Visiting Chinatown, trying another LBZ; Bangkok's first department store

Ordinarily visiting the local Chinatown isn't enough of a story to relate, at least taken alone.  This visit was different.  I finally met Noppadol again there at my favorite shop, Jip Eu.  He is the part-time local Thai and Myanmar tea vendor who helped out with two different tea tastings last year (covered here and here).  And my friends Sasha and Nok stopped by; I haven't seen them for awhile, since they've been out traveling.  I met a local doctor who I've met there before too, but I've forgotten his name.  It was nice seeing everyone and the teas we tried there were really interesting.

I would usually start with that, but I'm going to cover a visit to Bangkok's first department store just after that outing first, checking out the Nightingale-Olympic.  That way readers only curious about the department store part can skip the last half, and others who could care less about 1950's era Thai Department stores, and what is in them, can skip this first part instead.

pictures don't do the feel justice; it's like a museum in there

The Nightingale Olympic Department store

Old Siam; market space with shops above

I've been meaning to check this out since hearing about it a couple of years ago (in references like this article).  Reviews in places like Trip Advisor are divided; people agree that it's like stepping into the past, like time-travel as much as visiting a museum, but then they differ on how interesting and positive that is.  Some loved it, while others were put off by not wanting to own anything in the store, and didn't feel comfortable there.


I walked through the Old Siam mall on the way there (through a lot of Chinatown too, really).  That made for an interesting warm-up.  I bought a silk jacket for my wedding in that center 11 years ago.  It feels like a part of the old world in there too, but it's still active, a very functional retail center.  Due to walking around hot city streets I bought a "Arctic rush" slush float at a Dairy Queen in that center, the modern version of a "Mister Misty freeze" that I grew up with.  It seemed odd checking out stalls with countless interesting and cool looking traditional snacks in the center of the market area, while eating something completely foreign to that theme, but it was worth it to change internal temperature so quickly.

Nightingale Olympic was different.  I was the only person in there, except for a half dozen staff.  I could immediately relate to peoples' account of a negative vibe; the staff looked at me almost accusingly, as if I was probably only there as a tourist (kind of the case, to be fair).


I really wanted to start snapping pictures but those accounts mentioned a "no photos" policy, also documented there in the store by signs.  The downstairs was mostly clothes, with both the look of the shop (and design) and the clothes all looking a bit dated.

I went upstairs.  They had really old musical instruments and sports equipment up there, with only one staff member there to give me a strange look.  New versions of soccer balls and barbells made for an updated, practical option for a purchase, if someone wanted to participate in a typical retail role in such a way.

One photo in a review had included disks that I couldn't identify; I checked those out.  They turned out to be what I think were wood and metal discuses; very odd.  A lot of the musical instruments and sports equipment (beyond the barbells and soccer balls) were probably too old to be useful to most.  The musical instruments went way, way back in terms of what was there; I couldn't even identify all of it.  Lots of very old looking guitars stood out; some of those might really have value.

Back downstairs I walked around a little to be surprised to find something I really did want to buy, something that I never would've even imagined existed:  doll dresses in a traditional Thai style, the colorful silk versions.  My daughter would love those.  Anyone living in Bangkok, or a visitor who felt a connection to old Thai culture, with a 5 year old girl who loves Barbies would react to that much differently than anyone else.

Sure enough back at home my daughter was thrilled.  Anna and Elsa (the "Frozen" characters) are now dressed in traditional Thai outfits.  Kalani didn't love the period Thai-silk pants (not exactly pants) as much as the dress so I actually went back just two days later, and bought three more outfits and a Thai vesion of Barbie wearing another one.  The outfits were only 100 baht each ($3); buying a few more seemed a good idea, so her Barbies can hold a themed event together.  I thought she could give an outfit to her best friend too, to share one since she now has 6, but it seems unlikely she'll part with any.

I asked at that store and they do re-stock those; even if you visit and they're out they would get them back.  Asking for them in English might not go well.  I hadn't thought it through but that staff may have seemed a bit negative about seeing a foreign tourist because language issues could come up.  I switched over to speaking in Thai there; mine is a bit limited, and rough, but if someone can deal with me dropping out the tones it still works to say a few things.

Jip Eu shop visit

late-rounds smaller-group  tasting

Noppadol brought a version from a Lincang village (I forget the name of which), and since Kittichai, the Jip Eu shop owner, had a version from that village for comparison we tried both together.  They were both a little bitter but as long as someone was able to appreciate that style they were both nice, and more interesting for tasting them in comparison.

Noppadol passed on a sample of some Yunnan sheng, and gave me another of those tuochas of Thai Lamphang sheng I'd asked him to bring (we've gotta even that balance back out; I'll have to figure out what to pass back on that's interesting and of comparable value).  That Thai sheng is aging nicely; it seems to be in the range of style that could use a few years to mellow and transition some bitterness but doesn't necessarily need over a decade of aging transition to be pleasant.

I'll skip right to it:  Kittichai had Lao Ban Zhang sheng mini-discs and provided one for us to try after that.  I really should have bought some of those; I tend to get caught up in wanting what I missed last time and bought an aged tuocha Noppadol had bought last time that I missed.  I'll have to go back for that LBZ before it disappears.  I did pick up a second aged tuocha that I bought on another short stop there since, one for our family monk, since I'd tried the first version I bought in the first day.

Per the last post, in the past week, about trying a Lao Ban Zhang version, how would one know if it's "real," actually from there?  That always gets complicated, when it comes to teas that are in such high demand that selling other types as something they're not is profitable.  The standard answer is "use trusted sources," which invokes a bit of a regress; how to establish and justify that trust?  I'm going to report what this tea was like and my best guess based on character, but again it's not as if I have a familiar baseline in memory to compare it with.

they're busy getting ready for Chinese New Year, packing gift boxes

The tea was great.  It had some bitterness to it, but that transitioned to a very nice sweetness, and balanced well.  One aspect range might have been interpreted as floral tone, but really a pronounced honey flavor in that sweetness stood out even more.  It was intense in character; that was one difference that seemed to stand against the last LBZ version actually being that.

The balance made it work even better than those positive aspects sound; it was clearly one of the better sheng I've ever tried.  As for cha qi / drug-like effect it's harder to isolate that when drinking a tea along with other versions and in a good-sized group.  It's hard enough for me to pin that down in a very controlled environment at home, and I was chatting with lots of people there.  We stopped out to a lunch in a nearby shop (food offsets tea effect as much as anything, but then it was lunch time), then later drank more of that and another tea.  At the least that LBZ example was outstanding tea; that makes for a good start.

One other way you can tell if a tea is "real" LBZ is by price; if the cost is too low it just isn't that, because the initial tea material sells for a lot.  Unless I've got it wrong they were selling those 8 gram mini-disks in a small tong, of sorts, at a rate of 100 baht ($3) per disk; on the low side for LBZ but perhaps conceivable.  To me it's always better to buy tea because you like the tea, not because you are investing in a story, even if the story is true, and the tea seemed worth that.


After the lunch--at a nice local shop across the road, well worth checking out, even for being basic and local-style--we tried a pretty good version of a Rou Gui.  It was in a cinnamon-intensive style, so quite type-typical, within one range of how those go.  The roast balance was nice in that version, and the quality level of that tea.  Really that tea could've been a revelation to someone who hadn't been exposed to above average Wuyi Yancha, and as it was that was just more normal tasting for visiting them there.


I really like the owners of that shop.  It feels a little like visiting family to stop by there, like it does in visiting the monks in the local temple my son and I were ordained in.  I saw pictures of them visiting China during New Years break, winter scenes from a mountain environment, and Kittichai told me about visiting a tea competition in Anxi back in October.  Maybe I haven't been there for awhile.

I think a first time visitor would have a different experience; it can be hard to sort through expectations and get straight to the teas that you would like most there.  There is no clear menu of what they sell, and they seem to have something different around every visit, probably with at least a 100 versions tucked away here and there.  The shop specializes in Wuyi Yancha, and due to them having family ties to the Anxi region they would carry unusual versions of Tie Guan Yin.  I've bought nice Dan Cong there (relatively speaking; they sell good mid-range versions of it), decent Longjing, and a nice silver-needle compressed cake.

preview of a later post, a 2006 Nan Jian Tu Lin raw tuocha

One last odd turn came up in re-visiting the store the next time, swinging by to pick up that aged tuocha (which I'll review separately, and a Hunan brick tea sample Kittichai gave me).  A foreign visitor stopped by to look for something specific, which turned out to be a green tea type that wasn't well-identified by the packaging photo he had.


It turned out he was from Poland (a place I've written about related to local tea culture recently, here, with local blogger input as a second post).  And he was in the shop due to reading my blog post mentioning there; cool!


We talked a little about tea types, the open-bin storage used for teas in some stalls (better to go with the large-jar stored tea, really, and even that isn't all that functional), and eventually he left with a little Longjing.  The tea was really for his mother, complicating buying what he thought she might want.  It's kind of a shame he was that close to decent Tie Guan Yin and didn't buy any, given the lighter tea character focus, but at least decent Longjing makes for a nice start on passable tea.