Fruit Salad

I’ve found the first Filipino dish that I’m really going to miss back in the states: street vendor fruit salad.  The ingredients include diced banana, mango, apple, avocado, papaya and other local fruits, all floating in a sweet, creamy thin yogurt and served ice cold in plastic cups.  Vendors carry it in unmarked Tupperware containers.  It took me a while to try because it looks and sounds like the poster child of ‘things that will give me the runs’ but now I eat it twice a day, each time from a different vendor across town so that none of them know how enchanted I’ve become.

Today I was buying my second cup of the salad, this one from the vendor who adds gelatin and shredded coconut, when I heard the sound of American pop music coming from a nearby park.  I wandered over to find a small stage surround by a throng of teenagers.  I gathered from the decorations that today Dumaguete officially became a non-smoking city, and that this concert was the final event of a fun-packed agenda.  A cover band had just started performing Katy Perry when I arrived.  Everyone was going nuts.  I stood behind the crowd with the full intention of being snarky for a few minutes and then heading home, but ended up watching for the whole 45-minute set.  It was good!  The band even got most of the rap breaks correct, and the only funny parts were when the singers would yell, between songs, “Isn’t this fun?  Way better than smoking!”, and when the boys in the crowd became rowdy as the performer of “California Gurls” used a small towel to wipe off her stomach sweat.