ชาเย็น - Thai Tea

Wherever I go in the world, I turn to beverage carts and food stalls to see the drink menu. The finds have been spectacular. In Taiwan, they cook wintermelon into an earthy, cooling, and refreshing drink. And their iced milk tea is to die for. It's light and fragrant--the classic medium for boba tapioca pearls. Hong Kong has it's own special milk tea, a powerfully concentrated brew made from a blend of black teas to which evaporated milk is added. It's reddish orange, served hot or iced, and its intense flavor is a Hong Kong specialty. Singapore hawker centers serve bandung, an iced milky pink drink flavored with rosewater. But the beverage of choice is a black iced coffee called kopi bing. Invariably served in a glass mug, this drink is named with the Malay word for coffee and the Chinese word for ice as a reflection of Singapore's rich cultural heritage. Likewise, in Vietnam the coffee is preferred. Their intense, syrupy brew is poured over ice and stirred up to a red foamy froth, or has thick, honey-like condensed milk stirred in.

The original Thai iced tea
photo by Lữ photo by Lữ Như Tiên

When I think of Thailand, I think of flavors from stateside Thai restaurants. Especially, I think of the orange, milky, spiced tea in a tall glass filled with ice, with a layer of evaporated milk floating on top. In my experience, it's the iconic Thai drink. But they say (whoever they are) that nothing in the states is ever like the original stuff that you get in the country where it comes from. So when I got here I made a mission to try real Thai iced tea. Little did I know, getting Thai tea in Thailand was going to be a tall order.

Here on Pranang Cape, I ordered ice tea at the first place we went to. The barista pulled a yellow box with a familiar label from the back of a shelf, opened it, and grabbed the same type of tea bag that I had in my kitchen at home. This was no Thai tea. I asked to forget the order, and we moved on. What was the problem? You didn't ask for milk tea, I was told. So I tried again, this time at a different restaurant. While a friend ordered Thai iced tea, I ordered milk tea. Neither of us got the stuff we know from home. Mine was that old familiar tea bag steeping in a cup of hot water with milk on the side. My friend's was the same thing, but poured over ice. A triple dead-end.

The morning sun rises
on longboats at low tide
photo by Lữ Như Tiên

It wasn't until we traveled by sea and by land, to a common marketplace in the nearby town, when I finally found the tea I had been looking for. We hitched a boat into town sometime before dawn. The tide was low, and we walked across a hundred yards of mud flats to the edge of the water. Then, it was another fifty yards through the water to the wooden longboat. We climbed into the hull and watched with wet feet as the sun rose while we shuttled across the sea. We disembarked and hopped into the covered bed an old rusty pick-up truck. The chain link gate closed behind us, fencing us in completely like a cage, and I knew what a dog feels like when he gets caught by the dogcatcher.

We rode in the back of our pound paddywagon across the peninsula, past palm oil groves and resort villas, into town, and stopped in front of the village market. Our "dogcatcher" saw fit to let us out of the cage, and we headed into the market. It was extraordinary. Aisles upon aisles of fruits and vegetables. A veritable dry aquarium, with species of fish and shellfish too numerous to count. And oh so much meat. Since many of the southern Thai people are Muslim, the meat area is divided into Halal and non halal. So is the food center, where hawkers peddle packages and plates of endless variety, with giant pots of soups bubbling away, and neatly wrapped packages of sweet-sticky rice wrapped in leaves, and all sorts of things cooked on sticks. And things we could buy to eat and drink from these stalls delighted our tastebuds.

There, in one of the food stalls, we finally found it--a plastic pitcher with orange, milky tea, which was so thick it clung to the sides. Immediately we ordered enough to go around. The man filled the plastic cups with ice, then tea, then floated condensed milk on top for that extra milky kick. He capped them with lids and straws, and handed them over in exchange for 66 cents each. On the first taste, we found out something extraordinary. The Thai tea in the states is just as good as the original. Beverage heaven.

The moral of the story is sometimes they can be wrong about the stuff at home. The international food we get can be as good as the original. And when you go to the country of origin in search of the original flavor, I have one piece of advice: avoid resorts, because they work hard to provide you with the tastes you know from home. And that, in my opinion, is no way to travel.