Asiatic Pennywort Juice

This is another weird drink from the same juice stand in Thailand as the luo han guo juice. It was very interesting looking and had a curious name, so I had to try it. It's a putrid green, and not sweet at all. On the other hand, it's vegetabley taste is actually refreshing, if you like that sort of thing. It tastes a little like peas, and reminded me of green bean or green tea ice cream. Both of which are pretty delicious if you ask me.

I'm noticing a trend about this juice stand, is that they all seem to be healthy juices. Asiatic pennywort is also eaten raw as a salad, and it said to help maintain youthfulness.

Other common names for this plant are - brace yourself - gotu kola, indian pennywort, luei gong gen, takip-hokol, antanan, pegagan, pegaga, vallaarai, kula kud, bai bua bok, brahmi, rau ma, manimuni, ondelaga, and the saraswathi plant. Well I'm guessing this plant, whatever you want to call it, grows all throughout south and southeast Asia because every language in the area had to have their own name for it.

Actually, out of all of those, the one in my own language sounds the least appealing. I would much rather drink vallaarai juice or ondelaga juice than pennywort juice any day.