Good morning, everyone! The tea plantations we are going through look sooo different from the ones near our house in Japan. There, the rows were neat and manicured, and the leaves harvested by machine leaving the tea bushes smooth and even. Up here along the Burmese border, the tea is picked by hand so there is nothing smooth or uniform looking along the rows, themselves wiggling along the mountainsides.
There is a LOT of tea and coffee grown in Northern Thailand/South-eastern Myanmar, managed by the indigenous Hill Tribes (Karen, Lahu, Lisu, Aka, etc.) who in the past made their living growing opium poppies in these same plantations 40 years ago, and there are still quite a few acres of poppy growing in the more remote areas. But there is a reason you don't hear much about Hill Tribe coffee or tea. It's just not nearly as good as the more popular brands. Locals buy it because it's very cheap. Tourists buy it because it makes a nice souvenir.
The tea I bought, while tasting good, doesn't deliver the full-bodied tastes found with teas sold by the East India Company, Taylors of Harrogate, or even Twinings. This morning I'm drinking the tea we bought from the "Xing Yang Tea Company" and as a black tea, it falls somewhere just above Lipton's "Yellow Label" and below "Twinging's" Ceylon teas. Not bad, but not a tea that I'd write home about.
Time for one more cup of the stuff, then it's time to get back on the road, and head home. It's going to be a very wet day though... It's
"Songkran!" The Thai New Year's celebration. Thais celebrate it by throwing water at each other... and everyone who passes by. It's a five-day nation-wide no-holds-barred water fight!. 'Sawasdee Pi Mi!' (Happy New Year!)
Stitchawl