Roasted Tie Kuan Yin from a Bangkok shop, Ong Yong Choon

the friendly shop owners

I mentioned a local Bangkok tea shop in that post about my son becoming a novice monk, the Ong Yong Choon tea shop.  It's near the flower market that's near Wat Pho, the Pak Khlong market.  I haven't been checking out many new shops in Bangkok for awhile, so this post about local shops from a year ago wouldn't change much based on what I've turned up since.

I'm finally reviewing a roasted Tie Kuan Yin rolled oolong from that shop here, about a month after buying it.  The tea is nice.  It wasn't sold as an exceptionally high quality level version, just a good basic tea, moderate in cost, and that's what it is.  It's a bit unique for the roast level not being unroasted (the "nuclear green" TKY version), or charred, the typical take on a traditional style.  It's in the middle, at a level that seems to bring out nice character in the tea.

An online friend visited this shop not too long ago and bought a decent Shui Xian there (Wuyi Yancha, a twisted-style roasted oolong instead).  I did "try" some of those by smelling sample jars and one of a few I sniffed seemed like it probably was pretty good, but I was in a hurry that day, midway through my son's ordination training at Wat Pho nearby, so I just went with some TKY instead.  I shared most of what I bought that day directly with monks in that temple.  Just because they have limited opportunity to go out tea shopping they shouldn't have to skip drinking decent tea.

one of the owners again

two different languages I can't read

packaged versions, but they do sell tea from loose bulk stock too

that TKY packaging was identical to those portioned out, as single servings

teaware!

Review

The tea itself is a bit dark, and has a nice roasted smell to it, a bit rich, maybe just a little off related to scent tone, along the line of old books or car engine smell.  Taste is the main thing; we'll see if that's clean, complex, and full or not.



It is nice on the first infusion, rich with good depth.  It's clearly a medium roasted version, giving up brightness and potential floral nature to pick up more depth and other range of flavors, warmer and in a different range.  A creaminess underlies the experience, not a foreground part of the aspects but a nice supporting element.  The feel and aftertaste check out, even this early in the process; both are not as exceptional as in the best examples of rolled oolongs but quite decent.



The flavor is complex, hard to pin down.  It might taste like a well toasted rice, which could be interpreted by some as woody, and part of it relates to that old book scent in the dry tea, although really it's closer to old furniture.  I mean that in a good sense; I can see how saying a tea tastes like a dresser or end table might not be a good thing.  It's clean, complex, and well balanced, so it works.  That one unusual part that gives it depth could easily be just a little off and the tea might be horrible (sour, or too woody, or just strange), but in this case it's not, it works really well.  It's nice tea.


For better versions of similar oolongs the complexity remains throughout many infusions as interesting and pleasant transitions continue.  For more average range versions of similar style tea aspects drop out instead of complexity picking up or shifting, and the taste range might drift off being as positive in later rounds.

I went a little longer in the second infusion to get the tea fully opened up and brewing, so this will describe a stronger version (around a half a minute; I'm brewing the tea Gongfu style, in a gaiwan).  I'll try a short infusion (10 to 15 seconds) next and the tea should be unfurled and infusing well enough to show where it is clearly in early rounds.


The one aspect picks up more in woody range, which is nice.  It's not the bright, somewhat edgy woody aspect range that young sheng can sometimes express, which gets interpreted as lots of different things, more a tropical hardwood range instead.  Again there's a trace aspect that drifts just a hint towards nail polish that invokes old furniture, and again that still works out better than it sounds.  The mineral tones that are harder to notice ground that nicely, and the creaminess and fullness help it all make sense and balance.  Some would describe part of the sweetness as floral, maybe along the lines of lavender, versus brighter orchid tones in some other oolongs, and once I think of it that way that's clearly what it is.  It might already be clear in the rest of this but I do leave space for subjective interpretation in tea experience, for "seeing" or interpreting aspects in different ways.

Another way to interpret that roasted effect is through the concept / aspect description of "char."  Usually I wouldn't say much about that unless a tea is roasted a good bit further and does tend to taste like a charcoal.  Darker roasted Anxi Tie Kuan Yin can  be like that, and usually is, or more roasted Wuyi Yancha (Fujian twisted style roasted oolong, from the Wuyishan area instead of Anxi).  It works to say that trace aspect I just described as being chemical in nature really is that char, just a very light version of it, and that sounds a lot better.

Per the input from the owner of my favorite local tea shop, Jip Eu, that aspect is preferred by most Wuyi Yancha tea drinkers in Bangkok.  My sense was that he and I both meant that it's one range of preference that people have, not really a higher or lower form of preference, or invalid, just different.  Cooking a tea to a cinder can cover up flaws, of course, and make it hard to appreciate more subtle aspects in a good tea, so to me it's not necessarily completely neutral as preferences go, but at the same time people can like whatever they happen to like.




Even brewed on the light side that char picks up more in the third infusion, seeming more like char in this infusion.  It still does balance nicely.  It's clean and balanced; there is nothing wrong with it, with the roast seeming to draw out the potential of the tea.  On the more negative side there would be more depth of aspect range if this were better tea, more going on, and the feel would be that little bit fuller, with more aftertaste and overall intensity.  Tea that is good, balanced, and interesting is fine for me; I definitely don't need those extra levels to appreciate one.


All the earlier description still works for this infusion, the balance of them just shifts slightly, and it's as well to not overwork explaining in what way.


I took a long break from the tea, going out to get a haircut, and gave it a relatively short infusion to start back in, a bit under 30 seconds.  It seems about the same.  Often I would just leave off reviewing around this point anyway but since number of infusions and aspect character in later rounds is one sign of tea quality--not a direct indicator; those things can vary independently of quality--I'll give it a little longer and describe how it works out after the half-dozen infusion mark.

darkened by roasting, still a bit green

The flavors are still ok, still clean and decently balanced.  The char picks up a little since the more subtle flavors fade slightly but that doesn't.  I like the tea, but not everyone would.  If someone drank oolongs for the brighter floral aspects, or liked vegetal range, or the intense sweetness some exhibit this isn't on that page.  Even for medium level roasted oolongs some pick up more of a yeast / bread dough aspect, or flavors more like cinnamon or cocoa, or floral tones can still come through in a different form.  "Old furniture" wouldn't be a primary flavor range everyone is looking for.  For a medium quality oolong it's nice (with that sort of grading quite relative to what a person normally experiences), and I can appreciate the novelty of drinking a style of tea I normally don't get around to experiencing.

I bought an inexpensive light rolled Chinese oolong in a restaurant here a month or so back (maybe six weeks now), again a gamble of sorts, for what I think was 100 grams for around $8, so not that much of a gamble.  At that price and with very little information passed on, and from that source, I didn't have high hopes for that tea, but did hope it was decent and slightly interesting.  It wasn't quite as good a quality level tea as this one (which I think cost a little more but in that general range), and was much different in character.  It had some slight but obvious flaws but the general impression was positive, a bit on the creamy side, with decent complexity, and a reasonably "clean" overall effect.

This other Ong Yong Choon flower market shop tea is slightly better tea, but also just different, roasted more.  I guess I'm not as certain as I could be that they're both even the same thing.  They both could be Tie Kuan Yin, or then again it seems possible that other tea is local Jin Xuan instead.  I think this flower market shop tea was sold as Anxi TKY, but those come in a broad range of styles and quality levels, definitely not all a similar thing.


This tea is fading, around 8 infusions in.  It takes a 45 second to a minute infusion just to get the same intensity that a 15 second version had earlier on.  It's still nice though, still not "going off" and transitioning to negative aspect range.  If it was lower quality tea it would've done that before this round.  It seems quite possible for producers to give rolled oolongs like this one a bit more roast time to help mask flaws or transition negative aspects but in this case it was probably more about getting a desired aspect range out of a tea that was decent to begin with.

I went back to a medium length infusion time, a bit limited for where this stands now, around 30 seconds, and it's still nice on the lighter side, and not finished yet.  The feel is still decent and the aftertaste still works, and that balance of aspects hasn't changed much (mild floral, old furniture, creaminess, limited mineral base).  I think this might make a good old-person's tea, related to a Malaysian online friend commenting about how some vaguely related character in Liu Bao isn't for young people, and that younger people can't appreciate bitterness in the same way.  This tea isn't bitter at all, so maybe I'm mixing ideas and he wouldn't make that comparison.

I'll try to stop back and check out a better Shui Xian version.  Those owners speak perfect English (kind of strange, really, but one had lived in the US), and they were nice to visit and talk about tea with.  They mentioned that shop was there for the last 80 years or so, so beyond talking about tea versions they could pass on impressions of how tea culture has changed in Bangkok, and did so to the degree that limited time allowed that day.

Pak Khlong is the flower market, Wat Phra Chetuphon is the long name for Wat Pho (in the upper left), which is closer than it looks.

Finding a tea shop near you

I've been doing Quora answers lately, and a question brought up a good point:  how do you find a good physical tea shop nearby?  Actually it related to one near Gainesville, Florida, but the same answer works more generally.  I'll cite that Quora answer here, and there might not be much need to say more than I did there about a shop search:

Where is a good place to get loose leaf tea in Gainesville, FL?

I have no background with Florida at all (except for visiting Disney World as a child) but this is a good chance to answer the more general question. The short answer: there are great options to buy tea online, and you would get the best teas in a wider range of types at the best value there. Leaving that aside let’s consider how to find local shops.

It goes without saying Google search would work, doesn't it, or some form of yellow pages review, online or the paper version, if those still exist.  Another good starting point is Google Maps, because it’s easy, and something right outside the range of your search term range might turn up (in the greater metro area, or next small town over).  Oddly nothing looked promising to me, for better tea, but that can happen. No need to take my word for it; you can look at Maps results for “tea Gainesville FL” yourself.

I checked what Maps shows for our Chinatown too (in Bangkok):

That's just sad; one cafe, when there are tea shops all over the place.  Jip Eu is my favorite, and Sen Xing Fa is fine for other range (both starred), and there are lost of others.  I did the same search using the Thai character for tea, "cha" (ชา) and that didn't work either.  I guess this is why Google search might not be enough.

Next you can check specific “tea map” resources. I only know of two, and there may be others, but those aren’t a bad place to start. They’re on tea-themed sites, Steepster and Tea Chat. The content at both sites tends to be dated, and it seems unlikely that if a new shop went in over the last 2 to 4 years (when tea interest sort of ramped up) that those references would have been updated. 

Steepster’s link and local shops map:   Tea Rooms near gainesville florida

A lot turns up but at a glance that doesn’t look very promising to me, again guessing from the business names.  A closer review would confirm if my intuition is right, if those are instead probably ok places to pick up a bubble tea, conventional English Breakfast tea, or maybe even a tea and flowers blend, and scones, which aren’t interesting to me.  Scones can be nice but there are bakeries for that sort of thing.

To me this represents two strikes so far. There must be lots of ways to network to the information about local options, and you only need to talk to one right person for them to lay it all out for you, but I’ll only cover one more approach: search Facebook tea groups for leads.

I searched in Tea Drinker’s (one of my favorite FB tea groups, but the one I’m an admin for is International Tea Talk) and turned up just that:

Tea Drinkers  posted by Tom Wood, 10 January: 

Tea enthusiasts-Once again I am holding my 11th Butterfly Tea on my farm near Gainesville, Florida; February 17 from 10 AM to 4PM. My wild plum trees will be blooming and attracting butterflies. I will be serving at least 20 kinds of tea from China, India and elsewhere and displaying teapots, teaware, and tea books. There is no charge for this event…

That person posting the Quora question just missed that event, by less than a month, but Tom Wood knows all about the local tea scene, for sure, and may hold another event later.

As far as looking around different places for where discussions might have occurred there are other FB tea groups, or you could do a discussion section subject search on Steepster or Tea Chat (those sites I mentioned), or the Reddit tea subforum gets a lot of discussion traffic.  I'm an admin for an International themed group, International Tea Talk, a good place to ask about options outside the US, or about producers, and this Gong Fu Cha tea group is for people a little further along the path than most groups, mostly focused on the US.  Area-specific groups are nice, since they'd mention event options, and I'm in one for NYC, Los Angeles, and for Colorado.


The only Reddit discussion that came up said Volta is ok, and I suppose maybe it is:

Tea in Gainesville, FL? • r/tea

It seemed it wouldn’t be from that title, on the Maps and Steepster results as "Volta Coffee, Tea and Chocolate," but also selling two other things isn’t necessarily a bad sign.

Additional references:

Since I am using this for a blog post I went back to check Tea Chat's Tea Map section, to see how it compared (something I only mentioned as an option in that answer):  

Scrolling down it also pulled up one more option, Tea With Lee TEA WITH LEE  (at 944 E Silver Springs Blvd, Ocala, FL; I'm not sure how close that would be).

I might be too quick to judge that all these tea room options don't offer good loose tea; they really could.  If you click on the reviews there in the Tea Map section they don't mention the teas at all, only scones and such, which I don't take as a good sign, but it's hard to interpret.

Obviously a reference like Yelp could also work (the link to the Gainesville results), but the results seem to repeat the earlier ones.  That might work to untangle what places really sell, for example to check if "Kung Fu Tea" is really a Gong Fu brewing oriented place or not (seems not, from the reviews):

Kung fu tea has the hands down best boba tea in Gainesville. I've lived in Taiwan and watched the development of boba tea grow there into an international export. This place is the closest to authentic boba tea you can get.  Other places in Gainesville, its so artificial and the tea is just so unnaturally bitter. Here, I can actually taste the tea. 

So for bubble / boba / Taiwanese milk tea this is the place; good to know.  Trip Advisor would be roughly the same sort of resource as that, also tilted towards cafes over loose tea shops (their results for Gainesville; more of the same).

Reddit's tea subforum also has a Google based tea map; I hadn't realized that when I first posted this.  There aren't that many shops on it, and only one for all of South East Asia.  That would really be the key to any one reference being useful, including a lot of locations and staying up to date.  The format looks really good though, very well thought through.

I can only think of one more trick:  if you could turn up a local tea blog then that person would have done all that sort of work for you, putting way too much thought an effort into researching tea source options and teas.  Google search for "Gainesville tea blog" would probably find one (and I checked; it didn't, really).  

If some local blogger's page was only being read by a few friends and their Mom they would be way back in the search results, probably further than I looked.

Online shopping is really the best resource anyway, and it's nice that the options are as leveled as they are everywhere related to that.  But it is great to stop into a loose tea shop and talk to a knowledgeable staff, and try teas before you buy them, or attend a tasting, and to support local businesses so the options stick around.  It's not really related but I will add a little about online sourcing here.

Completely off the subject; buying tea online

Buying tea online instead of in a local shop is a different subject, but a good option. I wrote a post about some of my favorite online resources not so long ago, but keep in mind I live in Asia (in Thailand), so I’m talking about more direct sourcing in that, how to order from places like China. That sounds like the shipping would be way too high, but not so much, since the tea prices tend to be much lower to offset that.

Note that I'm not saying US based vendors (or vendors in other countries) are generally a bad option; obviously there will be a wide range of better and worse options for tea quality, selection, and value related to domestic options.


That reference, more focused on Asian-based sources:  More direct tea producer sourcing


I'd expect three of the better options I mention in that post would be Yunnan Sourcing,  Farmerleaf, and Hatvala (who offer free worldwide shipping on orders over $30).  Hatvala sells fantastic Vietnamese teas at prices that are really a little too low (probably as well not to mention that to them).  Both those other two sell samples, which isn't a bad way to get started, when new to tea, it's just as well to bear in mind what the per-gram cost for those is, to make sure it still makes sense.  If Hatvala is selling a version of tea for $4-5 for 50 grams or you might also order a comparable tea as a 10 gram sample from another vendor for $3 that shouldn't take much thinking through.  Quality dictates what a tea should cost, and it's hard to only say a little about that; once you actually try the teas you know where that stands.

All three of those vendors would end up selling tea for less than most US online vendors, as long as you bought tea in sufficient volume range, probably at break-even or a better deal when buying around $30 worth.  To be clear on context, I'm probably seeing Farmerleaf as a better than average resource partly because I happen to like Yunnan style teas, pu'ers (sheng and shou), and also Yunnan black teas (Dian Hong).  It does also help that the teas I've tried from them seem to all be of very good quality (which is also true of Hatvala).

Yunnan Sourcing (which doesn't require any description for people well-exposed to tea sources) sells a little of everything for Chinese tea, and a lot for pu'er, so although it might take more judgement and sorting to figure out what's going on a full range of options are there.  One downside:  they sell everything, instead of curating, so all of it might not be great tea.  In the last order I placed I loved three of the teas, disliked one, and was on the fence about another.  The Liu Bao (a hei cha) was really musty from wet storage, so that wasn't just a preference issue, and that Dan Cong black tea was just ok, a bit tart for my taste, so that was just a subjective preference issue.

A second tangent:  other tea related Quora answers

I'll mention a few, since I've been into that for a year or so now too.  I'm also converting one on why not to boil water for tea in a microwave to a post (it's a draft now) so I'll just mention a few others that seem to stand out.  You'd be right if you thought I'm taking this tea discussion, research, and writing hobby a bit far.

What is the history of tea?

Where can I get the highest grade of white tea at a reasonable price?

What kind of tea is typically served at Chinese restaurants? Why is that tea served?

Why do many (apparently) expert tea drinkers throw out their first infusion without drinking it?

Does tea act like a diuretic?

Does tea have as much caffeine as coffee?

What does oolong tea taste like?

What is the difference between oxidation and fermentation in tea manufacturing?

How do I prepare chai?

What should original Thai iced tea taste like?

Jin Guan Yin at the Peace Oriental tea house in Bangkok

I just tried a nice dark roasted oolong at a newish Bangkok tea shop, Peace Oriental tea house.  I'll cut the research and background section a bit short for this since there's already plenty to say about the shop and the tea, but there is an interesting back-story to the tea I'll start with.

 

 

What is Jin Guan Yin

 

At the shop one of the owners said it's a Wuyi Yancha, or rock oolong (nothing so relevant about this particular tea in this general category reference, but it's still interesting).  Fair enough.  One might reasonably assume that this was simply one of the other Chinese names for types of Wuyi Yanchas I had forgotten, but it turns out to not be so, with a closer tie to Tie Guan Yin, as the name implies.  Of course the cultivar type doesn't necessarily tell you how it is processed, there would just be a most typical style.  And different tea plants can be grown in different places, not necessarily just at the Wuyi mountain, although growing location would affect the tea (the terroir idea).

 

 

Different sources say slightly different things, but essentially it's a relatively newer hybrid, "a cultivar that is a cross between Tie Guan Yin and Huangjin Gui," per this Tea Guardian reference.   One other vendor reference seems to contradict that slightly, claiming it's not a conventional hybrid (cross breed of two plant types), but rather a plant that is created by grafting the two plant types. 

 

 

Reminds one of grapes cultivation practices, right?  Unless I'm completely wrong--which really could be the case--the idea is that certain plant types produce better fruit (or in this case, tea leaves), but that root disease resistance also varies by plant type, and it's possible to get the best of both by literally combining two different plants into one.  Seems strange for someone to use "literally" to mean something other than "figuratively" now, right?

 

 

It's interesting to consider how the tea is "supposed to taste" (of course with variation by lots of factors, so always taken with a grain of salt).  The Chinese Tea Company source describes that as:  

 

 

has a savoury scent of roasted vegetables, salted nuts and raisins. Wuyi Jin Guan Yun tastes less smoky than most Wuyi oolongs, but it has a rich mineral character and a mild sweetness of cooked fruits.

 

 

That part about being smoky, seemingly what others typically refer to as char, would seem to relate to processing inputs, not the original plant character.  The Tea Guardian source describe the same "should taste like" aspect as:

 

 

Fresh batches should not smell plumy though, but rather the Minhong type fruity floral and malty, almost cookie type of aroma in the dry leaves.

 

 

Right, like a cookie.  Hopefully like an oatmeal cookie; those are nice.

 

 

Maybe more interesting is that different sources describe it processed as a typical more-roasted oolong, that looks like a Wuyi Yancha, with the dark twisted leaves, or else as a typical lightly oxidized oolong, even rolled into balls, or even as a black tea.  Of course I've tried the same tea plants processed into different teas before, so nothing necessarily wrong with all that, although it does seem possible the one vendor just got the tea description completely wrong in the last case.  The one I tried was darker oolong, still medium in oxidation level, if that makes sense, with the typical twisted leaf appearance and malty / roasted smell.  On to what the tea was like then.

 

 

Tea shop experience and about the tea

 

 
 


Oriental!  Japanese?  Not particularly Thai.

 

 

The shop seemed a little barren, in a post-modern meets zen tea house sense.  It looks like the well lit clothing stores in a mall, lots of wood panels and soft whites, but still a bit cold. 

 

 

No sign of food, a limited menu on the wall, with pictures,  not much else.  Sitting at a small table on a cushion would make sense in Japan,  but isn't familiar in Thailand, except in Japanese restaurants here.  There is teaware on shelves on a wall back near a small tea bar, which of course they sell.

 

 

As might occur in a high end Bangkok mall I had some sticker shock to overcome prior to enjoying any tea.  Mid-range teas cost around 300 baht per teapot (US $10), with the "Legendaries" section--eg. Rou Gui--at double that, 650 / $20+.  Even for ordering the less expensive tea it's as well my wife doesn't read this blog.

 

 

 

There is a Buddha on a high shelf.  That's not common here in Thailand.  Chinese people put different small shrines in businesses, and spirit houses outside, quite literally a place for local spirits to live, but Thais would ordinarily only put the Buddha statue in a separate prayer room in the home.  It's not a violation of Thai culture, as wearing a Buddha image on a t-shirt sort of is, but not typical.

 

 

The server presented the tea in a small pot, along with a large thermous, and gave it an initial rinse without asking.  Of course that seemed odd, really a judgment call, but I'll not dwell on it here. 

 

 

He helped brew the first infusion as well, a short one, explaining they recommended three infusions brewed at around 8 seconds, then longer to preference, with the water temperature at 90 C (that part wasn't variable; the thermos was already there). 

 

 

The brewed tea itself had a great smell, roasted malty tones, caramel,  fruit components not so easy to separate, but one could imagine the dozen-component review one sees actually making sense.  Maybe a little plum as a front note, not so much wood as in some roasted oolongs, with a great floral scent and trace of unusual spice I've experienced in a rou gui before.  The roast was definitely medium, not light as in other oolong types, but without any char effect darker roasts can lead to.

 

 

The second infusion I brewed for about that long, maybe a couple extra seconds before I finished pouring it out, still slightly stronger.  The sweet and subtle plum element transitioned to a stronger earthier flavor, towards a light wood, as usual as one would imagine mahogany brewing (or something such; people don't really brew or eat wood).  A bit of spice kicks in as the sweet and fruitiness transitions, something like cardamon,  but only a trace.

 

 

I brewed the third infusion quickly, maybe only 6 seconds,  to see what that slightly longer brewing time changed before the flavors shifted further.  The third infusion was slightly better weaker, subtle, but it allowed the sweetness to shine, back to more plum and less wood. 

 

 

When I tried a better rou gui in the past I couldn't capture one flavor component, likely floral, but an unfamiliar version of it, and possibly a different scent altogether, some obscure sweet herb, a scent like perfume.  There is something similar and unfamiliar in this tea.

 

 

 

The fourth infusion is not transitioning much but the flavor is lightening.  I get the impression it will fade to earthier as I brew longer to keep going, but I'll see.

 

 

The tea is nice.  But maybe I'm just not used to tea shops, and would prefer something homier, as we saw in Seoul on the last visit, real wood-paneled environments with a different feel to them.  I'm sure some people would feel very at home here, Thais raised in high end malls.

 

 

Brewing the next infusion a little longer did work out well.  It's reminding me a little of sassafras now, from a distant memory of playing with plants, not from actually trying a tea made from those roots.  I guess saying that I grew up in the country, in a rural area, sort of doesn't completely explain that.  I suppose I might have just been a strange kid, but smelling random plants and damming up streams and all the rest seemed natural enough then.  When hiking in Colorado as an adult that transitioned to huffing on crushed sage leaves and pine needles while hiking.   Maybe it was something like that all along, sasafrass, but more pronounced now, so easier to pick out.

 

 

 

I eventually lost track of infusions.  That sweet herbal note stayed pronounced due to using longer brewing times, and the tea kept going, but the complexity diminished. 

 

 

More about the shop

 

 

According to one of the owners about the decoration and shop concept was supposed to be a neutral Oriental environment, not Japanese, as it sort of came across.  The tea theme changes over time, in the first "menu" more Japanese, now shifted to Chinese oolongs, with the exception of a matcha section.  Of course all the teas are farm-sourced by them (high quality, organic, hand crafted, etc.).  That tea was pretty good; definitely not just hype. 

 

 

They also sold loose teas; "take away."  The cost of around 1000 baht / $30 US per 50 grams might well have been justified by the quality but I didn't buy any.  Since I keep trying samples from different places, and have other tea source options in China to get to ordering from, it's normal for me to pass on the full-retail purchases like that, but for Bangkok upper-middle-class that should seem reasonable.  From my limited experiences with buying tea in China you really do tend to pay for better grades there, too.  For me it's nice to keep trying different teas rather than just drink the best of what I like so really nice to have tried this one.