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

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.

Bring your own, I am warned prior to departure to a rural non-tourist area for a yoga and nature retreat. So I buy a travel cup with a metal drip filter and a bag of ground coffee, but underestimate how much I will need and have to start rationing on day four of seven. 

Eking it out, guarding it from the hungry eyes of my travel companions, who are reduced to chucking fistfuls of instant into a cup and trying to disguise the horror with sugar and Coffee Mate.

The most desperate of us make an emergency trip to the nearest hamlet in the back of a pick-up, standing up hanging on to the metal bars like livestock going to market, and swarm the local 7-11, looking for the coffee aisle. 

There it is, among the salted egg mochi, durian ice-lollies and blueberry Fanta – shelves and shelves of coffee. Dozens of brands, flavours, packages - all instant. We are reloaded back into the pick up, returning empty-handed like those jungle people who fail the bushtucker trials and cause everyone to forfeit dinner. Caffeine withdrawal headaches loom.

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. 

And then disaster strikes. On a quiet island off the Cambodian coast, I lose the metal coffee filter. I also lose some highly sentimental jewellery in the sea, but am far more bothered about the filter – what good is all that priceless fresh coffee if there is no way of brewing it?

There is no 7-11 on the island, so no chance of buying paper filters, or even nylon pop socks to use as ad-hoc filters. You can have my flight compression socks, offers Daughter helpfully. 

Except she’s been wearing them from Melbourne to Bangkok. Ewww. But it gives me an idea – I jump on my moped, find a tiny local shop, and buy a pair of children’s socks.

Shazam! Sock Coffee is born. Stretching the sock over the rim of my travel cup, I fill the sock pouch with coffee and slowly pour hot water on top, as the Thai guest house owner looks on in bafflement. 

Is this what farangs do? Make coffee in socks? She points to the huge jar of instant by the hot water urn, points to the Coffee Mate, and shakes her head. I don’t care. 

Sock Coffee is delicious. Soon I am wide awake, with racing thoughts about copyrighting it. Watch out, Starbucks.