I tried this juice at the floating market north of Bangkok, where it was in one of the stalls on the shore. There were several juices sitting there in large glass vats, and when I ordered the galingale juice (by pointing), the lady who owned the stand ladled a watery purple liquid  into a cup full of ice. A Thai friend I was with explained that it's a purple flower called something like chun or chuan, I can't remember exactly.  It's pretty difficult to explain the taste  - it is similar to the roselle juice in that it kinda tastes like you're eating a flower. But other than than it's slightly sweet and refreshing over ice, great to cool off on the side of the river on a hot summer day in Thailand.

After doing some research as I usually do out of curiosity, I think this juice is made (at least partially) with Black Galingale or Galangal, a.k.a. blue ginger, a root in the ginger family that is used often in traditional asian medicines. I am able to recognize the first two characters on the label as Kha, meaning galanggal, but my Thai is not so good to be able to recognize the rest. If you can read Thai, please help me out and leave a full translation in the comments. Also, if you've tried this juice I'd like to know what you think.

This roselle drink is from the same restaurant and same brand as the longan juice. It tastes a lot like rose, or a very light cranberry juice. While it's pretty good and refreshing, I wasn't a big fan of the somewhat artificial-tasting flowery flavor.

It did, however, beat out the longan juice in a side-by-side taste test. I couldn't help comparing since I ordered them both at the same time. I even got a second opinion who agreed that the roselle juice was the better pick out of the two.

Roselle is a type of hibiscus flower, which is used often for making teas and is made into a drink in many other countries as well, including Mexico where it is called "agua de Flor de Jamaica"

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.

Imagine my excitement when I saw a juice stand at a market in Thailand. Lo Han Kao juice was one of the options. This is a dark brown juice of some fruit I have never heard of. It tastes like chinese plum or date, and is pretty good.  I wish I got a picture of the juice rather than just the sign (which didn't turn out great anyway), but it looked just like a dark brown iced tea, served with ice. It is sweet and supposedly good for your skin too. It's also sometimes spelled as Luo Han Guo, which I think might be the Mandarin Chinese version of the name.

According to Wikipedia, other names for this weird fruit are arhat fruit, monk's fruit, la han qua, and even a longevity fruit. It's used in Chinese medicine, mainly as a sweetener and is even used to create a sugar substitute because it is so sweet. But is also said to help with some illnesses such as heat stroke, larynx infection, cough, and diabetes. I can't vouch for any of these "cures," all I can say is that the juice does taste pretty good.

This is another one of those drinks that doesn't taste like what it says it is. It's supposed to taste like Longan, which is a fruit like a lychee with a brown skin.  It's a tasty fruit, on the inside it's white with a big dark black seed. The name comes from Chinese LongYan (龙眼) and translates to "Dragon Eye," so I guess you could say this is dragon eye juice. Now that would be a weird drink.

This Thai drink is sweet like a plum or a date, and reminds me of the flavor of sno-cones when I was a kid. It's an artificial flavor, so of course it's not dead on to what the fruit tastes like, but I can see how you could imagine that it tastes like longan.

While I'm a little disappointed at the flavor, it's not bad for artificial fruit juice.

I tried this palm sugar juice at Samyan Market in Bangkok, Thailand. At the time I'd never heard of palm sugar juice before, I guess it comes from a palm tree, like a coconut or date tree. I'm still not too sure actually.

It tastes similar to regular sugar cane juice, but not as "fresh" or "green." it has a slight hint of coconut water taste, which makes me think it could be made from coconuts or something like coconut. It's very refreshing and also very sweet. It's light brown in color, which is a little more appealing than the neon green of the regular sugar cane juice.

I think that if you can get this palm sugar juice, go ahead and get it, but it's not much better than the regular sugar cane juice, for about the same price.

Sugar Cane Juice from Bangkok, Thailand

I've had a lot of sugarcane in my lifetime, usually chewing the stalk to get the sweet juice out. This is tough on your jaw and quite a bit of work for a little juice. You can't eat the fibers of the plant, so you have to spit them out and that can get a little messy sometimes too. Nevertheless, it is still one of my favorite snacks and I will get it whenever I see some. It's seasonal in most parts of the world, so it makes it a special treat when it is in season.

Only last year I got to try juice from sugar cane that's been pressed through a juicer machine that looks like a pasta roller. They stick the chopped up peeled cane into this machine and crank the handle, so these stands end up with fresh sugar cane juice plus a huge pile of dry flat stalk pieces. This particular one I got in a market in Bangkok, Thailand. It's light greenish yellow, like yellow Gatorade. Smells and tastes like a very weak but very sweet apple juice, but a little grassy like lemongrass tea. It's not quite as sweet as the palm sugar juice, which reminded me more of turbinado sugar. This cane juice was probably made out of the green sugar cane, which is less sweet than the black sugar cane, but in my opinion tastes a bit better.

The verdict? If you like the taste of sugar cane juice and just want something quick go for the juice. Otherwise, chewing on the actual sugarcane is much more satisfying.