Where in the world am I? (4)

I am in a country with, it would seem, a decidedly sweet tooth.

Recently, I was on an internal flight and the attendant came around offering drinks. Beer did not seem to be available, and the fruit juice here is never very good, so I asked for a cola. "With sugar?" the attendant beamingly asked. I assumed he was offering me a choice of diet or regular cola, but diet is just about never available anywhere here (although you can buy it in stores easily enough), and a quick glance at the trolley confirmed that only regular Coke was on offer now. "Sugar?" I boggled. "Sugar!" he agreed eagerly, proffering a handful of the sugar sachets we normally associate with undrinkable airline coffee. "No, thank you," I said,"just the Coke."

Was I the victim of a bored (or mad?) hireling playing a cute little practical joke on a gullible foreigner, or do people in this country really feel that regular soda drinks are somehow not sweet enough? I almost suspect the former, since friends who travel on the domestic airlines more than me claim never to have encountered this bizarre drinks option before, and locals I've quizzed about it purport to find it as ridiculous and unbelievable as I did.

I'm almost sorry I didn't take him up on the offer, though, in a spirit of scientific enquiry. Surely adding sugar to a carbonated drink would lead to massive foaming, frothing, and spillage? Maybe I'll run the experiment at home some time, with plenty of kitchen towels on hand.

This, then, may have been a freak occurrence, a misleading guide to the palate of my new countrymen. However, a lot of the food here is very sweet, sugar being a regular addition even to meaty, savoury dishes. And some years ago, on my first visit, I was treated to the memorable culinary innovation of chips sprinkled with sugar (that's 'French fries', of course, to my American friends..... or do the NeoCons amongst you still insist on 'Freedom fries'?). Actually, they weren't at all bad; though that again is an aberration I have yet to see repeated.

Perhaps there's just a conspiracy against me to keep on offering me joke food & beverage choices to see what I do with them. Have I been set up on a website somewhere as the 'Sugar Boy', so that half the country is now looking for opportunities to inflict hastily improvised 'sweet treats' on me?

I'm getting paranoid again, aren't I?