Asian Drink Special #4

Sorry about the delay in updates. I haven't been to the Asian supermarket in forever. So when we swung by the other day, I picked up the cheapest, strangest one I could find:

This drink, FIN...

... where FIN apparently stands for 'Fly In Nature'.

1. Originality - I think the main selling point of this that seperates it from everything else is the fact that they use 'Deep Sea Water'. Seriously. The whacked-out english description wasn't 'SOFT DRINK' as I expected it to be, it was 'Deep Sea Healthy Drink'. I believe it's healthy and all; it only has 4.3g of sugar. I don't know what other benefits it has - everything apart from FIN, Fly In Nature and the nutrition information label is in a mixture of Chinese and Japanese.
Actually, this whole 'deep sea' thing is making me think of Cloverfield. Oh shit. Anyway, I give this drink a nine, because why would you bottle deep sea water? [9]
2. Taste - Oh my god, what is this? It's like someone took some salt water (but then, what do you expect from DEEP SEA WATER), threw in a bit of lemon and thought, 'It needs to be sweeter', and throws in a few teaspoons of sugar. It's drinkable, sure, but at the moment I'm not even a quarter of the way into the bottle and I'm gagging slightly at each mouthful. But that's just me. If they keep selling this, there has to be a market for it. [3]

3. Packaging - Plastic bottle that says 'FIN' on it. Self explanatory. [1]
4. Price - $1.50. Which is reasonable for a drink that large, I guess. [5]
5. Other - Boy, I really don't know if I can bring myself to finish this.

OVERALL: Makers of FIN: you're trying to bust my kidneys, aren't you? In a discrete, supposedly healthy way. Keep trying. I'll probably go downstairs and make my own salt water mix. Because that would taste more awesome. [5]

By the way, happy birthday, Elaine!

Asian Drink Special #3

Oh jeez. When I saw this one, I just knew I had to buy it.

Apparently made in Vietnam. Well, someone had to come up with the idea.

1. Originality - I don't think anyone else has ever sat up and gone 'Hey, I've got a great idea! Why don't we make a drink flavoured with the extract of artichoke?'
And should it really be brown in colour? I know that when I poured it into the glass I said 'What the HELL' several times.
2. Taste - Personally, I love artichokes. I can't get enough of them. But then when I saw this, it was kind of horrifying. I mean seriously, it's an ingredient you put on pizza and on antipasto platters and now you're making a sweet drink out of it? It's a world gone topsy-turvy. So I took a swig, expecting the worst...
... and for some strange, unexpected reason, it tasted like a grass jelly drink.
Grass jelly may seem a tad weird to those folks in the West, but over in Asia-land, it's about as common as Coke and lemonade. And it's not bad. So because the supposed artichoke drink tasted like grass jelly, it has this sweet but earthy kind of flavour. Which was pleasant, but too normal to my Asian tastebuds. That didn't stop me from throwing it out, though. [6]
3. Your standard can. It's got English AND German on it, which is weird considering it's a product of Vietnam. [1]

4. Price - $1.17. Yeah, I suppose that's ok. It's cheaper than your normal soft drink anyway. But whether anyone is actually churning out a profit from this drink is another question. Really... [7]
5. Other - I said above that I threw the drink out. Well, it was only after I had bought it that I realised this, which I guess is my main reason for only drinking half the can:

OVERALL: Whoa, it's expired, grass-jelly-tasting artichoke juice from Vietnam! [8]

In other, non-consumable related news, the No More Heroes soundtrack is awesome. It's like my ears are having an orgasm.

Asian Drink Special #2

Today we have the Baige Aloe Vera drink. Some of you may cry foul here and say that since I enjoy aloe vera, it's not really a test for a bizarre Asian drink. I am inclined to agree, but the main reason I bought it was the colour of the drink itself. It's this creepy greeny-yellow colour, like someone had pissed straight into the bottle and added aloe vera.

Thankfully it doesn't taste as bad. Not that I know what piss tastes like.

1. Originality - I know for a fact that whenever I have aloe vera (to consume), people who haven't seen me drink it before exclaim "What is THAT?" So I guess if one did not know that there is more to aloe vera than just for health purposes, you'd be pretty surprised too. However, putting the aloe vera in some weird juice concoction gets extra points. Hell, after reading the list of ingredients they put in the drink, I STILL didn't know what I was drinking. [7]
2. Taste - Surprisingly enough, it didn't taste too bad. That being said, I did wince slightly everytime I made a sip. How to describe the taste? It's sort of sour, with this pleasant aftertaste. I have to say though, that it smells a lot better. It smells delightfully fruity. [5]
3. Packaging - The second reason I bought this drink was the delightful bottle it came in. It's pure glass with some fancy print on the front. It is lovely, but it was a real trial trying to get it open. My whole family took turns trying to open it. Buy this drink if you want your family to bond. [6]

4. Price - $3. Seriously, for a crazy drink with even crazier packaging. Though if you ask me, the bottle is worth $3 alone.
5. Other - I spent ages trying to figure out if Baige was an ingredient before realising that it was, in fact, the brand name. Oh, those crazy Asians!

And while I'm at it, Merry Christmas, y'all. Hope you get everything you wanted.

Asian Drink Special - An Introduction

Everyone who read my previous blog knows that I did some crazy stuff for the sake of entertainment, such as hooking up with boys while pretending to be a 13-year-old girl and cooking some weird foodstuff off the top of my head. Consider this to be the newest addition to the group (possibly bumping the 13-year-old saga out of the way - all interest has been lost).

Asian supermarkets. I don't know about you, but I find them to be just a tad dodgy. Chinese herbs? They smell so weird that even if they were expired you'd probably disregard the use-by date and throw it into your soup anyway. And why can they sell everything so cheaply? But if there's one category of Asian consumables that has always fascinated me, it's got to be the beverages. And I'm not just talking about the green, black and whatever-other-colour-you-can-think-of tea, I'm talking about stuff like asparagus juice. Combine the weirdest drinks with one of the dodgiest supermarkets to shop at and I'm usually afraid to drink things as simple as carbonated apple juice because I can't read Chinese/Japanese/Korean for shit. As I result, I really do not know what I'm getting, unless the bottle or can has one of those nifty translated stickers on the back. Alas, this is not the case all the time. Oh, and my paranoia might have something to do with this as well.

Without further ado, I welcome you to the Asian Drink Special, where I review an Asian drink. Well done, Captain Obvious. Review scores are based on:
1. Originality - Let's just say that if I ever pick anything like asparagus juice up, it will get a 10.
2. Taste - It may taste really, really good. Or if it causes me to throw the can in horror on the first sip, it will get a 1. Or a 0. Or a negative number.
3. Packaging - What's the point of having a drink if you can't drink out of the bottle? Bonus points for frickin' sweet packaging that you will never EVER see the Western world willingly use.
4. Price - No sir, I would not be happy if I had paid $5 for a drink I hated (see point 2). Then again, if I had paid $5 for a drink I liked, I would probably still be unhappy. 5. Other - Was there some crazy thing that happened while I was drinking (or attempting to drink) the beverage? Other notes here.

First up, Sangria melon soda.

Gettin' cool. Seriously.

1. Originality - I guess in the Eastern realm, there is nothing TOO weird about melon-flavoured soda. But if you were to shove it in a Westener's face, there is a relatively high chance of them either freaking out or wondering (out loud) what the hell melon soda is and what it would taste like. [4]
2. Taste - It tastes pretty good. I'm sort of a fan of the artificial melon flavour though, so feel free to take three or four points off the score if you don't think it's your thing. [9]
3. Packaging - As you can see in the pictures above, the Sangria melon soda comes in a nice aluminium bottle. Forget glass, aluminium is the way to go. However, the bottle is a bit too flimsy for my liking, which is probably the only thing stopping me from using it as a bottle I carry around with me. (That and I haven't been out of the house.) [7]
4. Price - At $2, it's cheaper than most soft drinks that are available. [10]
5. Other - True Fact: Whenever I took a sip, I could hear this weird buzzing in my head.

OVERALL: So it's not too weird. And it's pretty tasty, not to mention cheap. It's definitely something I would buy again. [8]