Harum Manis mangoes - how not to get cheated

A 3 hour drive from Penang gets you to the border of Perlis , the tiniest state in Malaysia .

Thailand lies beyond , but now being June , sees our presence here for a sampling of the famed Harum Manis mangoes . This species of mangoes thrives best only in this state and is only available from May to June thus we made it just before the season ended .

That clutch of mangoes below weighs approximately 2 kilos and cost us 50 ringgit for the whole lot .

You might be turned off by the black spots and think that they are not perfect but not to worry , the fruits are still edible .

A different route through Perlis - a shaman , the small lake and a giant donut

 When Penang is crawling with traffic and people , we sometimes go further up north and  explore the quiet countryside in Perlis .

There are many routes you can take besides the regular North South expressway . Because of the vast rice fields , you can go into a town one way and exit another way via another thoroughfare .

Boring is what you make of it and have we had some stories to tell each time we made it through the smallest state in Malaysia .

We have been to Wang Kelian , walked across to Thailand and back without a passport . That was amazing . You can't do that anymore mind you . 

Driven through the massive sugarcane plantations in Chuping . Beautiful then , not so now .

Taken the old highway all the way up to Kangar .....Once during a normal morning where the farmers had just come out for breakfast ( very quaint experience ) another during the muslim fasting month ( which we never want to do again as the entire state was almost devoid of people and other conveniences therefore soooooo creeepy !!!!) .

This time however , we took a different route