There was a bubble tea shop two streets from my school in Singapore.

It wasn’t fancy—no neon signs, no curated playlists, no pastel branding. Just a fogged-up counter, a battered handwritten menu, and the familiar whirr of the sealing machine snapping lids onto plastic cups.

Every day after class, my friends and I would pile in, sweaty from the walk, uniforms untucked, backpacks dragging behind us. We ordered the same things: classic pearl milk tea with 50% sugar, lychee green tea with aloe vera, sometimes a shared plate of Taiwanese popcorn chicken if someone had enough pocket money.

We didn’t call it “hanging out” back then. It was just what you did—an unspoken ritual, a soft landing after the chaos of school.

Later, when I visited cousins in Hong Kong, they had their own version: the cha chaan tengs. No pearls, but buttery pineapple buns, icy lemon teas, and towering plates of instant noodles drenched in satay sauce. We sat in cracked vinyl booths, shoulder to shoulder with strangers, the clatter of spoons and Cantonese chatter filling the air. Those afternoons smelled like condensed milk and toasted bread, tasted like freedom.

In Taipei, it was all about the tea streets—rows of tiny shops, each claiming to have the best brew, the chewiest boba, the softest taro balls. My older cousins took me there like it was a rite of passage, warning me which places used fake powders, which ones steeped their tea leaves properly.

Looking back, these shops weren’t just places to buy drinks. They were third spaces—those vital in-between places where you could just be without performing, without pleasing anyone. Where a $2 drink bought you hours of belonging.

We sat for hours cramming for exams, gossiping about teachers, whispering about first crushes. We learned how to flirt, how to fight, how to say sorry over a second round of drinks. It was in those sticky plastic chairs that we began to stretch into ourselves, to figure out who we wanted to become.

Today, bubble tea is global. You can order a brown sugar boba in New York, a matcha latte in London. Shops are sleek now—Instagrammable interiors, artisanal toppings, biodegradable straws. I love that the world has embraced it, but sometimes I miss the old messiness—the condensation pooling under plastic cups, the noise, the chaotic teenage heart of it all.

Every time I drink milk tea, even now, it tastes like being fourteen and free. Like growing up one sip at a time, in the after-school tea shops that quietly, steadily, raised me.

By Zoe Lim | The Asian Diaries | Singapore