Battered bananas

CHECK out these bad boys giving bananas a decidedly naughty name.
Everywhere in the Philippines there's fresh tropical fruit - mangoes, bananas and coconuts are the big ones - as well as vats of iced fresh juice ready to be ladled into a plastic bag for slurping.

In Tagbilaran, the main town on Bohol island in the Philippines, we discovered - much to Wes's delight - this banana stand.
On the left there's small bananas on a stick, dipped in batter, deep-fried, then rolled in sugar and served slightly warm. Almost like a doughtnut casing.

Pedicabs, emblazoned with Christian phrases, drive you around town for just a few pesos. Unfortunately, on the ride out to Alona beach, we gave our pedicab a flat tyre. Nasty.

For five pesos (about AUD13cents) Wes almost wanted to stop, eat a few and call it lunch, washed down with some "buko" (young coconut) juice.
He resisted but did say they were almost too good, reminding him of deep-fried bananas at Chinese restaurants back home when he was little.

The bananas on the right look like they're fried until caramelised; didn't try those ones so not quite sure, but now that I'm looking at that photo and how gooey and brown and delectable they look, damn, I wish I did. Oh well.

In the juice corner there's usually fresh lime juice, a touch bitter, as if straight off the tree, with mini squashed limes swimming around; young coconut juice with shreds of soft coconut, and sugar cane juice, as well as all the usual suspects.

Now in Sabah, Borneo, I am enjoying a slightly salty version which is very popular - fresh lime tea, as they call it, comes filled with ice, mini limes as well as a shrivelled salty plum.

Nice on hot days, when meandering waterfront markets, tables loaded with bloody tuna, green mangoes and enormous young coconuts the size of your head. The size of Wes's head, for that matter...(!) hehe.

Locals pile into these colourful "jeepneys" to get around, hanging off the back and sitting on the roof.

Lobok river, pictured on the way to the town "Carmen". Awww, how about that.