Posting Tesco tea bags to Thailand from UK?

[cliveshep]

I read that it is forbidden to import tea into Thailand but black tea-bags are not available here any more ever since the Traitor Tesco sold out to the heathen Lotus's. I drove round all the Tesco branches buying up their Red Label tea bags while still on the shelves but now - no more.

 

So Tesco managed to sell their Red Label tea-bags from Ireland here, can I have some sourced in the UK and posted here for my personal use? Covid plus Prayut plus Anutin have scuppered my kids chances of coming anytime soon with tea bags in their luggage for Dad.  I am 76, don't have a low-yield nuke device to deliver to Government house as a welcome gift to Prayut and his ghastly mates so have to live sort of within their rules!

 

So - can I get some sent snail-mail (by ship cheaply?) to me, like maybe small packets of 480 bags, 1.5kg max without the customs thieves confiscating them? Apparently postage by sea is many times cheaper than by air from the UK and that makes it viable financially. 

[Bangkokhatter]

Why don't you just order online inside of Thailand ?

 

Siambury's in partnership with expat foods.com have Yorkshire, PG and Tetley available at reasonable prices. If you combine your order with some other western food delights, delivery cost is not too bad.

[Dmaxdan]

There are lots of places other than Tesco to buy English style tea bags here. Small, independent shops specializing in western food.

If you let us know roughly where you are located then someone will be able to point you in the right direction of a local shop.

 

Also they are readily available online from various sellers on Lazada. The seller Food Variety being a favorite of many expats.

 

[Denim]

Lazada has Typhoo and PG Tips

 

https://www.lazada.co.th/food-variety/?from=wangpu&langFlag=en&page=6&pageTypeId=2&q=All-Products

 

 

[scubascuba3]

No way i would order from UK, Lazada is good or try Siam Expat Foods, Pattaya, good choice of tea, not sure if they deliver

Edited April 27, 2022 by scubascuba3

[proton]

Is it true taking tea into Thailand is illegal?

[cliveshep]

We are in Khlong Sam Wa 10km NNE of Minburi.

 

Found several ads on Lazada for Ty-Phoo at fairly reasonable prices - every one out of stock. Those with UNREASONABLE prices got stock but apparently you don't get free gold pieces of eight with the orders. There is a massive mark-up, in the UK it's £5 a box of 480, if post by sea was available the price still beats anything of the ex-pat rip-off sellers here.

 

I know Ty-Phoo and PG tips are pretty close in flavour to the cheap Red Label but I'm no connoisseur of teas, just a creature of habit. Tea that tastes like creosote does does not appeal so those 3 seem ok. Twinings and Tetley by comparison as like dirty water to me. I suspect Yorkshire tea falls into the creosote category but I have never actually tried it so am open to advice there.

 

I'm English to the bone, and what's more ex construction so I am pretty fixed in my tea drinking ways. Dip your tin cup in a galvanised bucket on the fire and add milk and sugar was where I started, with Irish labourers fighting over whose bacon was written O'Reilly and whose written O'Leary because the indelible pencil had smudged on the rashers in the back ground. Twee designer brews like Twinings not allowed! Chuck a handful of black Co-op loose tea in the bucket and a piece of wood to attract the ash.

 

Paying 3 times as much here hurts I'll tell you which is why I was thinking about getting my kids to ship some if possible!

[cliveshep]

8 minutes ago, proton said:

Is it true taking tea into Thailand is illegal?

That is what I read.

 

[BangkokAlan]

1. Tops Market have Waitrose teabags which are very good and half the price of PG tips

[PETERTHEEATER]

A deterrent to mailing them is having to write the recipient's address on all those little labels....... ????

[stat]

I would like to "import" tea as well. Flavored green tea. What can go wrong in the worst case? They confiscate the tea. Maybe give it a try.

[BritManToo]

Siamburi is selling Typhoo One Cup, 300 bag pack for 219bht.

https://www.lazada.co.th/products/i3333127524-s12372137276.html

[BritManToo]

1 hour ago, cliveshep said:

Found several ads on Lazada for Ty-Phoo at fairly reasonable prices - every one out of stock. Those with UNREASONABLE prices got stock but apparently you don't get free gold pieces of eight with the orders. There is a massive mark-up, in the UK it's £5 a box of 480, if post by sea was available the price still beats anything of the ex-pat rip-off sellers here.

Just bought 2 x300 bags from Siamburi on the link above.

500bht delivered.

[ivor bigun]

just stick em in a packet send em royal mail and ,they will arrive ,put on the packet its something else .

[cliveshep]

3 minutes ago, ivor bigun said:

just stick em in a packet send em royal mail and ,they will arrive ,put on the packet its something else .

That would work BUT the cost of Royal Mail is enough to buy a Chinese Submarine (without engines of course) for Prayut! If I  could get it sent by sea cheaply by Royal Mail without customs opening it then fine. Sea shipping is relatively cheap, it's using the Wright Brothers that is expensive!

[Maybole]

Last year my brother bought me 2x250gm packets ie 1/2kg, of Morrisons Premium loose tea and sent it from Glasgow. At my insistence he sent it sea mail And, it still arrived in 4! days.

The total cost was 413 Baht.

The only loose European style tea that I could find in Chiangmai was Twinings Breakfast tea @ 323! Baht per 125gm tin.

Even if it  had come by sea mail it would have been worth it.

It was clearly marked as tea and valued @ £2.50. Customs ignored it.

[richard_smith237]

Op has to be in the middle of nowhere if the only place he could find tea before was in Tesco’s. 
 

Best option is Op gives his location.

 Some nearby May be able to direct him or a willing poster could Kerry express him some! 

[Denim]

Living in Thailand.

 

Is it really worth the sacrifices.

 

Can't easily get tea. Can't easily get sausages. Peasants don't speak English. Excessively hot.

 

Sigh

 

Its a trade off I guess. Nice women and cheap living vs the above.

 

Tough choice .

[freedomnow]

...just get them off lazada for frik's sake.

[cliveshep]

In the UK I had a speed camera on the verge outside my house, there were 3 more in my road. Yorktown Road, Sandhurst, Berks by the Royal Military Academy. Going to work via M3 and M25 every day cameras on every gantry, police everywhere in patrol cars, people willing and waiting to be offended about something, rigid motoring laws, EU regs in my work and H & S destroying my industry, Thailand in all those freedoms is so much better. Sure the roads are often more hole than road, driving quality is appalling, police mostly conspicuous by their absence - by comparison with the UK that's a good thing.

 

It's bloody hot, cost of living is going up, the girls are gorgeous, well, many of them and my wife is one of those, food is pretty good, and life is free of taxes and those miserable petty restrictions in almost every aspect of life in the UK, whether Local Council or central Government rules we were chronically over-regulated. Here - mostly no one gives a toss.

 

The only downside - the lack of good old Tesco Red Label value tea-bags!

 

[cliveshep]

12 minutes ago, Denim said:

Living in Thailand.

 

Is it really worth the sacrifices.

 

Can't easily get tea. Can't easily get sausages. Peasants don't speak English. Excessively hot.

 

Sigh

 

Its a trade off I guess. Nice women and cheap living vs the above.

 

Tough choice .

Make your own sausages - we do and they're yummy plus the makings are not expensive. The only faff is cleaning the intestines if you buy animal ones but there are synthetic edible ones. We make our own bread, and pizza, mix our own taco and chilli-con spice mixes from ingredients we buy from Lazada, cost about a 10th of what Schwartz charged in the UK stores for a packet for 1/4 kg of our home made. We make our own Boursin cheese - dead easy to do BUT cannot get unmentionable tea bags! Don't want Twinings cat's <deleted>, and those that are available are at rip-off prices we simply won't pay.

 

Not speaking Thai and they not speaking English is a pain, but the art of Mime is usually sufficient to get by.

[cliveshep]

36 minutes ago, Maybole said:

Last year my brother bought me 2x250gm packets ie 1/2kg, of Morrisons Premium loose tea and sent it from Glasgow. At my insistence he sent it sea mail And, it still arrived in 4! days.

The total cost was 413 Baht.

The only loose European style tea that I could find in Chiangmai was Twinings Breakfast tea @ 323! Baht per 125gm tin.

Even if it  had come by sea mail it would have been worth it.

It was clearly marked as tea and valued @ £2.50. Customs ignored it.

Now THAT is the most informative post so far, thank you. Think I'll get my kids to buy some tea bags and post them and see what happens.

[mancub]

On 4/27/2022 at 2:23 PM, PETERTHEEATER said:

A deterrent to mailing them is having to write the recipient's address on all those little labels....... ????

Indeed. and even the fittest pigeon can only carry one on each leg !

[scubascuba3]

9 hours ago, Denim said:

Living in Thailand.

 

Is it really worth the sacrifices.

 

Can't easily get tea. Can't easily get sausages. Peasants don't speak English. Excessively hot.

 

Sigh

 

Its a trade off I guess. Nice women and cheap living vs the above.

 

Tough choice .

Depends where you live, good sausages available in Pattaya area

[Delight]

Good selection of tea and many other items-Britshop

https://britishop.com/

[Whale]

If in Minburi just have a trip to Bangkok. All of the supermarkets sell "British" tea. I settled on Liptons yellow because its the cheapest.

[In Full Agreement]

On 4/27/2022 at 12:53 PM, cliveshep said:

I drove round all the Tesco branches buying up their Red Label tea bags while still on the shelves but now - no more.

 

So you're the one that scarfed them all up?    ????

 

 

"So - can I get some sent snail-mail (by ship cheaply?) to me, like maybe small packets of 480 bags, 1.5kg max without the customs thieves confiscating them? Apparently postage by sea is many times cheaper than by air from the UK and that makes it viable financially. "

 

How many bags do you use a day?       I was once told by a customs agent they could tax the air inside an empty box if they so chose to do.

 

 

[norfolkandchance]

10 hours ago, cliveshep said:

Make your own sausages - we do and they're yummy plus the makings are not expensive. The only faff is cleaning the intestines if you buy animal ones but there are synthetic edible ones. We make our own bread, and pizza, mix our own taco and chilli-con spice mixes from ingredients we buy from Lazada, cost about a 10th of what Schwartz charged in the UK stores for a packet for 1/4 kg of our home made. We make our own Boursin cheese - dead easy to do BUT cannot get unmentionable tea bags! Don't want Twinings cat's <deleted>, and those that are available are at rip-off prices we simply won't pay.

 

Not speaking Thai and they not speaking English is a pain, but the art of Mime is usually sufficient to get by.

I bought a large packet of prepared and cleaned pigs casing from Lazada a year ago. Believed they came fromChina. Good product. Just store them in salted water in the fridge. I’m still using them.

Good for Black puddings as well but not for the feint hearted. Cheers

 

[scubascuba3]

2 hours ago, Whale said:

If in Minburi just have a trip to Bangkok. All of the supermarkets sell "British" tea. I settled on Liptons yellow because its the cheapest.

Come on, raise your standards, lipton yellow is about the worse which you'll realise when you buy the brit teabags

[xylophone]

3 hours ago, Delight said:

Good selection of tea and many other items-Britshop

https://britishop.com/

Fabulous.....many thanks for the link; will be on to that shortly!