Thailand

Located between the Indian Ocean in the West and the Pacific in the East, Thailand borders on Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia in its North as well as Malaysia in the South. Tea cultivation takes place in the north of the country, at altitudes above 1,000 m.

For some decades now, tea has been cultivated here by various ethnic groups, also called “hill tribes”, as well as Chinese immigrants who have found their way into these mountainous regions during the chaos of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and have brought with them their century old knowhow of tea. The origin of the various hill tribes is unknown; in most cases they are nomads who have settled there over the centuries.

Since the 1980s, tea cultivation was pushed and financially accelerated by the current King Bhumibo with the goal to turn the farmers and their families away from the cultivation of opium and help them build a secure future income. As a supporting measure, selected tea plants of fi rst rate were imported from Taiwan in the 1990s and integrated in teagardens in even the most remote mountain villages.

Thailand is still a young tea country, but it will surely soon make a lasting impression on the tea world map.


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