It won’t be surprising if you have only started to get more in tune with durian news and knowledge in recent years.

Marketing exposure of durians online has exploded partly aided by the pandemic. Leaving a lot of people working from home, spending a lot of time online, and heavily targeted by durian sellers advertising their online delivery services.

Coupled with the breathtaking increase in prices, sellers and middlemen agents are finding it even more profitable to expend their budgets on marketing.

So it’s only natural that more and more consumers are researching into this green spiky fruit before placing their orders from people they have never dealt with.

Anyone who has their interest piqued and does just a little extra investigation outside of the common durians such as musang king, black thorn and XO, would quickly learn that there are so many more types of durians in the market.

And many of them have been around for decades, if not centuries.

The really old durians that have withstood the test of time are really worth our reverence.

Product life cycles these days usually don’t last more than 18 months. And that being generous. To last so many years demands a mark of respect.

One such antique durian that is as rare as it gets today is D194 Gabai.

Gabai is actually an area located in Hulu Langat of Selangor state. A landmark that it is probably best known for is Gabai river with a waterfall that locals like to spend their getaway time splashing about in. This is also an area famed for the wild mountain durians harvested by Orang Asli. Orang Asli refers to the native indigenous community. When I first heard the name of this durian, I naturally thought that it had something to do with the sakai durians in that area.

You’d think that gabai durian was named to pay tribute to the location because the mother tree of this cultivar was located in a plantation within that particular area. But the story was that the mother tree was actually located not far away in the Besut area of Selangor. And the name is a tribute to a native who granted permission to Lee to collect grafting material from the mother tree. It was over 100 years old when it had to be removed for building of the airport. Legend has it that at it’s peak, the tree stood approximately 100 feet tall! FYI groundbreaking for the KL airport construction occurred in 1993.

Don’t be misled by the registration date of gapai on MARDI records. This durian has been around for decades before the reg date. The mandarin name is ka bai (卡拜) which goes some way into explaining why many consumers refer to it as kapai.

While the name is spelt gabai, the pronunciation by the locals sounds like kapai. Thus, there is often a misidentification and misspelling of this cultivar. It can even be labelled as gubai, gupai, kabai, gapai, tapai, and more. But the most common ones used are gabai and kapai.

Don’t get mixed up with another cultivar D203 Kappai from Segamat Johor. With that said, I have never seen D203 with my own eyes. And the official photos of kappai looks eerily similar. So I won’t rule out the possibility of a double entry. This is not unthinkable as we can observe it to happen on other cultivars like ganja and ganghai.

Anyway…

This durian fruit used to command a strong presence. Demand was particular high in Singapore in the 1990s. And because the currency conversion of Singapore Dollar to Malaysia Ringgit was already about 1.5x during the 1990s before the Asian financial crisis of 1997, a lot of gabai was exported to the Singapore market for the better margins. The exchange rate jumping to over 2x during the crisis only made it even more attractive to export rather than keeping the fruits in the domestic market.

Somewhere along the line, musang king started to gain major media attention, and a lot of orchard owners started to replace their plantations with it because gabai is known as a tree that is strongly resistant to disease. So grafting MSW on these tree stumps make sense.

Before MSW hit the big time, gabai was selling at up to 3x the price of MSW.

These days very few gubai durian trees remain in both East and West Malaysia.

Features of gabai durian D194

This is a small to medium sized durian that usually weighs around one-and-a-half kilos give or take.

The shape is generally oval and globose with the upper half having a wider girth than the lower half. The agricultural term for this attribute is ovoid.

This physical characteristic is often referred to by locals as like an upside-down pineapple.

The rim where the husk meets the stem at the top is slightly raised. And while the bottom is generally a convex shaped indent, the arrangement of the bottom thorns due to an indented bottom can often create a form flat enough for the durian to stand up straight on it’s own. The thorns on this part also tend to form an explosive arrangement like what can be seen on goldfish. This part looks like tawa but more amplified. And this is a unique identifying feature of kapai.

The husk can be as green as green dragon and also as worn-out antique-looking as dato nina. You can expect such variations with old varieties. The thorns are more silm like 747, definitely not short and small like red prawn, and the pattern is somewhat uniform. It is often said that this is an ugly durian from the outside, but hides such unrivalled beauty on the inside.

Upon pulling apart the husk, the light yellow flesh mimics a look that reminds one of a smaller version of D14 or big bun.

It has thick luscious flesh, but hides an average sized seed within all that yellow goodness.

This is a bittersweet durian with a very dense and smooth-dry texture. The flavour is like a softer version of musang king with a hint of milkiness and complexity. If we are to rate the flavour of musang king as 5-stars, then a top quality kapai might be as high as 4.5-stars. It’s definitely no slouch in terms of taste.

Some fruits from old trees can be intensely bitter and sticky. This is when people will claim that even MSW has to step aside.

In fact, one which I had was so sticky that it felt like the most sticky durian flesh I’ve ever tried. Even the stickiest of horlor might have to take a back seat. The dense texture reminded me of fried tapioca starch from a pan-fried oyster dish and a kaki compared it to that of melted mozzarella cheese dipped in chocolate fondue. It sizzled like a gassy cola the moment I put it into my mouth. Blended into that powerful durian taste, I was definitely stunned by that particular kapai because I didn’t know it had such capabilities. The last time I was so astonished was my first tupai king. At one point, I was licking and sucking on the seed like a lollipop. And if I chance upon D194 again, I won’t hesitate to demand it served to my table immediately!

This durian is raw power like the Hulk. It demands respect with the smashing punches that it throws at you. But when the Avengers gather, you’ll find that it lacks the balance that comes with a main character like Captain America.

Gabai durian harvest season

The mid-season is when fruits start to drop.

Gabai tree trunks tend to have an unusually thick girth. Since many existing trees are quite old, with favourable weather, each tree is said to be capable of producing up to 80 durians per season. Yet they get sold out almost as soon as they are harvested.

Because of the scarcity of this durian, it would be nothing short of a miracle for you to find it sitting nicely in a stall waving at you to grab it. Especially outside Selangor.

Only farmers who have decided to keep the heritage of this tree have it in their farmlands.

So you would really have to be on their good books for them to be generous enough to put you on their waiting list… if you are lucky.