Hommage to an ugly duckling

I find the Rambutan one of the least visually tempting fruits on earth. With it’s tentacly outside (or “hairy”, as literal translation from the Malaysian word) , in yellow-reddisch colors, hinting at a new cleaning device for your encrusted one-pot, the more rotten it looks, the better the inside. Having first encountered it 25 years ago in Sri Lanka, where street merchants praised it as the king of the fruits (next to the Mangosteen as the queen), it also fulfills the westerners no. 1 survival rule in the tropics: if you cannot boil, fry or peal it, don’t eat it. And peal it is a charm. With just a little knife cut (or good traveller-dirty fingernails), it reveals its shiny ivory-white and oh so tasty secret, as if to start a new generation after the outside has decayed. Well, that points to the kernel, which cannot be ignored, but can serve quite well as defenders in a twin against the Makaks. Thank you again, Rambutan!