Not My Cup of Tea

So, when you think of Asia, what would you think of as the typical, generic hot drink of choice? Green tea, right? WRONG. Or at least, not this Asian country.  I have yet to find a decent green tea. They have the usual teas that you would find in Canada at a Tim Hortons, a William's or a Starbucks., but they're expensive and certainly nothing special.  I was hoping to be drinking a fair amount of green tea on this adventure but this is seemingly not going to happen!  I even came equipped with a loose leaf tea infuser, which is currently sitting on a cupboard, neglected and alone.  The tea bags that I bought at the grocery store looked quite promising with a picture of a ginger root on the box but I can't taste even a hint of ginger in it!  Instead, it tastes like rice… Rice tea… Not cool, Korea! Not cool.

On the side of the hot beverage spectrum, coffee seems to be the new fad drink of choice.  A cup of black coffee generally cost between $4-5 at a chain caffee.  Ouch. It's much cheaper to buy a package from the grocery store and make it yourself (not shocker there).  Interestingly enough, it's difficult to find real coffee.  Instead, you find yourself faced with an aisle of instant coffee drink sticks.  Sticks. Of instant coffee mix. I ended up choosing one called Mocha Gold.  The powder inside is %75 white (I'm assuming milk powder and sugar), %15 instant coffee, and %10 percent flakes of coaco (no complaint there).  The resulting drink is quite palatable, but is certainly a stretch of the word "coffee". 

I guess the coffee sticks are their version of our coffee pods; single, pre-prepared drinks. It's a bit of a disappointment when I was expecting loose leaf green tea, but hey, when life gives you lemons (or in this case, instant coffee), make lemonade!