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It didn’t occur to me before I arrived that Laos has great coffee. You don’t really see it marketed well outside of Laos. It’s quite common to see the Sumatran or even Sulawesi blend at a Starbucks, but Lao blend, I don’t recall. Anyway the coffee here is great. Local beans brewed in a coffee sock and the usual sweetened condensed milk as is the go around this part of the world.
Coffee Lao by the Mekong River – Luang Prabang
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When I’m in London I usually stay around the Earl’s Court/Gloucester Rd area. It’s in well to do leafy West London and has good transport connections. It is also home to one of my favourite cafe’s – the Troubadour.
Troubadour Cafe - London
The Troubadour has been around since 1954 and it was a famous music venue in the 60’s. Musicians who have played there include Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Sammy Davis jnr, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin.
The cafe is worth visiting just to see the collection of intruments hanging from the ceiling. For me, I like coming here knowing that Led Zeppelin once graced these rooms.
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As much as I love sitting in European cafes watching the world go by, I do miss the ritual of reading the newspaper with my coffee.
I have found a regular cafe in Amsterdam that has great coffee and a selection of daily newspapers in different languages. In English they have the International Herald Tribune and The Guardian. This is at Cafe het Paleis on Paleisstr, behind Dam Square.
Koffie verkeerd (caffe latte) in Amsterdam
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Next door to modern Rotterdam is Schiedam, a picture postcard version of Holland. Schiedam is a separate city to Rotterdam, though it is practically a suburb and is part of the Rotterdam metro system.
In Schiedam you will find everything you thought a Holland town should have: windmills, canals, old world homes and warehouses, and a classic old Stadhuis (town hall).
View of the Stadhuis, Schiedam - Netherlands
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I never would have thought that a coffee from an airport Starbucks would make it as coffee of the day, but I didn’t want to leave the UK without mentioning the current exchange rate.
Coffee of the day: London Stansted Airport - UK
At the moment 1 AUD is around 53 pence. In my 10 years of coming to the UK the Australian dollar has never been so strong. At one point 1 AUD got just 33 pence. So this £2 coffee in 2009 is a bargain at $3.77 . In the darkest days of the weak Australian dollar this £2 coffee would have cost me $6.06 AUD.
I never thought that I would be saying that I came to London and had a cheap holiday.
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A cafe/restaurant in Tuk-Tuk on the Island of Samosir. Samasor is the worlds largest island within an island (Sumatra).
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Sumatran coffee in Sumatra. It beats getting your Sumatran blend from Starbucks. The coffee in Sumatra is served with lots of grinds floating on top, which eventually settle.
Like in much of Asia the milk in the coffee in Sumatra comes in the form of sweetened condensed creamer. Here though you get the creamer in the can and you can dispense your own serve. I am becoming addicted to this stuff. A non coffee drinker in our tour party was even helping himself to the creamer straight from the can.
Bukit Lawang is a jungle village about 4 hours north of Medan. The town is a base for visiting the orangutan rehabilitation centre in the Gunung Leuser National Park.
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I visited KL in 2006 and had what I believed to be one of the best iced coffees ever. I say what I believed because I don’t know if it was good as I remembered, or if it became a legend in my own mind.
Time has a way of making things seem better than they were. Sometimes on a hot day I would dream of having an iced coffee as good as the one from KL.
The iced coffee is from King of Tea in Chinatown.
King of Tea
Don’t let the name put you off, my fellow coffee fiends. Dont worry about Nescafe on the sign either. You’ll only get Nescafe if you ask for it.
The coffee is filtered though a Chinese coffee sock and mixed with sweetened condensed milk.
Chinese Coffee Sock
The coffee is then poured into a bag of ice.
Iced coffee in a bag
It’s a strong and sweet brew and every bit as good as I remembered it to be, all for 1.60 MYR (40c US).
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