Hi everyone, I'm a tea lover from Slovenia. I've just returned from Thailand where I found a lot of 'teanteresting' things to explore. In Thailand there are several plantations that grow mostly Taiwanese style oolongs. But this is quite a well known fact and is not the topic of this post.
What I'd like to talk about is that I found out Thai hill tribes have been eating 'miang' - fermented tea leaves for centuries. They harvest the leaves from ancient tea trees that grow in the bush and are not being cultivated at all. They are Assamica trees, so the original tea trees that used to grow in the China - Laos - Thailand - Myanmar - India region before people starting cultivating the plant. Now there is a project going on, started by Monsoon Tea company (a Chiang Mai based company run by a Swedish man), that supports those farmers to produce tea rather than just miang. Also it enables them to get profit from the tea trees which otherwise would surely be cut down and replaced by other crops.
So I brought home many different teas, among others two greens, they call them the Dhara green and the Lanna green. I'm going to try them out (gongfu style of course) and see how ancient Assamica green tea tastes like!
Just thought I'd share this teainteresting experience with all of you tea lovers out there. Cheers!