Both Joan and I grew up on this stuff. My wife used to get dumped at Popular Book Store on Cecil Street while her mom did marketing, and I've walked up and down the same street millions of times going to school and Chinese classes at Kwong Siew Temple. Such were our childhood memories - of hawking, spitting Chinamen, drains clogged with last year's refuse, the hollering of buy-one-free-one and fresh apples, and the wafting aromatic mix of every kind of Chinese kueh ever invented.That's KL downtown for you.
This Longan drink store has marked the corner of Cecil and Petaling Street for ages past. They used to serve the drink in metal bowls and dunk-wash them in one pail of water. Today, paper cups and straws have replaced the old charm of clanking metal spoons - a price we pay for hygiene. But their drink has not deteriorated that much - something to do with their fresh, succulent longans but mostly because they are still surrounded by the old Petaling Street cacophony...
