Misty Mountain Morning in the Lipton Tea Fields

When we woke up this morning we happily admired the spectacular view that stretches from the mountain ridge that we are on in central Sri Lanka all the way down to the south coast. From our high vantage point we look out at the rolling green hills getting smaller and smaller before they eventually flatten out into plains dotted with lakes that glisten in the morning sun. What a view to wake up to!

Needless to say, it appeared to be the perfect day for the hike up to Lipton's Seat- the view point that Sir Thomas Lipton, of Lipton tea, himself would climb to to survey his tea empire from. The views were meant to be breath-taking and I had been looking forward to it since I had started planning our Sri Lankan itinerary. First, though, we had to go to the Dambatenne Tea Factory, started by Lipton in 1890, and still 'growing' strong, providing Lipton tea lovers around the world with their morning cuppa for over a century. Pretty cool. Sri Lankans are proud of their tea- and rightly so- they are the world's second most important tea-growing nation, and, from experience I can say that their tea is pretty darn tastey.

I steam-rolled Jonathan until he agreed that it was time to get up and start the day. We went to our fave local eatery, where they love us and seem intent on stuffing us full of delicious Sri Lankan food and tea for as long as we'll keep nodding at their re-fill offers. In the end, our bill came to a whopping total of $2.75 and we were sure we wouldn't have to eat again until dinner. The friendly bus station men led us to the exact spot in which our bus would stop and then we collected (by no effort of our own) a group of overly-helpful locals who made it their mission to ensure that we were entertained while we were waiting, and ready the second the bus pulled up in front of us. As we waited the clouds started to roll in. Boo. By the time we had paid our 20 cent bus ticket and the rickety bus had rumbled and belched its way down the cliff-hanging road of a hundred turns and deposited us in front of the factory, everything was enveloped in clouds. Up here in the hills, the sky doesn't just get cloudy, the sky actually falls around the town. We were in the clouds and mist and could visibly see cloud wisps as they blew by. It would have been great, if I hadn't known that there was something spectacular hiding out there beyond the clouds.

Travelling off season has many benefits. Lack of other tourists being the main one. We paid our $2 and set off on our private tour of the Lipton tea factory. We started up on the second floor where 10kg bags over-flowing with tea leaves were being hauled in from outside. Tea leaf collectors, all women, bring their loads in to the factory three times a day. Each woman collects about 20kg a day! During the day, the factory processes thousands and thousands of kilos of tea leaves. It takes 1kg of leaves to make 250g of bag-worthy tea! Ponder that next time you are enjoying your Orange Pekoe.

The process is fascinating. First, leaves are individually inspected for quality. Only the youngest, lightest leaves will do. They are then poured into troughs where they are aired for 16 hours with warm air from a big fan underneath. Our tour guide dug down to the bottom of the trough and let a gust of air blow up through the leaves setting them off into a dancing frenzy, blowing up into the air and swirling around us. Tea leaves scattered everywhere. Judging by the amount of tea in its various forms laying at random around the factory floor, I figured that they had some to spare. This may be a world renowned international brand, but we are still in Sri Lanka, we laughed. After they're blow dried, the tea leaves are dropped down a hole into huge barrels. More dancing ensues, as the leaves shake, rattle and roll themselves into longer stick-like form. They are cut one, two and three times down to miniscule size with a little more bouncing around in between, of course to separate the superior quality from the seconds. The tea is fired, separated again and then bounced around some more to divide the different size morsels. The best quality tea is packed up and shipped away for us westerners to enjoy. Lucky us!

Its amazing that within 24 hours tea can go from a young leaf on a branch to a black pinch of dust ready for your mug. It was also funny to walk around the factory and see all the millions of cups of tea bouncing, cooking, or just lying around. There was tea absolutely everywhere.

After our lesson we left the factory to wander around some of the hundreds of acres of tea plant covered hills. Unfortunately the clouds had not lifted in the least and we could see no more than a couple hundred metres ahead of us. I was disappointed again as we started to stroll, but the spectacular atmosphere changed my tune pretty quickly. The clouds/mist itself was beautiful to walk in. The vibrant green tea plants that immediately surrounded us were a bright contrast to the opaque whiteness of the cloud and the trees that dotted the plantation looked like blurry silhouettes adding dimension to our limited view. When the clouds momentarily parted to reveal steep green mountains lined to their peaks with rows of tea plants and speckled with butterfly-like tea pickers in their colourful sarees, it was absolute magic. The scene vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared, almost as if it wasn't actually there at all.

Speaking of things appearing out of the mist, on our way back down through the hills, I turned back momentarily and my heart stopped. Was that... could it be... a gorilla emerging from the mist behind me! A gorilla in the mist! Gasp. A quick second take calmed my nerves. No gorilla... for better or worse, it was just my hairy, hairy husband bringing up the rear... haha!

ps. Ceylon tea is tea from Sri Lanka. I didn't know this. The Brits changed the name of the island (from the name the Dutch had already changed it to, from the name the Portugese had changed it to...) to Ceylon back in the day. And then they planted a bunch of tea in 'Ceylon'. Ceylon Tea! In 1972 Lankans restored their island's name to what they had always known their country as, 'Lanka', adding 'Sri' as a respectful title.

The Tea Master vs The Tea Disaster

In Melaka we had the privilege of couchsurfing with a Chinese tea master. 'Yee Tea' was his couchsurfing profile name. His current mission: to meet every person in the world. Not wanting to stand in the way of such an ambitious mission, we immediately messaged him to assist in his quest. Free accommodation and the chance of hanging out with a 'master' would just happen to be side benefits. Considering Yee Tea had three-hundred-sixty-five positive references from fellow couchsurfers, it became apparent that Tea was already well on his way to achieving his goal. Yee Tea, fittingly, owns a tea shop on the main street of the old town of UNESCO World Heritage protected area of Melaka. 'Tea talk is free' his profile read. Perfect. We found Tea's shop pretty easily. 'You want a tri-shaw ride?' asked one of the thirty-eight tri-shaw drivers standing proudly beside his contribution to the 'tackiest tri-shaw in the world' competition. Its their thing in Melaka, apparently. They deck out their tri-shaw with fake flowers, flashing Christmas lights, heart-shaped pillows and Happy Meal toys and then tourists find the idea so entertaining that they can't possibly turn down a ride. 'No Thanks, we don't need a ride. Our friend lives right down the street.' 'You have a friend in Melaka?' the driver asked curiously. 'Yes, he owns a tea shop.' Jonathan told him. 'Ohhhhhh,' said the tri-shaw driver, nodding, 'Yes, he has many friends.' I guess you can't host five-hundred couchsurfers without your townsfolk taking note.

Yea Tea's shop was cluttered in a charming sort of way. The walls were lined with shelves that were stock full of ceramic tea pots in various shapes, sizes and colours as well as knick-knacks of the hand carvd variety, large silver canisters full of loose leaf tea and a couple beautiful tables that looked like they were sliced from the middle of a very large, very irregularly shaped tree. Yee Tea was asleep in a chair in the back. His wife jolted him awake when we came in and Tea immediately set about boiling the water for a cup of tea. We sat at one of the tables and Tea poured us fresh, strong, oolong tea from a tiny teapot where the tea steeped into miniature tea cups. Tiny cup after tiny cup of tea we drank, while getting to know each other a tad over 'tea talk.' When we could drink no more, Tea suggested we go explore the old town a bit and come back around 8pm, when he closed the shop. So that's what we did. The old town itself, particularily Chinatown, is a fantastic jumble of narrow streets lined with shops and restaurants offering eyefuls of window-hanging meat, huge bags of meat-crackers, and colourful sarongs and paintings combined with nosefuls of smelly dried fish, barrels of mushrooms and sweet pineapple cookies.

When we arrived back at the shop Tea suggested we head out into Little India for some 'cheap noodle soup.' We weaved our way down the streets and behind an outdoor kitchen to a parking lot full of tables and chairs and a big screen playing an Indian movie via projector. The tables were full of locals slurping down bowls of soup accompanied with large bottles of beer. If a tourist was even able to find this place, ordering would have been an even bigger challenge. Tea said something in Chinese to the lady stirring a massive caldron of boiling oil and then motioned for us to follow him through the maze of tables. Not long after followed two bowls of tasty noodle soup and a couple over-sized 'Tiger' beers. The two bowls of soup cost barely a dollar in total! We could get used to this dining with a local thing. Just as Tea was delving into Malaysia's multi-cultural society which is comprised mainly of the Malay, Chinese and Indian communities he jumped up from the table and returned with a couple of so-fresh-they-were-too-hot-to-touch chinese doughnuts (dough stretched out into long sticks and fried). 'To soak up the bottom of your soup with,' he explained. Chinese doughnuts to soak up our Indian soup. Multiculturalism at it's tastiest.

Tea drove us to his house on the out-skirts of the city. He and his wife live above the shop, but keep this house for couchsurfers, to sublet and for somewhere for their kids to stay when they come to visit. One of the rooms was currently subleted to a retired Dutchman who was rumored to speak English and be very nice. He came storming out of the bedroom when we arrived and jumped onto Yee Tea yelling, 'I KILL YOU' in very clear English. Tea laughed and graciously returned the sentiment, so we assumed this was a common greeting of sorts. These were to be the only words 'Fred' spoke in English that we understood over the next forty-eight hours. Fred, we think, was maybe a little crazy; quirky, at the least. He got very worked up about something and continued on ranting in 'English' for quite some time trying to get his point across. Judging from his hand gestures his anger had something to do with chopsticks. Then, from what we gathered, his dissatisfaction turned to something sushi related and before we knew it Fred had run into the kitchen and grabbed a large, extremely well cared for chef knife to show us how to properly cut air sushi. We think. The knife made me very uncomfortable and I quickly offered to return it to the kitchen for him. Then I hid it underneath all the dish towels at the very bottom of the very furthest drawer: this just in case Fred decided he wanted to demonstrate cutting something else in the middle of the night. When we woke up in the morning with all of our digits in tact we came to the conclusion that maybe Fred really was a nice guy who was just very passionate about chopsticks and sushi. 'What are you doing today, Fred?' I asked him on his way out the door. 'Coffee bean,' was his reply.

We spent some time in Chinatown that day, wandering relatively aimlessly and stopping often for goodies. One of the 'Don't leave Melaka without Trying' items in our Lonely Planet guide was the local drink: cendol. It was supposed to be sweet - so obviously it made it to the top of my list as well. Cendol is a odd combination of shaved ice, coconut milk, green tapioca drops and local liquid palm sugar. I don't know why the tapioca needs to be green- but it is. The tapioca itself, in case you are having trouble picturing it, is like the pearls or bubbles in bubble-tea. So chewy and not super flavourful, but obviously there. The drink came out in a large icecream dish that was piled high with shaved ice and topped with sugar. In my books, anything topped with sugar and containing coconut is a-ok, but it certainly was unlike anything I had tasted before.

We had a personal date with our very own tea master that afternoon to learn the secret behind steeping that perfect mug... or tiny thimble in this case. Yee Tea had trained in China and Malaysia to become a Tea Master. Little did I know, that there is apparently a lot more to drinking tea than plugging in your electric kettle, plopping in a choice tea bag and then piling in a hefty scoop of milk and sugar. There are different tea families, different temperatures to drink the teas at, things to think about and meditate on while preparing the tea, serving the tea, and finally a special way to drink the tea.

It all starts by preparing the table. On a tray, Tea had a variety of objects with which to set the table. A small, thick table cloth, coasters, a tea pot, teacups, loose tea, a bowl for the tea leaves, a holding jar, a scoop... Then there was a certain order in which these items were to be set on the table, and a specifc place for each of them. The whole event seemed like one big photo-op for me. I probably would have payed a bit closer attention had I known we were going to have to mimic all of Tea's movements. 'Your turn!' he declared. I made Jonathan go first and desperately tried to remember everything he did. You know Jonathan. He is so calm and serene and slow... 'Very Good! 95%!' Tee said to Jonathan after he had finished. Jerk. By the time I was through picking up an item, looking at Tea, him shaking his head, me randomly picking another item, plunking it onto the cloth, and then Tea moving it to it's proper place, Tea looked like he really needed, well, a cup of tea. 'Umm. Ok? 75%' he told me, most certainly only to not dash my dreams of becoming the next Tea Master extraordinaire. I'm not even going to get into how perfectly Jonathan poured the tea. Not a drop went a rye. Myself, on the other hand, poured almost the entire pot pretty much everywhere besides into the tea cups while posing for a picture. So, really, the mess was Jonathan' fault, because he should have known better than to distract me while I was pouring. 'Tea Disaster' I was declared. Which is really unfortunate, because I thought I was capable of making quite a tasty 'cuppa' before all this.

In addition to learning about tea, Tea explained a few thought processes that were common among his fellow Tea Masters. One idea that I thought was particularly interesting was that of the 'Eight Senses.' In addition to your five senses, Tea believes that a sixth sense of experience, seventh of thinking and eighth of memory are equally as relevant in how you interpret your everyday life. It seems obvious, when you think about it, that our past experiences would shape how we perceive our new experiences. That our way thinking, which may be significantly different than those around us, would create a framework through which we would interpret what we are experiencing. And that the knowledge we have, both formal and life would have a direct impact on how we live day to day and how we internalize and make sense of new circumstances.

Jonathan and I feel very lucky to be travelling right now. We think and talk a lot about what we see, who we meet and how this experience is shaping our lives and opinions as well as broadening our knowledge. Life is very different here than what we are used to at home in Canada. Often it is a lot to take in. We meet tons of other travellers from all over the world as well as a good number of local people. We love talking to other people about life and travel, exchanging tips and learning from each other's experiences. What is so obviously apparent is that every person is different. It's such an obvious statement that we often don't even think about it. Of course every person is different. Everyone has their own thoughts and opinions and a unique set of experiences and education to use as references. What we hadn't spent as much time thinking about before this trip, however, was how people come to be so different. Again, it's so obvious that we had just taken our differences as fact and moved on.

What we have found important to realize is that every person experiences the events of their life differently because the events are interpreted by each person through a personal set of senses. This is where the extra three senses became interesting to us. We come to Asia and look around. What we see, smell, hear etc is internalized by us through our personal lenses. Our lens takes in all these new things we are seeing, smelling, feeling and filters them through our past experiences and knowledge. Through this process, that we don't even realize is happening, we are able to understand this new experience. Each person is only capable of understanding a new experience through what they already know. It is impossible to use knowledge that we don't have or systems of approaching difference and change that we haven't nurtured (or even discovered yet) to interpret a situation. It is unreasonable and unfair for anyone to expect us, being Western and only having a limited experience in the Asian culture to be able to understand fully what we are experiencing, or even know for sure the way someone will interpret things we do or say. This is partly why we are travelling: to widen, and mature our personal lens and, over time, become able to understand and communicate with clarity, not only our experiences, but how others might be experiencing us. Of coure this doesn't mean that we intentionally go into situations ignorantly. We do our best to read, to talk to other travellers and locals and to learn from how we see the world happening around us. But its impossible to be prepared for every single situation and know how to react perfectly to every person. People are just as varied within a culture or country as the culture is itself from the culture we know. Therefore, the more experiences we have, the more days we spend immersed in this foreign culture, the more capable (we hope) we are of understanding other people's influence on us, and ours on them. Of course we also learn and grow through talking to other travellers, who, if from the west as well, would have experiences and thought processes at least similar to our own, and therefore easier for us to understand. Lessons that can be bundled up and easily delivered to us via other travellers are usually of the easier of lessons, however. Harder to digest cultural differences seem to be more often learned through personal experience. The idea of learning from others, or through fellow travellers' mistakes brings up yet another issue, however. Sometimes what people are saying isn't really getting the point across that they intend to, whether because of a language barrier or just their way of explaining. And then, even if your fellow travellers do manage to successfully communicate their point, it's not necessarily the case that you will interpret the information the way it is intended. Although, I suppose these are general issues with communication and not necessarily specific to travel. Nonetheless, that doesn't lessen the value of the experiences and systems of thought foreign to us either. Nor should it be an avenue deemed to offer no or even limited opportunities for growth and maturation. Quite the contrary, in fact. Still, though, tips, advice, stories and tall tales are internalized through that lens of ours. No matter how open one is to seeing the 'real' world it is impossible to see anything any other way than through what they already know or hold as true. One of the reasons we love travel so much is it's unabashed opportunity to learn. We've said before, and strongly believe that engaging with real life and real experiences are the best way to learn about the people, places and cultures. We have noticed significant changes in ourselves over the last three and a half months. Our experiences and knowledge have widen our horizons considerably and, no doubt, how we are experiencing Thailand today (we are posting this from Thailand) is through an enlarged and not-quite-the-same framework than we would have been able to experience it two months ago. Still, we are new, and, clearly, have a lot to learn.

After our tea ceremony, Yee Tea and his wife invited us to join them in making dinner. Tea and Jonathan set about making a pineapple curry while Tea's wife and I rolled sushi. (Maybe we should have invited Fred to join, considering his obvious passion for cutting sushi and using chop sticks). We had an absolute feast. Tea even plucked his leafy vegetable tree dry and fried the leaves up into the most perfect veggie serving I could imagine. The food was so tasty and it seemed so easy to prepare.. although it probably won't be once we are at home and trying to recreate the perfect combination of flavours. Our conversation outlasted even the last drops of scrumptious curry. We are very grateful to Tea and his wife for hosting us in Melaka. We would have loved to stay longer, but alas, we had to go off to Kuala Lumpar to pick up a Thai visa.