7-Eleven is My Friend
I decided not to bring my intrepid travel mug and hot water coil on this adventure. I decided I would, instead of making my own caffeinated beverage in my room every morning, I would do as the Thais do and get my buzz somewhere else. The first morning, no problem, our guest house included breakfast, which included Nescafe (a favorite in guest houses the world over), which I could make as strong as I wanted (which ended up being much stronger than I actually wanted, because it's been a while since I've had Nescafe and I've lost my touch with the dosing). If that hadn't worked out, just down the street was a cafe called "World Coffee Company" which wasn't (yet) Starbucks, but was certainly taking advantage of much of the Starbucks brand. Of course, as I already said, Hua Hin was overrun with European tourists, most of whom are as addicted to Starbucks as Americans are, and so they needed a coffee shop.
Petchaburi (which is where we are . . . I remembered . . . ) is decidedly not overrun with tourists. Hence, this morning when I awoke with a headache only partly related to the rock-hard mattress, and went out into the world to find some relief, I was assaulted with the sights and sounds of dense marketplaces selling everything from raw mussels to fingernail polish to bulk curry pastes to gift baskets filled with Nestle products . . . but for the life of me could not identify anyone selling caffeine. I'm sure they're out there--the Lonely Planet book says they're out there, and that coffee is even grown in the country, but I was in no position to search them out. Finally, out of desperation, we decided to try 7-Eleven.
We had seen 7-Elevens everywhere, and they all seem to be open 24 hours. We had not, however, been into one, as we didn't want to appear to be total chicken-shit tourists. But then we remembered that there were hardly any tourists around here--certainly not enough to support, literally, a 7-Eleven every two blocks, so we went in. And there, next to the Slurpees and the soda machine was a cooler tank full of Thai iced coffee!
I expect that, before we head back home, we'll figure out where the rest of the Thais get their coffee, but for now, 7-Eleven is where I'll get mine.
3 comments:
If I had my choice of Starbucks or Thai iced tea/coffee, I gotta say that on a hot day the Thai iced coffee is going to win out just about every time. And at 7-11 no less. Was there anything more unusual than a hotdog rolling around on the hotdog roller thing?
Actually, I've found that hot dogs on a hot dog roller, in this place full of delectable things to eat--I mean really full--is the unusual thing.
I got to buy the coffee at 7-11 this morning, and was able to pick up some tasty stringy things that look like excelsior (the stringy packing material), but according to the ingredients list contains 80% fish meal, 10% seasoning, and 10% salt. The package had a superhero face on it. It didn't seem like ideal breakfast material so I'm saving it for later.
While it may seem like we're squandering our vacation in internet cafes, the truth is that we are only capable of thoroughly seeing the sights of town if we can occassionaly set in a comfortable chair in an air conditioned room among a bunch of pimply Thai boys playing multi-player games online.
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