One of the things we're crazy about here is all the fresh fruits that are new to us. The mangos, especially, are unlike any mangos we've had in the U.S. They're like an amazing sweet fruit butter. The papaya here is also delicious, making cantaloupes taste fairly bland in comparison. We normally purchase a few mangos and papaya every day from the fruit vendor a few doors down from our apartment. We've gotten to be regulars there already and normally have a chat with them in stilted Tagalog, learning new words from them by pointing to various fruits and vegetables we've never seen before. This evening we learned the word for ginger: "luya."
Last week we went down to the public market in Marikina City and picked up a yellow pakwan (watermelon). This was actually pretty comparable to yellow watermelons we've had in the U.S. and was good, but nothing too special.
Here's a little platter (on a cutting board next to dirty dish water) of some of the fruits we're stocked with now. The big yellow papaya, yellow mango, bananas, and calamansi (little green lime-like fruits that we've been using instead of lemon juice) are from our friendly fruit vendor. The little brown ball is something given to us by a friend at IPC; we don't remember what they're called but they're very similar to lychee. The furry red ball next to it is a rambutan (also pictured in close-up below). Like the lychee, they have white flesh around a big pit after you peel away the skin. The flavor of these is really unlike anything we've had before; kind of like an intense fruit juice flavor. Very, very good though. I've been bringing these and cut-up papaya to lunch with me. The big pink fruit pictured here is a pitaya, or as they're known around here, dragonfruit. These are also common in central America (Grace used to eat them regularly in Nicaragua). We haven't seen these sold quite as much as the other fruits but it wasn't very difficult to find. 
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