whack our 'enemies'.

i saw one lone woman lugging a plastic bag full of langsat. she would have easily plucked about 3 kg of the fruit. some workers from the nearby farms were happily enjoying the fringe benefits by the road-side. quite a number were families and friends out on a week-end treasure hunt, were busily moving from tree to tree. besides duku langsat, there are also mangosteens which are also in season. but most of the mangosteens have however disappeared from the trees.

the sad thing about this fruit gathering is that some people in their greed to 'sapu' as much as they can, damage the trees, especially the mangosteen trees. because the tree is taller and some of the fruits are out of their reach, they pull down the whole branch just to get what they want.

as for me, i was there just to take pictures for my blog.