Since the 1960's, Chanthaburi province in particular (and also neighboring Rayong and Trat to a lesser extent) has been developed as the most productive fruit-growing region of the Kingdom. Great quantities of fine-quality durian, rambutan, mangosteen, longkong, jackfruit, and other tropical fruits are grown annually. 

Chanthaburi's Big Four (clockwise from  upper left:  durian, rambutan,  longkong, mangosteen)

Chanthaburi is the durian capital of the world in terms of production, with the largest concentration of durian orchards on the planet — over 137,000 hectares (340,000 acres), producing about half of Thailand's entire durian crop [which in 2000 was reportedly approximately 927,000 tons, or 840 million kg!]). There are also about 11,000 hectares (28,000 acres) of mangosteen orchards, producing 42 million kg (46,000 tons) of mangosteens per year. 

typical orchard near Chantaburi  (mangosteen trees in foreground, durian trees in the distance behind)

Rambutans are a third major fruit crop in Chanthaburi grown in great abundance (in May- June, going for under 10 Thai baht/kilo in the markets, the equivalent of 10 cents U.S. per pound). Sweet longkong (Lansium domesticum) is the number four major fruit crop. It's a fantastic place to visit if you like tropical fruit!

one of Chanthaburi's fruit markets, heaped with tropical abundance

Each year at harvest time Chanthaburi town has a colorful 10-day fruit fair and celebration at the time of peak fruit harvest season. (In 1999 it was early May, in 2000, early June; in 2001 it was early May, in 2002, late May; and in 2003 it was 14-22 June.) There are traditional fruit competitions among farmers, arts and crafts displays, entertainers, sporting events, a temporary marketplace of all kinds of things (including of course much fine tropical fruit), and much more, but the highlight for me is always the fantastic parade on the opening morning. If you've been to or seen photos of Thai temples or the Grand Palace in Bangkok, Thai people love to make colossally intricate and flamboyant monuments of creative artistic genius. These vibrantly colorful parade floats are perishable wonders of the world, awesome scenes and statues and designs all decorated almost entirely with thousands of tropical fruits and many  vegetables too. Seeing these parade floats alone would be worth a trip to Thailand! For those of you unlikely to make such a trip (or planning to in the future!), I've placed some of the digital photos I've taken at the Chanthaburi fruit fairs in photo galleries below. Presently there are photos only from the 2000 and 2003 fairs here; I have hundreds of great photos from the 2001 and 2002 fairs also but haven't gotten around to putting the best on this site yet! Eventually... :-) 

  On the 2000 photos, if some of the photos are a bit hazy, that was mist on my camera lens... It happened to be raining that day, which dampened the parade somewhat but was probably better for the preservation of the thousands of fruits covering the floats than a sunny day!  The 2000 photos were taken with a Casio QV-2000 2-megapixel digital camera, the 2003 photos with a 4-mexapixel Canon G2. 

Enjoy... Shunyam Nirav   nirav@durianpalace.com