On food in Hong Kong (liquids)

So, you might be sick of me starting posts with the word 'so', maybe not.  You might also be sick of Hong Kong posts, but there is one more yet until the end of my Hong Kong wrap-up.  This post happens to be on the various liquids, their ingredients, and various bottlings and casings they are found in.
First I'll start with the standard stuff, water and tea.  When at a restaurant, it seems very strange when you ask for only water, either ask for lemon water or tea or coke, otherwise you'll get weird looks, this is my advice to you.  Also most places, barring Pizza Hut apparently, serve tea as the standard and not water.  As for water itself...it's water, not much more to say there.  There are many types of teas and a plethora of different beverages in Hong Kong, many I'm either scared to try or just didn't because I didn't have time to try them.
Next I'll talk about something I'm more familiar with, soft drinks.  As an American, I know my way around soft drinks, at least I like to think so.  To that end, I'd like to point out some differences between soft drinks in the US and in Hong Kong.  First off, most soft drinks in the US use sugar substitutes or other sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup to sweeten their drinks.  I'd be remiss to say that no soft drinks in the US are flavored with actual sugar, eg. Jones' Soda, but I would be correct to say that most aren't.  However, in Hong Kong, most drinks are flavored with sugar (see picture below, turn your head I guess).

After the ingredient differences, there are also flavor differences.  For example there is green tea flavored Sprite(see picture below) and Coke Lemon, which may have existed at one point but I no longer see it commercially.

On the topic of green tea Sprite, while I do not like green tea particularly, I also didn't find the green tea Sprite very appealing.  Ha, I probably got you to think I'd say the opposite, you guessed wrong.  Anyways, it was a very interesting drink, and I'm sad that I forgot to quickly get a bottle or two to bring back to the US.  An interesting fact about this green tea Sprite is that it is sweetened with stevia.  If you haven't heard of stevia, I have some articles on it since I was a bit confused when seeing it as well.  They are here.  The effect the stevia had on the green tea Sprite was to have an incredibly powerful sweet taste that left a strange aftertaste, too difficult for my non-chef mind to explain properly.  Also, I'm lazy so I don't feel like thinking back about that very strange taste.  In any case, if it ever comes to the US, which I highly doubt, I suggest you look at the ingredients and maybe try it if you like green tea.
Well, this seems to be quite the long post, but at least I have more pictures for you.  The most visible difference between soft drinks is definitely bottling.  Here I have two examples of strange bottles, one for Mountain Dew, which tastes a bit funky more like Sprite in Hong Kong, and orange Fanta, which tastes largely similar.

I hope you enjoyed this strange post on liquids in Hong Kong and I hope that if you decide to go to Hong Kong that you stay hydrated with funky fluids like these.  Next post is on actual food in Hong Kong.

--CsMiREK