The best tea house ever.
Now I think everyone may have gathered by now I am a little obsessed with tea. I am currently sitting in a guest house in the mountains in Myanmar writing this having got the owner to find me boiling water so I could have a large mug of earl grey (I take tea bags and a mug everywhere). You can’t be from Yorkshire and not be a fan of tea it is pretty central to life!
So this in mind I was looking forward to visiting some proper tea houses on this trip around Asia and this one is most definitely my favourite so far. It is run by an organisation called Reaching Out who were established in 2000 to help create work for people with disabilities. The Tea House is run entirely by people who are deaf so is a peaceful and tranquil oasis. They have a well organised process for ordering drinks and nibbles and some blocks on each table with useful words on so you can communicate in silence.
You are served a cup of green tea while you decide what you might like. Everything is served in beautiful china made locally. The sweet treats that are available to accompany your beverage are made by hand and the ones I tasted were delicious and went perfectly with my tea. I had local green tea and two choices of coconut snack one plain and one flavoured with green tea. The green tea one was particularly lovely and I have not managed to find it again on my travels so I assume it is special to them, I would love to work out how to make it…watch this space.
The space was very conducive to drawing and it was raining hard outside so I stayed for an hour or two and really enjoyed the quiet and the tea! This is one of the drawings from that day.
The same group also have a gift shop full of beautifully made local crafts from textiles to silver to ceramics and more. It is only about two minutes walk from the tea shop on the road behind and very well worth a look, they also take credit cards which is helpful and dangerous!
