Monye Tea

We got tired of Hanoi pretty quickly. It was one of the roughest places we’ve ever traveled to. Thousands of motorbikes constantly pour through the streets, making it almost impossible to cross the road. The sidewalks are mostly full, but not with pedestrians. Shop owners and others have dragged their rustic stoves and pots and pans out onto these pedestrian walkways and begin their days cooking and serving food right from the sidewalks. So it’s frustrating not being able to walk on the side of the streets or on the sidewalks. This goes on well into the night. The fair offered here is nothing I could ever eat – giant eels, horseshoe crabs, snakes, dogs (rumor), basically anything with its back to the sun is up for grabs here. In one section of the country even the monkeys are not safe. The attendant at the monkey sanctuary we visited told us people still hunt monkeys deep in the forest for ancient ritualistic consumption of monkey brains and glands. 

We quickly had enough of the city, especially with our experience with Bia Hoi – or fresh beer. It’s legendary in Hanoi. Brewed every day and consumed within 24 hours, it’s a part of the culture and on most tourists to-try lists. It was around 7 PM one night, the weather was warm, and we were walking around and Laurie started to inquire about Bia Hoi. We didn’t have much luck. Sold out, sold out, was what we kept hearing. On a dark, narrower, less busy street, an old lady responded to our request by looking around as if to see if the coast was clear, and drew us into a small alleyway. You want Bia Hoi, she asked? We said yes. She pulled out 2 filthy tiny plastic stools for us to squat on. We sat and waited. She grabbed 2 glasses that were probably rinsed in a horrible pot of soapy dirty water that had been sitting on the sidewalk all day, and handed us our first, and last, Bia Hoi. It wasn’t too bad as far as draft style beer goes. We sucked it down, paid her hardly anything for it, and resumed our walk, for what was supposed to be our last night out in Hanoi. I remember stopping at a jazz club and seeing a great small combo play before we retired for the night.

By 2 AM Laurie was really sick. I remained motionless in bed while she vomited every 30 minutes or so, watching myself very carefully knowing that I could be next, any minute now. Needless to say our plans to head North toward Sapa, a rice field laden countryside, were put on hold. We holed up in a nearby Hilton hotel for the next 3 nights. Laurie slept as I watched TV, ordered pizza from room service, and took baths for 3 days. The cost of staying 3 days at the Hilton was about 15 days of our budgeted lodging money. But we could make it up in Sapa where we’d stay with local families, rice farmers, for just a few bucks a night. I was certain that there would be something for us to eat there, rice at the very least.

The cool thing about Vietnam is the transportation. It’s not like the ultra modern, high speed trains, subways and monorails of Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur. Vietnam has something unique. I go online and type in that I wish to go from Hanoi to Sapa and tons of private bus options pop up. I book it online and the next day, at the exact time they say they’re going to pick you up, they pick you up. And it’s super affordable. Some of the buses are really nice and some are just OK. Anyway, a young gentleman walks into the lobby of the Hilton, looks at me, and says Mr. David, please let’s go. He grabbed our backpacks, threw them on the bus, and we’re off to the next hotel or guesthouse to pick up the next traveler and on the road to Sapa in no time. 

The countryside heading North was very scenic. Rice field terraces, small mountains rising up in the distance and winding roads led us to today’s destination. Tons of greenery everywhere. The bus dropped us at our destination and we were led to a modest guesthouse where we’d stay for the night. Like a lot of our trip, we didn’t have a definite plan. If we liked an area we could stay longer, if we didn’t we could move on sooner. The only deadline we had was a flight from Hanoi to Danang in a few weeks. 

We hiked around the ricefields and soaked up the beautiful scenery. This was a welcome respite from the hectic pace of Hanoi. We commented to our hosts about how beautiful we found this area. They told us if we hiked the scenery here we should consider traveling further North, where the surroundings were even more majestic. On the way back to our accommodations I struck up a conversation with a man who was working on motorbikes in front of his home. He told me that he refurbishes old bikes from the 1970’s and rents them out to tourists. He waved me to follow him and came around the side of his home where we laid our eyes on a shiny, seemingly brand new, Honda 150 from 1976. It was in mint condition. I’ve rented motorbikes in India and Indonesia before, but nothing as cool as this. Lots of chrome, colorful paint and a super cool vibe. He quoted me a price of about $4 a day which is even less expensive than India or Bali. Since I wasn’t planning on renting a bike and didn’t know the area I was hesitant to take him up on the offer. He told me it wouldn’t be a problem. He had a family about 50 KM north of here. There was only 1 paved road heading north. We could not get lost. His brother in law, who had a small tea plantation, would recognize the bike and put us up for the night. In the morning we fueled up, packed a small day pack and headed North. All we had to do was look for the tea growing on the right hand side of the road about 90 minutes north of here.

The ride was amazing. Sometimes the road rose up and down hills revealing scenery that forced us to stop and take photos. Other times the road became enclosed in a jungle-like tunnel of lush green, thick forests. We did have a map with us and the few times I did look at it I made a mental note that we weren’t very far from the Chinese border. With all the stops we made along the way it took us close to 3 hours to finally see the tea growing to our right. We pulled down a dirt path heading toward a large structure, possibly the tea processing building. When we pulled up a small man approached us, smiling from ear to ear. I introduced myself even though he already knew who we were and why we were there. He invited us to follow him around the back of the building where we parked the bike and followed him further down another dirt path to his home. After introducing us to his wife and 3 children we sat down for lunch. Rice, with some boiled root vegetables we had never seen, some sort of fluffy white rice pancakes dusted with a spicy bright orange powder, a sweet rice-yogurt dessert, and some sort of bread made from rice. After this great lunch we rested for a while and about mid afternoon he led us for a walk through his tea fields. 

After our tour he invited us into the tea production building where we were led to a room upstairs. We sat on the floor in a circle around a thick, rustic, wood carved table. On the table was a large tray with ornate oriental characters carved into it, probably Chinese, not Vietnamese. The characters were hand painted in gold. There was a dark maroon clay teapot and half a dozen small gray cups with no handles which appeared to be handmade, ceramic pottery maybe. His wife handed him a small hand carved wooden box. He pulled out what looked to be a hunk of super compressed weed. Placing it in the teapot, he then poured hot water over it and let it steep for a minute or so while he poured a little hot water into each of the cups. Next he poured some tea into the cups until the tea pot was empty. I was eager to smell the tea, but when I reached for the cup nearest to me, he held up his hand and motioned for me to wait. Slowly he took each cup with the hot water and the tea and dumped them all into a large bowl. Odd I thought. He heated up another pot of water and poured that into the teapot. After a few minutes he once again filled the cups. This was all done in silence, like some sort of ritual or meditation. Then he motioned for us to drink.

I smelled the tea and it was like no other tea I had ever smelled. There were hints of spinach and beetroot, though the color of the tea was neither green nor red. The taste was hard to describe, but extremely pleasant. We sat through 3 rounds of this, all in silence. Each round the tea became more and more mellow. I wondered about the caffeine effect but felt no jitters. I did have a heightened sense of focus and clarity. 

I told him how much I was enjoying the tea. It tasted great and was a pleasant experience after the fact. I finally told him that he grows the best tea ever. Well, he laughed, then told me it was not his tea and he did not grow it here. It was a special tea, for special guests. Over 30 years old. Very expensive and extremely hard to get. Monye Tea. It comes from a place not too far from here, right close to the Chinese border. 

I guess I didn’t realize we were that far north.

Monye Tea grows on an inaccessible cliffside right near Vietnam’s border with China. Three generations of this one family live at the base of the cliff. They have trained a monkey to climb the treacherous cliffs and pick the rare tea leaves and bring them back down. The local politician gets most of the tea. But a little bit makes it out and lands right here, right now, right where we are today. And it was delicious. And yes I’ll make you a cup of tea if you visit.