Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Mae Salong - Oolong Tea & Fun

We feel better today after spending the night here in Mae Salong at the Shinsane Guesthouse and Bungalows. We are at the highest elevation that you can get to by paved road, here in Thailand.


This guesthouse has rooms starting at 50 THB ($1.65 US) and bunglows for 200-300 THB. We stayed in a bungalow with our own bathroom and hot water shower.

There is no need for air conditioning as it is cool here in the mountains. Matter of fact, we were cold last night and I put on a jacket to go to the morning market.

We got up at daylight. I would say sun rise but it is very cloudy/foggy this morning. You could not see the sun.


We walked to the morning market, had coffee and bought a few beaded braclets from the local hill tribe folks (Akha). Daeng also bought a half a kilogram of medium grade tea for the lady at the Ban Pa Meat Pa Thong Ko &Coffee Shop where we usually have morning coffee.

We also bought some braclets from the local girls as we walked back to our room.

After a little breakfast we checked out and traveled to one of the local tea factories. This area is now famous for their "Oolong tea".


We stopped on the south side of town at the Choke Chamroen Tea Co. LTD. As we got out of the car a lady, in the doorway under the sign, motioned for us to come this way. She led us into a little room and gave us clean flip-flops to put on our feet.


After changing our shoes we followed her into a hugh room with lots of workers and machines. She began explaining, in Thai, the sixteen (16) steps to making quality, premium tea. If you leave out any of the steps the tea becomes less of a quality tea.


It all starts with quality tea plants on the hill side. Every morning the tea pickers pick the tender leafs from the tea plants. They are then brought and layed out to dry for a day.


After the first day of drying, they are moved inside twice in a drying process. Then the tender tea leafs are put in a round machine that turns and heats the tea leafs.




After that process, the leafs are bundled and massaged in machines, removed, put back in round machine that act as sauns, rebundled, massages more until the tea leaves are ready for hand sorting and seperating from the stems.


Remember, this is Thailand and everything gets massaged, even the tea!

I don't think I have ever seen premium tea like this. The tea leaves are all bunched up and look like rasins. I learned later, in a tea brewing demonstration, when brewed correctly the tea leaves open up to their full size, just like when they were picked.

By the way, the ladies in the sorting picture are paid 130 THB a day (around $4.00 USD). Sorting the tea leaves is a very time consuming process, too.

After the hand sorting and stem removal, the tea is again warmed, then bagged, vacuum sealed and boxed for shipment.

I never knew the cost of tea could be so high. It was explained to me that this kind of premium tea will bring as much as 2000 THB ($66.00 USD) a kilogram on the wholesale market. Sometimes even more than a hundred US Dollars ($100.00) a kilogram. The package in Daeng's hand is 1/5 of a kilogram (200 grams).

And I thought coffee was high priced!

After our little tour of the tea factory we went to the tea tasting area. We were tought how to brew this kind of tea correctly. I had never seen it done this way:

1. Put tea in small tea pot, filling about 1/4 full with loose tea. Put almost boiling water into pot and let set for less than a minute. Pour water back out. This washes the tea leaves. You can throw that water away.
2. Put almost boiling water back into pot and wait about three to five (3-5) minutes, then pour brewed tea into cups.

This can be done with the same leaves for at least five times or until the taste of the tea is no longer strong enough for your taste.

We were told the rebrewed tea tastes better than the first brewed tea. It has something to do with the soaking of the tea leaves.

We drank two small cups of tea, one - Green Oolong Tea and one - Ginseng Oolong Tea. I was wired for over three hours from the caffeine (I think it was the caffeine.) in the tea.

We did buy 200 grams of both the Green Oolang Tea and the Ginseng Oolong Tea. The Ginseng Tea had a sweet taste to it.

We also bought a beaded braclet from a little boy outside the tea tasting area. He was a real cutie.

After we left the tea factory we took a little ride onto some of the less traveled roads. One of them dead ended into the Mae Salong Church Drug Rehabilition Center. Go figure since this area was, at one time, a high producing Opium area. This is part of the "Golden Triange" area.


Another road stopped at a Buddhists Temple. My GPS showed the road continuing on but we could not find a way around the temple. TIT! (This is Thailand!)



It is a beautiful little temple.




We desided we had done enough for the day and it would be nice to spend the night in our own bed. We were only about 50 kilometers from our home so we headed in that direction.



It was a fun trip.

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