High Tea (Pun Intended)

The Tea/Gas Station at Mae Salong

Doi Mae Salong is probably the only place in the world where they have a tea shop by the gas station. Seemed totally like my kind of town. 'Hey honey, we've run out of tea, let's go to the gas station and refuel!'

Wont Smile till you pay me..

Doi means mountain in Thai, however the language itself is quite amusing, the Thai use extremely colourful phrases to describe something really simple. For starters, "Going Overboard" is often expressed as "Kee Chang jap dak ga daan" which means "riding an Elephant to catch a Grasshopper", yeah makes visitors go "HUH?"
So the Songtheaw to Mae Salong from Tha-ton took us about 2 hours of driving through steep and winding roads and riding with the local Akha tribes who come by the dozen - If the question is how many people can you fit into a small mini van? The answer is 17. The Thais have mastered the science of compression technology when it comes to public transport.  An elderly Akha woman demanded 20 Baht for taking her picture, she did try hard to smile though - must give that to her.

Off to School

So the town itself is chinese               http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_Chinese  and has had generations of chinese settlers living here, it almost feels as if you are in Yunan or one of the chinese provinces. Education is extremely important to the Mae Salongers and so they end up sending their kids to two schools (for the price of one?), one is a Thai school where the entire curriculum is in Thai and from 4:30 to 7:00 p.m. they study Mandarin in a Chinese school. So their day starts quite early and you will see truckloads of kids being transported off to their schools.  Yin and Yang is totally at play here as you tread from the bustling local market which sells red hot chilli peppers ( I just wanted to say that) to a 700 mt climb up the mountains to a Chedi that provides some of the best views in this little town. 

Red Hot Chilli Peppers

The view from the top of the Chedi was simply stunning and helped me understand the grandeur while throwing a completely new perspective to the term "Climbing great heights". I wondered if this was a reflection on how tiny the world seemed from a great height and yet living in it seems big and overwhelming. It also helped me understand that work on the self also refers to the climb and the reward is well worth it.

View at the Chedi

It took me half an hour to get back to the town and there were lots of Akha people on the way who were quite friendly despite several warnings by fellow travellers. Some of the sights of the tea plantations made me thirsty and all activity in the town went dead by 9:00 p.m - Mountain life! The Party animals of Toronto would either hang themselves here or may just start another Boston Tea Party.

I decided to check out the Tea plantations the next day after a brief and disappointing visit to Market and finding chillies again instead of pineapple.  So here's the cool story behind the teas of Doi Mae Salong that makes you go high just by reading it...
http://www.doi-mae-salong.com/information/history

What was originally a land filled with opium has now been magically transformed into a tea plantation with every single trace of opium being removed and the chinese being given Thai nationality with the understanding that they would maintain the tea gardens and pass on to future generations. A find and replace act - how cool is that? Sounds like Terminator 2 doesn't it? Perhaps not...

The historic tea plantations of Mae Salong

"It can never be a 100% organic tea", said one of the experts in the region, "Soil factors, Seepage and other variables creep in. It also takes about 4 years to go from being an non organic plantation to an organic one", beamed a proud tea plantation owner who had completely managed to convert his crop away from the dark side. I spoke to 6 different Tea Plantations, tasted 25 cups of Oolong and Formosa and have now settled on the perfect cup with the perfect story and the perfect name for the Thai tea that would go into the Tea Garage portfolio. The challenge now would be to find a way to transport these to Canada and other places - hmm, this too shall unfold.

My Songtheaw back to Tha-Ton was at 11:00 am and I had a far ride ahead of me to Chiang Mai the city of 300 or more temples. Amidst all this excitement, I could hear a subtle knock on my soul and this time there wasn't anything zen about it. My thoughts were surprisingly calm and serene as I left one of the most beautiful tea hills in the world. It was as if deep down I knew my reason for coming here in the first place despite the stark question - " Do they even have tea in Thailand?"

No more tea for me today - 25 cups are good enough ( I think).