TRAVEL IDEAS

10 drinks worth travelling for

Holidays and exotic drinks are a match made in heaven

NOTHING says holiday like kicking back with a cocktail or quenching your thirst at a street stall.

There are the obvious ones, like Guinness in Ireland and Cosmopolitan in New York, but some of the most interesting drinks are those you’ve never heard of until you arrive in a new country (and then may swear never to drink again).

Lonely Planet’s latest book, The World’s Best Drinks, lets readers in on the recipes of some of the world’s most famous beverages, as well as some of the lesser known liquid delights that can be found around the globe.

Here are 10 worth trying while you’re travelling:

MINT TEA

Morocco

Mint tea and Morocco go together like camels and the Sahara or carpets and Marrakech. Made from gunpowder tea, zingy spearmint and a LOT of sugar, it is the essence of Moroccan hospitality. Saddling your camel at dawn to trek over the dunes, luxuriating in a lavish riad in Marrakech, watching the sun set over a kasbah or eating a tagine in Fez, you will be offered mint tea all day long. During the Crimean War in the 1850s, a British tea merchant could not offload his wares in the Balkans so was looking for other customers. It was love at first taste for Moroccans.

You can’t avoid mint tea if you’re visiting Morocco

KVAS

Russia

Kvas is synonymous with summertime. With those long hot days, kvas vendors arrive in droves, doling out the cold, slightly frothy beverage from sidewalk stands all across Russia, Ukraine and beyond. It may sound off-putting — it’s made from rye or black bread, has a slightly sour tang and is poured from a spigot — but once you taste it, you’re hooked. And with its low alcohol content (typically around 1 per cent) and cheap prices (about 40 roubles, less than US$1), you can drink to your heart’s content. Kvas enthusiasts also tout its health benefits — and with beneficial live bacteria in every glass they may be on to something.

A sidewalk kvas vendor waits for a sale.

SANGRITA

Mexico

Forget the lime and salt: in Mexico, a shot of tequila is traditionally served with a matching glass of this juice combo that’s sweet, sour, spicy — and blood-red. Allegedly, Sangrita was born when thrifty drinkers poured off the juices from a bowl of a Guadalajara-style fruit salad called pico de gallo, seasoned with salt, lime and ground hot piquin chiles. Although Sangrita was little known outside the state of Jalisco until later in the 20th century, it has since spread across most of the country.

Sangrita will help fire up your Mexican adventure.

TEH TARIK

Malaysia & Indonesia

Watching teh tarik being made is a must for visitors to Malaysia and Indonesia

You haven’t arrived in South-East Asia until you’ve drunk a mug of teh tarik — a strongly steeped colonial cuppa served with a generous spoonful of sticky condensed milk. Teh tarik originated with the Mamak (Indian Tamil) community, and Mamak food stalls are still the best place to enjoy the glorious theatre of its preparation. The “pulling” of teh tarik is an art form — anything less than a metre between the two jugs that the tea is poured between would be considered amateur. Virtuoso tea-makers can pour two cups simultaneously, even sideways, while spinning backwards, sloshing the drink from one vessel to the next to achieve the perfect flavour, sweetness and consistency. Miraculously, not a drop is spilt.

YUAN YANG

Hong Kong

Ever wondered what coffee mixed with tea tastes like? The makers of yuan yang did. Picture:

A heady concoction of tea and coffee, with generous lashings of evaporated milk, yuan yang is an invigorating midmorning drink and a bittersweet reminder of Hong Kong’s colonial past.

The beverage is a marriage between South-East Asian coffee and “pantyhose milk tea”, the poor man’s English tea. The latter, served at street stalls and cha chaan tengs (tea cafes), is brewed with eggshells for silkiness, and filtered through a cloth that hangs like a stocking. One day, an operator steeped in Chinese wisdom wondered, “Tea has cool energy — yin; coffee has hot energy — yang. Why not combine the two?” Thus yuan yang was born. It’s doused with creamy calorie-packed milk for the benefit of labourers.

CARIBOU

Quebec, Canada

Caribou is served both chilled and warmed at Quebec’s Winter Carnival. 

A popular drink at Quebec City’s Winter Carnival, this boozy Canadian beverage will make you forget all about the cold with its brawny blend of brandy, vodka, sherry, and port. The carnival mocks the frigid weather every February with snow sculptures, parades, parties and other festivities — and of course, the traditional Caribou drink. Caribou can be served chilled or warmed like a mulled wine, spiced with cinnamon. With its mix of booze and fortified wine, this alcoholic punch packs a punch, and warms you up. Many revellers pour their drinks into ‘Bonhomme canes’, hollow canes topped with the head of Bonhomme, the carnival’s snowman mascot. Simply unscrew the head when you want to take a drink!

AYRAN

Turkey

A street vendor sells ayran near Istanbul’s Blue Mosque

You’re a few bites into a spicy round of lahmacun, that snack of thin dough topped with ground meat. Or you’ve just polished off a few tender morsels of Adana kebab. What do you reach for to quench your thirst? The answer, any Turk will tell you, is ayran, a cold, salty yoghurt drink in a hefty mug or from a bottle or foil-topped cup (shake both well, to froth them up). Ayran looks plain, but it works on many levels. The salt complements the meat. The dairy cools chilli heat. The yoghurt critters help digestion. And, perhaps best of all, the sour flavour triggers your salivary glands and makes you dig back in to your meal.

TERREMOTO

Chile

Terremoto is like a fruity milkshake ... at first.

The aptly named terremoto (earthquake) is a sweetly potent cocktail made with white wine, a dash of liquor, and — wait for it — pineapple ice cream, served in a large glass. It’s a speciality to seek out at a classic Santiago bar like La Piojera — one of the bars that claims to have invented it — where the waiters carry large trays laden with glasses and the wooden tabletops quickly get sticky with splashes of the creamy concoction. Typically, the terremoto is served with a straw. On the first sip, it’s like drinking a fruity milkshake — then you taste the acidity of the pipeno, a sweet white wine, and the bitterness of the liquor. The first one goes down easy. Finish a second one and the ground might start to feel unsteady.

ANIJSMELK

The Netherlands

Anijsmelk is a Dutch staple. 

Steamy warmed milk infused with delicate, licorice-flavoured anise showcases one of the Netherlands’ signature flavours and its staple beverage, all in one soothing cup. When you’re chilled by the North Sea winds after a canal skate or winter stroll through Amsterdam’s cobbled streets, the Dutch provide a mug of steaming Anijsmelk, often served with koek (spice cake) or olliebollen (doughnuts). This winter warmer, traditionally offered to children, will give you a true sense of gezelligheid, a uniquely Dutch word best translated as a homeliness. Anijsmelk’s citrus-laced licorice fragrance pulls your attention as it wafts through the froth. Each creamy, sweet sip warms your insides as the anise, used as a cold remedy and digestive aid, envelopes you like a hug.

SIAM SUNRAY

Bangkok, Thailand

The Siam Sunray is a cocktail that really needs to be drunk on location — in Thailand.

A generous serving of Asian cooking spices transforms the Siam Sunray from vodka cocktail to “Thailand in a glass” — sit back on a Thai beach and imbibe! We suspect that Thailand was secretly fuming that the Mai Tai came from California and that Singapore had its famous sling. The time was ripe for a uniquely Thai cocktail, and in 2009, the Siam Sunray was born. Concocted by award-winning bartender Surasakdi Pantaisong as part of a tourist board campaign, this unlikely sounding drink blends the elements of tom yam with syrup, vodka and lime — it probably shouldn’t work, but somehow, in the sweltering heat of a Bangkok evening, it tastes just right.

source: www.news.com.