Google has a silly game this morning about making bubble tea. I’ve heard of it, seen the places serving it but never tried it as it didn’t seem to me that inviting.
What’s it like?
Milky chai type drink (also available fruity not milky) with little balls (aka boba pearls) of flavoured tapioca or sometimes even potato starch. If you like things like falooda you will probably like it too 
It looks to have the consistency of tapioca we saw it for sale often in China.
Lots in China town in London but never tried it.
Popular in Hong Kong and Seoul. I think it began in Taichung, Taiwan. I prefer it fruity.
If you can’t get used to the idea of drinking the black bobbles, you might like to try Chai, an Indian beverage popular in South Asia. Made by brewing black tea in milk and water, usually sweetened with sugar. I think it is best hot.
It’s tea for people who think a Starbucks venti frappamochacockachino isn’t poncy enough.
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I notice no-one’s said it’s nice. 
Should pay more attention to Google……I read this your title as meaning hubble-bubble pipes! Which I gave up along with smoking.
Off to London in a couple of weeks so maybe give it a try, seem to be bubble cafés everywhere.
Had to google that, in which case I might well like it 
, but I don’t think I would go out of my way to get it though.
Coffee is my drink these days but I thought chai was just Indian for tea, not something special, in other words what I used to drink at the pavement vendor’s stall outside the YM in N, Delhi. Black and sweet, just as I used to like it. 
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It’s become something more special with cloves and other spices in it because of marketing I expect. Boring old dark-orange chai cooked up with the milk and a bit of sugar in it is what I drank all the time in my office in India, because that’s what there was.
I loved teh tarik in Malaysia which is another variant on the sweet spicy milky black tea theme.
It’s ok but too sweet for me. The boba are ok but sometimes the texture is a bit disconcerting.
Funny that, the Finnish film I watched last night had the Chinese chef producing a thin colourless but very nourishing soup that they were all instructed to chew while sipping.
Merci. I think you have resolved something that made us squeamish at the time and have remarked on to friends for the past 15 years. Ambling through a night street market in southern Taiwan a busy stall caught our eyes and taking a closer look revealed a large glass container containing what closely resembled ‘bubble tea’. We moved quickly on after scrutinising the stall’s facade of Chinese characters to find one English word - ’ tadpoles’. Maybe it is time to go back to a delightful country to correct what now looks like an incorrect assumption.
This came at the end of a day in the fascinating national aquarium and just before choosing our fish from a restaurant tank aided by helpful fellow customers.
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In my experience, the first glass of chai on a steaming hot day is heaven and the second - one can’t resist - is hell.
Chai from the cheery chai-wallah on the street is a great cauldron of boiling water into which is tossed bagfulls of black tea leaves. Next, an enormous quantity of sugar - huge amount. Sticks of cinnamon, too. Finally, condensed milk in vast quantities.
This mix is set to a steady boil for hours. Ingredients are added as the pot is consumed.
A glass is dipped into the cauldron and handed over … Tho’ I see they have adopted poly beakers now. Less chance of Delhi Belly
The result is sweeter than anything you have ever tasted before. It bangs its head against the top mark of sweetness. That first one seems sooo good. Maybe if one is extremely thirsty. The second one is intolerable. The sweetness is beyond — it’s sickening.
It’s many years since I tried making it at home. There are teabags and loose tea purporting to be chai but why bother? The real thing comes in a grubby glass, passed up to the window of the train one’s in from a cart on the platform.
Or on the street
Note the bellows, bottom left, to get the water really boiling on just sticks of wood.
There are so many wonderful teas without the palaver
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I thought this fad had been and gone 
I’ve had it everywhere from Paris, to La Rochelle, Brittany and Nouvelle Aquaintaine - my kids love it too. If we pass one, we often go for a bubble tea treat instead of an ice-cream.
It’s just a refreshing drink (you can choose the level of sweetness), and then you get to choose the tapioca balls you want in it, combining different flavours to compliment your drink.
A healthy alternative, with seed ‘bobbles’
https://www.frais-eminces.fr/nos-produits/les-jus/jus-pomme-mangue-chia/
Available at Grand Frais.
You can put sweet basil seeds in most fruity drinks or cold teas etc if you like the mini frogspawniness
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