Showing posts with label coffee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coffee. Show all posts

Monday, August 17, 2009

Who needs a menu when it's on the wall?













Here's the menu at my local coffee shop (see previous photos). The prices are in Dong. The exchange rate is around 18,000 Dong to the USD at the moment. And here's the translation:

Black coffee 6,000
Iced Coffee 8,000
Hot coffee with milk 7,000
Iced coffee with milk 10,000
Milk 1,000
Soy Milk 6,000
Hot lemon juice 4,000
Iced Lemonade 6,000
Coke 6,000
Rootbeer 6,000
Lipton tea 4,000
Fresh squeezed OJ 12,000
Salted plum soda with sugar 7,000
Green Tea 9,000
Sting (soda?) 8,000
Iced Tea 2,000




Morning coffee scene

My new coffee joint. All men, with one or two lady friends, and the
women who work here of course. It's almost always ladies working in
food, retail, lottery and recycling. Aside from the noise and the
smell of petrol it's a great people watching spot. Motorbikes zipping
past on the sidewalk, food vendors, men passing time smoking, reading
the paper, drinking coffee, communicating silently together. One
coffee is hot (nong) and the other is on ice (da) but both have
condensed milk in them. There's a kettle of warm tea on the table
which is included. Total is almost $1. If there was just wifi and a/c.
That would be the bomb.

Coffee in a shot glass

Today I stopped into a typical coffee shop on the corner of a busy
intersection where the goal seems to be to sit as close to the street
exhaust as possible- as that obviously offers the best views. For
7,000 Dong I had a coffee out of a shot glass and a kettle of tea.
The tea comes with whatever you order as it's expected that you'll not
want to order a lot, but like everyone else (mostly men) you'll want
to spend a good part of the day there. My waitress was surprised that
I was leaving after only 10 minutes so, but it was too difficult to
explain that it was because I was sweating profusely and had already
inhaled the equivalent of 12 cartons of Lucky Strikes. Good coffee
though. I'll be back earlier tomorrow.