December 2009: This must certainly be the most difficult trip to get together. Timing was quite bad for most and despite my best efforts I only managed to get three cars in total to venture up north for Segamat Durians. However, it was rare to have Francis, JS and their little boy zhiyu (knowledge of the whole universe) to join me. Alan, Ry and TC, J and friend also came along.

We were a little late to set out from my house and got held up in a little jam at the checkpoint. We drove straight all the way from the checkpoint to the North South Highway and made a rest stop at the Machap R&R. There, we had to wait for TC's car to arrive, which took an hour.

When TC finally arrived, we took off and reached the farm in about 1.5 hours. I used the GPS, and branched off from the NSH at Yong Peng and took the small roads. Road was fairly clear and we made good speed. Upon arriving at the POI, I didn't see any building or house that said "durian farm". We were quite lost. We drove further down the road but that took us away from all the nice durian trees and into a palm plantation. We backtracked and finally came upon a clearing and saw people waving at us. That was it. We were finally there.

The helpers quickly brought out baskets upon baskets of durians for us to eat. We had different types of durians: 101, 13, 18, local and MSW. The others were not available yet. Durian was fresh and delicious although the many flies there made eating quite difficult. The children were squeamish about the flies landing on their durians and didn't eat much. We also took some pictures under the durian tree, until the workers told us that there is danger of the durians dropping on us.

After having our fill, some of us packed durians back for friends. To my surprise, my little Pica was able to load 25kg of durians. But my car now smelled "durianlicious".

After a good dinner, we headed back to Singapore to deliver the durians to friends.