Listening to durian 

In general, veteran sellers just need to smell durian, see its prickles and the color of durian peel to know if the durian is ripe and when it is edible. However, durian "knockers" can do more than that: they can say which durians are ripe or unripe when the fruits are still on trees.

“To earn money from this job, you need to have fine ears and experiences to define the age of fruits by listening to the sounds from them,” Tran Van Truong in Binh Phuoc province said.

“Merchants usually buy whole orchards or whole trees. What I have to do is find out when the time is right to pick the fruits, so that the merchants hire workers to harvest fruits for sale,” he explained.

The tool used to examine durian is very simple, just a hard-handled knife with a blade sharp enough to cut the fruit. Workers climb durian trees, checking each fruit by tapping the knife handle into the fruit. The sounds from the fruit differs, which indicates the age of fruit and its quality.

Sometimes workers not only have to tap durian, but also smell it to assess its sweetness and quality.

There are over 50 durian granaries in Dak Nong province and each of them hires one or two professional workers who specialize in tapping fruit. On average, a worker can earn VND1.5-2 million a day. However, workers need to be strong to take this job.

Smelling jackfruit

In recent years, jackfruit has been the main fruit tree in the South. One of the most important  tasks during jackfruit harvesting is finding out which fruit is ripe and can be harvested, with no need to cut jackfruit into segments. The smelling is particularly useful if merchants want to carry jackfruits to northern border gates to export fruit to China, or sell in the northern market.

Hired jackfruit smellers often go to orchards with merchants to determine the maturity of the fruit. In most cases, they undertake the harvesting as well.

Massaging coconut flowers 

The job has recently appeared in the southern region. Massaging coconut flowers means using physical methods to stimulate flowers to leak nectar.

"There are many nectar glands in coconut flowers. If you don't massage them, the nectar will not be stimulated to flow out. So, massaging flowers with reasonable strength is a must, but not everyone can do it,” said Pham Dinh Ngai, a worker.

Hanh Nguyen