MARDI Langkawi Agro Technology Park. Don’t those words just scream fruit farm? No? Well that is, in fact, the name of a fruit farm on Langkawi. 

After nearly two weeks of a diet heavy in noodles and fried foods, I was in desperate want of something fresh. There was lots of fruit available at the night markets, and stands selling it along the street, but this fruit was usually already pre-cut and portioned out into the plastic cups with the plastic lids that they use for frappuccinos at Starbucks. Most people would probably be grateful to have their fruit already cut up. I was just horrified that a product that was given its own wrapper in nature, was stripped of that and packaged in plastic. Plastic that was doomed to end up in the ocean for the next 1000 years. So as mouth-watering as all the displays of dragonfruit and mango were, I just couldn’t bring myself to justify contributing to more plastic pollution. Going to a farm and getting some non-plastic-wrapped fruit sounded like a good way to spend the afternoon. 

I imagined myself happily picking mangosteens from a tree and eating them in the garden, but those lovely visions were quickly twisted into something a bit more cartoonish. The Agro Technology Park was a tour tailor made for Chinese tourists, and if you don’t know what that means, then continue reading. 

The fee for the tour was 30 ringgit, a little steep for some fruit, but I was ready to stay and eat my fill. 

I waited in the waiting area, still unsure of what exactly to expect. What was meant to happen here? A tour through the orchards? Picking our own fruits? As I sat, I noticed that I was the only white girl. These were all Chinese and Arab tourists. Funny how different activities are marketed to different nationalities. While the Western backpackers were out being sold jet ski tours, the Chinese and Arab guests were being lured into the fruit farm. And then there was the white girl who just happened to really like fruit. 

A safari truck arrived with four rows of forward-facing seats. I was loaded in alongside an Arab family. There was no tour guide to tell us what to expect, or to tell us anything about the farm; we just began driving through the orchards. I wondered for a moment if I had just paid 30 ringgit for a truck ride. 

The truck dropped us off at a small, open-air shelter up the hill where there was a fruit buffet. We helped ourselves to the seasonal selection, which for January consisted of both red and gold watermelon, pomelo, guava, and jackfruit. I hadn’t even finished my first plate yet when the truck driver came over and spoke to me for the first time. He said that he didn’t know what was wrong, but the Arab family was already wanting to leave. I glanced over at the truck, and sure enough, there they all were, eyes staring expectantly out of the slits in their black gowns at my fruit-stuffed face. He then told me to take my time, look around, and just catch a ride with another one of the trucks. 

He didn’t have to tell me to stay twice. I helped myself to a second plate of fruit, and a third, and stuffed myself silly on jackfruit. Hey, so I really like fruit. 

All this time I watched as one of the Malaysian staff took photos of a Chinese family with a pineapple. The pineapple was suspended on the end of a stick, and held in front of the camera lens by the photographer, so that it looked massive compared to the Chinese subjects. I got a good chuckle out of this, but karma came back to bite me for laughing at the Chinese photo shoots, because pretty soon the photographer was pulling me away from my jackfruit to take my photos with the giant pineapple. 

This wasn’t the last photo opportunity on our cheesy little tour. After we loaded back into the safari truck, the next stop was alongside a jackfruit tree, where the jackfruit had been dressed up with a leaf nose and sunglasses. The photographer knew exactly where to stand so that it looked like the person in the photo now had a jackfruit in place of their head.

We returned to the truck again, this time with a different Arab family, and stopped at a little pond to feed the catfish some pellets. I was given my very own cup full of pellets. I would have preferred to learn something about fruit trees, but the slippery, whiskered faces popping up out of the water were entertaining too. 

And then, with the tour nearly over, I finally got a few tidbits of information. The driver shared that jackfruit originally came from Bangladesh, and that pineapples only produce one fruit per plant and it takes a year to grow. Yay for actually learning something about fruits on the fruit farm tour!

On the drive back to the starting point, the dad of the Arab family deiced to ask where I was from. When I said America, he nearly jumped out of the truck with enthusiasm. “America?! I love you! I love America!” I was quite startled. I hadn’t realized that anyone in the world had such exuberantly fond feelings for us. Usually when I say “America,” I’m just met with the indifference of a question that was only smalltalk, and the person didn’t really care; in fact, they will probably ask half a dozen more times. The indifference is preferable to the seldom, but dreaded political jab. 

At the conclusion of our tour, the driver whipped up a palm frond-woven grasshopper for each of us, as easily as if he had just plucked it off of a tree. That was a cool trick.  I appreciated the gesture, but didn’t have any need for a fragile souvenir to destroy in my backpack, and so tried to pawn it off on a little Malaysian girl who was staring unblinkingly at me outside the entryway. She was much too shy to take a palm frond grasshopper from a stranger though, and so I got stuck carrying the thing around until I eventually lost it. 

I can’t say I would recommend the Agro Technology Park. You can get a lot of fruit at a local market for 30 ringgit, and learn way more about fruit by Googling fruit fun facts. So unless you really want someone to take a photo of you holding a giant pineapple, or watch some catfish fight over kibble, the fruit farm is an activity worth skipping.