Suzanne Harrington: I'd rather drink out of a puddle than drink instant coffee

Bring coffee, I beg my loved ones, heading to Thailand from opposite ends of the planet. I don’t know who I am happier to see, them or the bags of Arabica in their luggage

Portrait pictures of Irish Examiner journalist, Suzanne Harrington at home in Brighton

Although not a coffee snob – I don’t need my coffee beans to have come from a high altitude volcanic single estate, or passed through the bowels of a civet – I draw the line at instant. 

I’d rather drink out of a puddle. Yet despite Thailand producing the world’s most expensive coffee, Black Ivory ($2,500 a kilo, the beans eaten not by civets, but by elephants, with someone employed to carefully sift through the pachyderm poo), away from cities and swanky resorts, the most widely available Thai coffee is instant.