January for us is always a good time to get away from London, reflect on the past year, make some plans for the new year and check out what is happening in the world of coffee in other parts of this world.

This year Oscar and Martin spent a couple of weeks in South East Asia. Here is Martin’s write up.

Our gateway for this trip was Singapore. It was Oscar’s first time but I had been before over a decade ago.

In Singapore we based ourselves near Chinatown. Near our hotel we found a coffee shop called Nylon. It was tucked away on the ground floor of an estate. We went here twice, due to the close proximity to our hotel.

Despite the slightly hidden location the coffeeshop was quite busy on both days. We started with a flat white (made with beans from Nicaraguan origin) and a filter from El Salvador.

They also were selling retail beans and yes, as this is Asia, this was through a vending machine!

The other coffeeshop we visited was Apartment close to Rochor and Little India MRT stations. When we arrived we were asked to wait outside as there was no seating available inside. It wasn’t too long before two seats came available at their communal table. Inside the vibe was a nice mix of people drinking a quiet coffee, maybe doing a bit of work on the laptop and friends catching up whils enjoying a nice cup of coffee.

We were served at our table and I had a washed Ethiopian filter (Refisa), whilst Oscar was drinking a iced filter with beans from La Divina, Colombia

Unfortunately our plans to visit a coffeeshop called Asylum on our final day before flying back to London fell through due to a 5 hour delayed flight coming back from Malaysia.

Ah well, I’m sure we’ll be back at some point. Singapore is a great city with great connections to other countries in the region.

After Singapore we visited some less urban areas in Northern Sumatra and Malaysia where it was a bit more challenging to find good coffee, but the Aeropress we brought a long came in handy.

We did spend a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur.

There we visited 103 Coffee, which is a small chain. We visited their location in Chow Kit a fairly central neighbourhood (The Petronas Towers can be seen from outside the shop).

Apparently some of the newer specialty coffee shops in KL can be found in more suburban areas like Petaling Jaya towards the west of the city, but do involve a little travel.

103 Coffee has been on the scene for a while and the 2018 winner of the World Latte Art competition was no other than Irvine Quek, 103 Coffee’s co-founder.

It was here that a choice of latte art options was presented as part of the menu and the team did deliver indeed! Oscar had the coffee flight which also included a cold brew topped with steamed oat milk and a slice of orange and I was drinking a natural processed filter produced by Juan Carlos Velez out of Ecuador.