coffee

Coffee was a very important part of my morning back home, so I wanted to write a quick post about the most potent and delicious caffeine delivery systems we have yet encountered on our trip. To set a base line on my level of caffeine addiction, back home I would start each day with a large, 24oz Dunkin Donuts coffee, either store bought or home brewed. So I am no stranger to a big shot of caffeine. Admittedly, in the last four months of travel I have been somewhat irregular in my caffeine intake so I may have become more sensitive to a big caffeine rush. However, I am no novice. As we have traveled I have had to get my morning fix in a myriad of ways, including: Turkish coffee, hot Lipton tea, Coke, and even occasionally the horrid Nescafe instant coffee.  The most remarkable brew so far was the Luwak coffee in Bali.

Luwak coffee, or Civet coffee, is coffee made from coffee berries which have been eaten by and passed through the digestive tract of the Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). The civets eat the berries, but the beans inside the berries pass through their system undigested.  Interestingly, these animals will not survive in captivity so thier poo has to be collected in the wild, letting the civets roam and have pretty normal lives.  For about $3 a cup the coffee was milder and a smoother brew than the regular Bali blend which went for $0.50.

Upon arriving in Hanoi, Vietnam I discovered the wonderful caffeine and sugar rush that comes from Vietnamese iced coffee. As far as I am concerned this is the perfect blend of a cool, sweet and even slightly chocolaty beverage. They start with a strong brewed local coffee which after brewing is kept cool in the fridge. To that they add a generous amount of sweetened condensed milk and ice to keep it cold. I enjoyed my first iced Vietnamese coffee during lunch at Cafe Paris in Hanoi and I made the mistake of having a second one. At only 12,000D ($0.60), why not? I will tell you why not, because at 1am that night I was still staring at the ceiling unable to sleep. On the upside, I was incredibly productive all day. I helped Amy write a guest blog post for Briefcase to Backpacker, edited and uploaded pictures from Indonesia and finished reading my latest book, When Broken Glass Floats. All of that on top of sightseeing and some provision shopping in Hanoi’s Old Quarter. I am not sure how the Vietnamese have not yet taken over the world. With this potent brew getting them going every morning I would think that there would be no limit to what they could achieve.

Lest you think this was a fluke, I had another iced Vietnamese coffee in Hue at a French bakery with the same results: high productivity all day until I finally drifted off at 1am. Maybe the best part of this caffeine rush is that I do not wake up exhausted after only five or six hours of sleep, and if I ever feel a little slow I know that a cafe is never far away with an iced pick-me-up waiting.  With all the new parents I know back home maybe there is a market for this in the States?

I know there are lots of caffeine junkies out there, so let’s hear your best caffeine stories, or lack there of, in the comments below.

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