WHY GO NOW

We go in December, when the air is cold and clear and the cherry trees are starting to flower.

Doi Mae Salong is a mountain town north of Chiang Rai, settled by a Yunnanese community, with tea on the hills all around it.

December is the cool season here. The mornings are cold and can be misty, the days are clear, and from about the middle of the month the wild cherry trees start to flower.

It is not the picking season. Most of the tea is picked from February to October, and the bushes rest in winter. So the tea morning is about the gardens, how the leaf is made and how it tastes, with a producer to explain.

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WHAT WE HANDLE

The route

Mae Salong is about an hour and a half from Chiang Rai airport, the last part on a winding mountain road.

We drive it in daylight both ways, with a professional driver.

The tea

Tea gardens are easy to look at from the road.

We arrange time with a tea producer, someone who can walk you through the gardens and explain what happens to the leaves, then a tasting.

The food

Yunnanese food is one of the best reasons to be in Mae Salong. Some meals are together at places our local partner knows, so you are not guessing from a menu.

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^{THE EXPERIENCE}

Tea is one morning of the weekend, not all of it.

That morning is in the tea gardens with a producer, seeing how the leaf is grown and made, followed by a tasting.

Around it: Yunnanese food, mountain views, the story of how a Yunnanese community came to settle here, and time to wander the town on your own.

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^{WHO THIS IS FOR}

This is for you if you like tea and a cool weekend in a mountain town sounds good.

This is not a tea course. It is a weekend in Mae Salong, with tea as the reason everyone came.

If that sounds like your kind of weekend, add your name.

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^{DATES DON'T WORK?}

Register anyway and tell us when you could go. If enough people ask for the same dates, we add a trip for them.

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