We landed in Hong Kong late at night. The next morning we woke at 7am and, determined to put a clamp on any transpacific jetlag, we set off in search of coffee. Local coffee, of course, because to get anything other than a cultural infusion would be a travelling travesty.
Our ambitions for a quick Chinese caffeine kick were dashed from the moment we laid eyes on our first green and white paper cup. The further we walked, the more hands seemed to cradle that same familiar mermaid, until we knew we were near the epicentre.
In the Starbucks line, we spurted off excuses—”At least we know this will get rid of the jetlag for sure. Can you really trust the local stuff when your week depends on it?”—and ditched our telltale cups as soon as the Americanos had dripped down our throats. But we felt guilty: here we were, in Hong Kong, and our first course of action was to find the only Starbucks in the city for an American-style wake-me-up.
We shouldn’t have felt bad. It wasn’t the only Starbucks. In fact, it probably wasn’t even the only one on that block. The peak behind that towers over most of Hong Kong even houses a Starbucks—an elegant location that overlooks the many franchises below.
In the end we went by taste and price: local coffees were actually strange orange-coloured teas, and MacDonalds coffee was better and cheaper. So the double arch brew became our local coffee of choice.
The truth is, there are franchises everywhere. Even Malaysia, considerably less Westernized than Hong Kong and Singapore, has Subway, Dunkin Donuts, and more KFCs than you can wave a chicken finger at. It’s sad, until you’re craving something other than Chinese-fried noodles, and you realize what you’re doing isn’t so un-local because the locals eat here anyway. (This said, a great abundance of Malay toddlers and children are particularly pudgy, though who knows for sure that it’s not a case of grow-out-of-it genetics.)
So we’ve settled on not feeling bad about our periodic fast food cravings. Everything here is deep-fried anyway, and given that the fish balls are most certainly not what they appear, the nutritional content can’t be all that different. Even so, McDonald’s fries still have a remarkably Asian flavour—this is no doubt because the oil is local and likely quite the same as what’s sizzling away in streetside foodstands. It seems even American joints can’t quite match American flavour.
A few days ago, Dave’s dad asked to speak to me on the phone. He had seen recent pictures of our trip on Dave’s iPhone photo stream. “I have to say, you look really happy eating that McDonald’s burger,” he told me.
And I was.
