“We’re in the Philippines, and we found this very interesting machine.” The man speaking is the creator behind @trumpbyryan, whose account name is Chinese Trump (RyanChen). He stands in a narrow alley lined with orange walls and tangled power lines, wearing a straw hat and a gray embroidered shirt, and points at an old coffee vending machine fixed to a wall beside a water jug. His caption calls it “The 5-peso coffee in the Philippines,” and an on screen note beside his first line converts the price to about $0.08 in U.S. dollars.
“You give them five pesos, so you get a big, nice hot coffee,” he says. The machine’s front panel is printed with a coffee cup and beans and the word Star, and the close up frames show a row of buttons above a small coin slot. Subtitles in English and Chinese label the choices as he reads them out: hot chocolate, caramel macchiato and coffee three in one.
He picks the three in one coffee. “Let’s give it a try,” he says, and the camera follows his hand as he feeds a coin into the slot and a paper cup drops into the dispenser. Then comes the detail he chooses to point out: “Some ants. They also want the coffee.” The close up shows insects on the dispenser area while the cup fills.
The finished cup is small, white and printed with a green round logo. “Oh, it looks like Starbucks,” he says, holding it up to the camera. He takes a sip and reacts right away: “Wow, it’s good. I like it. I like it.” The video ends on a joke: “I think this is the real Starbucks. You never know. You never know.”
The on screen conversion of about $0.08 is a note added to the clip, so a visitor paying with real coins should check the current exchange rate instead of relying on the number in the frame.
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