
HANOI -- Taiwanese-style tea shops offering concoctions of cold milky tea filled with fruit, jelly and tapioca balls -- often known as bubble tea -- are all the rage in Vietnam, where coffee-drinking culture has long prevailed.
In central Hanoi, a Ding Tea outlet is usually crowded with female customers, who mix their milk tea with tapioca balls, jelly, chunks of fruit and other ingredients that fill about a third of the large cup, all of which is consumed through a large straw.