I've learned to love what is sometimes called the King of Fruits, but it wasn't love at first smell.
Above from the kitchen of our old house out past Ban Nam Nguen
I eat lots of weird foods, but only if they taste good. I ignored durian for a long time just because no one offered me any and I don't necessarily seek out foods just to have eaten them. At one time I lived in Sri Racha Thailand during the rainy season and the smell of durians was inescapable as there were many plantations around. The smell wasn't really bothersome, just kind of sickly sweetly rotting. Thailand has many smells anyways, durian was only one more.
It was many years later when I went back to Laos as a long term tourist (months not weeks) that I tried durian. Once I did, the smell became forever associated in my mind with the taste of that delicious fruit I had in our kitchen.
I'd bought it at the market, it cost an astronomically high price of 10,000 kip per kilo, about a dollar. Bear in mind less than half the weight is edible. One woman sold durian and she never had many, maybe twenty or thirty at most, durian was too expensive for most people, it had to be imported from the south of Thailand or something.
My wife didn't like it, nor did her sister, but my brother in law Jit loved it, gosh knows how or where he picked up the fondness, maybe at the gold store he works at. Eventually one day my wife tried a bite, forever after the durian had to be spit 3 ways.
Now we buy it frozen which isn't half bad, down at the Chinese Supermarket. On sale it's $1 a pound, not bad.
The taste is of richness and sin. Like eating liquid chocolate laced with butter or something, not the taste but the richness. The flavor is durian, so strong it has the feel of drunkenness when I inhale. When it's in the fridge the entire kitchen smells of it, tempting me until it's gone.
I like it cooled in the fridge with very black dark coffee on the side.