I don't taste a big difference with some of the crafted coffee drinks between International locations and stateside locations. Then again, I'm a big black coffee drinker.

In 2008 while I was in Taiwan and China for some of my biz trips, one of my friends said that you could get aspartame artificial sweetner and taught me the proper phrase (I am fluent in Chinese, however, there are some local phrases that I am not familiar with) and then the Baristas behind the counter would hand me a packet of Equal from a compartment. I was sad to find out on my recent trip that Starbucks had apparently costed-down to Sweet & Low Looks like it's back to carrying some Equal packets with me when I'm in the Far East.