Gimme some suga!

I originally thought this stuff was bamboo, and had worked out my intro to this post before I even tasted it. I wanted to mention the fact that some species of bamboo can grow up to 18 inches per day, and that by tensile strength, bamboo is in fact stronger than steel. I even wanted to say how I someday hope to own a light green short sleeve shirt with a dark green bamboo pattern coming down it in vertical stripes.

Turns out, however, that I was wrong. These long green shoots are actually (and probably obviously) sugarcane. The cane had been stripped and was being made into a cold drink on a pierside on Cat Ba Island in Halong Bay. The vendor fed each stalk into a motorised mangle one-by-one, collected the liquid in a jug underneath then mixed it with crushed ice in a tall glass.

The result was a white, cloudy drink with a light, sweet, refreshing taste. My realisation that this stuff would go great with rum was only slightly before I realised they were basically one and the same.