A Local Drink Roundup From Vietnam

Time for another local drink update. I was rather curious about the first one as it was the first time I had seen soda chanh in a packaged form. Not surprisingly, it didn't have the punch of freshly squeezed lime in it, and it was much sweeter than I was expecting. I definitely prefer the fresh version instead, even if this bottle saves the time and hassle of having to mix up soda chanh on one's own. At least it wasn't 7-Up, which I worried it might be. The other drink was just your everyday orange soda.

Next up was this green tea stuff, which to my surprise was sweetened with honey. It wasn't exactly like the unsweetened Pokka Oolong Tea that I was expecting. I also got a box of artichoke tea bags below. I've been drinking this stuff occasionally at Pho Lan's new Boon Tat Street location back in Singapore, so I picked up a box here at the airport in Ho Chi Minh City just for the fun of it. It tastes like rather straighforward tea, although being based purely on artichokes, it naturally carries an artichoke flavor, if only very mildly. This is from the Dalat region of Vietnam where this stuff is apparently quite common.

Note to self: as great as it is to find a new international terminal here, the fruit drinks are sold inside at a whopping US$4 each - even beer is cheaper. But there is a Vietnamese restaurant upstairs selling bowls of phở (and they take American Express - yay!), which might come in handy if I am flying a low-cost carrier again without lounge access. It's amusing that Jetstar even charges S$2 for a copy of the Straits Times...they've gotta look for every opportunity to feed that bottom line, I suppose.