howdy,

i've heard tea is grown in the chiang rai area.

i'm looking to buy a "round" of tea (see photo), not loose leaves.

can anyone recommend a place to start looking

the picture looks like chinese black tea.

I've only seen thai tea ( the kind used with sugar and milk) in loose form.

the picture looks like chinese black tea.

I've only seen thai tea ( the kind used with sugar and milk) in loose form.

those round harden tea block are mostly from china made, compressed and dried, some keep for many year, which only expert will know about it. not cheap but not that expensive also.

normally if you mention thai tea, they will think it's the red thai tea which can be found everywhere.

for this type of round block tea, only sold in specialist tea shop and those branded dept shop (maybe in paragon)

the picture is chinese tea. it's just an example.

lower level of huaykuai mall has a small tea shop with two types of round biscuit.

one is pu'er tea from yunnan province. (8 years old, 357 gram, 1000 baht).

the other is made of tea grown near chiang rai. (3 years old, 357 gram, 2500 baht)

a bit expensive as it's in a special package, labeled for his 80th birthday.

nice, but i want tea for drinking, not for displaying.

in that case, a brick would do just as well.

I drink the Thai teas available in the various super markets. Some are cheap and some are not. Why is the "brick" tea better? I'm naive about tea, among other things.

The picture show Pu'er compressed tea from Yunnan in China. A company called Yunnan Sourcing offers a good selection of it by mail order. I don't think anyone in Mae Salong (Chiang Rai's tea town) is compressing their tea, which is usually the small leafed variety, not the same type of tea used to make Pu'er.