{"id":23575,"date":"2018-08-06T10:03:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-06T03:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/?p=23575"},"modified":"2024-08-16T13:41:46","modified_gmt":"2024-08-16T06:41:46","slug":"vietnam-where-has-that-coffee-bean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/news\/industry-news\/vietnam-where-has-that-coffee-bean\/","title":{"rendered":"Vietnam: Where Has That Coffee Bean?"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"23575\" class=\"elementor elementor-23575\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-f6b6014 elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default tm-col-stretched-none tm-bg-color-over-image\" data-id=\"f6b6014\" data-element_type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-1853cf9 tm-bg-color-over-image\" data-id=\"1853cf9\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-c56bf56 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"c56bf56\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t<style>\/*! elementor - v3.13.3 - 22-05-2023 *\/\r\n.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-stacked .elementor-drop-cap{background-color:#69727d;color:#fff}.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-framed .elementor-drop-cap{color:#69727d;border:3px solid;background-color:transparent}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap{margin-top:8px}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap-letter{width:1em;height:1em}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap{float:left;text-align:center;line-height:1;font-size:50px}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap-letter{display:inline-block}<\/style>\t\t\t\t<h3><b>Vietnam: Where Has That Coffee Bean?\u00a0<\/b><\/h3><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">6 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Aug 2018 <\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Where Has That Coffee Bean?\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A few months back, I made a vacation trip to see and experience <a href=\"https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/resources\/destination-guide\/vietnam\/\">Vietnam<\/a>. Since the country opened up again for tourism<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">many people had made the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">trek <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to see this once war ravaged country. I took my family and spent four lovely, relaxing days in Hanoi.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is no city <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Asia that is anything like Hanoi. Its wide boulevards are tree lined and mercifully absent of the bumper-to-bumper traffic that plagues Bangkok, Manila and Jakarta. The French influence is evident everywhere from the colonial architecture <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the fresh, warm baguettes available in any of the many small boulangeries that populate the city.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From Hanoi, we pushed on to Saigon, nee Ho Chi Minh City, nee HCMC <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the local expat crowd. You couldn&#8217;t find two more different cities in the same country. For every bit <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">charm and sophistication that Hanoi <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">offers<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, HCMC offers equal measures of the hustle-bustle found in any typical Asian commercial metropolis. Both cities are picturesque, full of wonderful restaurants, and <\/span><b>old <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">world hotels that radiate charm and romance. The Vietnamese are quite friendly and welcoming to tourists. And I still haven&#8217;t made <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">it <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to the Highlands where the verdant countryside rises to 1,500 plus meters, and where you must wear sweaters at night &#8211; an irrefutable selling point to anyone living year round in the tropics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the manifestations of the French <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">colonial <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">heritage <\/span><b>in <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Vietnam is a well developed <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">coffee <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">culture<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In most other Asian countries, with the exception of Indonesia, tea tops the hit parade of hot beverages. In Vietnam, however, coffee is the drink <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">choice and you can find it in any one of the hundreds of street <\/span><b>side <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">cafes<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In fact, Vietnam has become the second largest exporter of coffee <\/span><b>in <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the world behind Brasil.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One afternoon<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">after an especially taxing day visiting the various tourist sites (including the obligatory visit to the Museum of American War Atrocities, a title that didn&#8217;t exactly warm the cockles <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">my heart) I decided to duck in have my afternoon java fix.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The waiter seated <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">me <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">at my table and handed <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">me <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a menu that listed more than 30 different varieties of <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">coffee<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. I&#8217;m a purist, just a &#8216;black, no cream, no sugar&#8217; kind of guy, but I thought I&#8217;d take a look and see what was on offer. My eyes fell on a rather interesting entry &#8220;weasel coffee.&#8221; I figured that must be the brand name, and since it was significantly more expensive, I decided to treat myself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"825\" height=\"510\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-23576 size-full\" \/><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The coffee came and I tried a sip. It tasted unusual, somewhat buttery, a hint of salt with earthy undertones. It was black as pitch, cloudy and strong enough to wake the dead. Not really my &#8216;cup of tea&#8217; I decided, so I had another sip and left about half the cup for next time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8211;\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lucky I <\/span><b>did <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">because when I got back to my hotel and opened my Fedor&#8217;s guidebook, I happened to notice a featured article about chon weasel <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">coffee<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Reading the explanation left me shall we say &#8211; shocked and appalled. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">seems that Vietnamese weasels, some refer to them as civet <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">cats, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">have an ability to smell out, select and eat the best, ripest robusta <\/span><b>coffee <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">beans while they are still on the tree. The weasels &#8216;process&#8217; the beans in a way Nestle never dreamed of. After processing, the weasel deposits the semi-digested beans in very special &#8216;packaging.&#8217; The beans are separated from the &#8216;packaging,&#8217; dried in the sun and then go through the regular roasting and grinding process.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Slowly recovering my senses<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I couldn&#8217;t believe what I had done. The second thought I had, almost immediately was maybe I could lure some of my friends into unknowingly drinking weasel poop coffee, like I had done. I mean, why I should let anybody I know escape the pleasure and excitement of drinking the product <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the excrement of some wild animal? Why shouldn&#8217;t I include them in this wonderful experience of a lifetime, much like I had? Why, indeed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now if only I could get my hands <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">some Chon beans. A little detective work<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a little shoe leather and then next thing you know I was buying a 300 gram package of Chon coffee, freshly ground and vacuum sealed. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">added it to my collection of Vietnamese souvenirs and it now sits in my pantry<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">lurking, waiting to unveil its ugly identity on its next unsuspecting victim. Oh, I can hardly wait.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Author: Rob Chipman Asian Tigers Hong Kong <\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vietnam: Where Has That Coffee Bean?\u00a0 6 Aug 2018 Where Has That Coffee Bean?\u00a0 A few months back, I made&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1.jpg",825,510,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1.jpg",825,510,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1.jpg",825,510,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1-300x185.jpg",300,185,true],"large":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1.jpg",825,510,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1.jpg",825,510,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1.jpg",825,510,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1-672x448.jpg",672,448,true],"logixs_wp_thumbnail_height":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1-600x510.jpg",600,510,true],"logixs_wp_thumbnail_height_400":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1-400x510.jpg",400,510,true],"logixs_wp_square":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1-550x510.jpg",550,510,true],"logixs_wp_landscape":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1.jpg",825,510,false],"logixs_wp_portrait":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1-550x510.jpg",550,510,true],"logixs_wp_huge_square":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1.jpg",825,510,false],"logixs_wp_square_150":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"logixs_wp_small_height":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1-150x180.jpg",150,180,true],"qi_addons_for_elementor_image_size_square":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1-650x510.jpg",650,510,true],"qi_addons_for_elementor_image_size_landscape":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1.jpg",825,510,false],"qi_addons_for_elementor_image_size_portrait":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1-650x510.jpg",650,510,true],"qi_addons_for_elementor_image_size_huge-square":["https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Letter-from-Asia-Where-has-that-coffee-bean_s-825x510-1.jpg",825,510,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"atadmin","author_link":"https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/author\/atadmin\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"<a href=\"https:\/\/asiantigersgroup.com\/category\/news\/industry-news\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Industry News<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Vietnam: Where Has That Coffee Bean?\u00a0 6 Aug 2018 Where Has That Coffee Bean?\u00a0 A few months back, I 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