Because I couldn't have a post about coffee without also describing its natural companion. The yang to coffee's yin. The omega to its alpha. The Shirley to its Laverne.
What are Thai people drinking at these coffee shops, if not cups of coffee? They're drinking various dessertlike concoctions made with espresso and sweetened condensed milk.
Sweetened condensed milk. Practically the national food. At the grocery store there are shelves and shelves of it. Brand after brand, cans stacked to the ceiling. You can't buy a dessert from a street vendor that isn't drizzled with it, straight from the can, opened with a nail. Hot coffee, iced tea, blended fruit smoothies: none are complete without that syrupy nectar, either mixed in to give the whole thing an opaque sugary homogeneity, or lurking at the bottom like a depth charge.
It took me a little while to figure this out, and I drank more than one God-awful sweet, creamy drink while swearing under my breath. Thai people's love for it notwithstanding, I find sweetened condensed milk to be even worse than the non-sweetened, non-condensed kind, which is to say intolerable.
Even so, I do appreciate the passion with which so many people here consume it.
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