Will that be BOP or OP?

our amazing visit to Sri Lanka is almost over. We barely scratched the surface of this wonderful island, and yet we feel overwhelmed. In a word, it was "elefantastic (soon to appear in Wikipedia)!

This island has been called by many names -- the gem of the Indian Ocean, the land of elephants, the resting place of the tooth relic. In addition to those, we will also think of it as the land of tea.

Of course, we have not been to China, and we are about to see the plantations in India, but there was nothing more breathtaking as to see the hillsides with rolling tea fields.

As tea lovers, Cintra and I took a special interest in this aspect of our vacation. To be clear, we are not connoisseurs. We mostly use tea bags and generally drink what is available in the grocery store (on sale).

Of late, we have acquired some special herbal teas and flavored tes. We enjoy flowering tea in the clear teapot andd I enjoy loose tea from a Brewt.

But we soon found out we really know nothing about tea. I had no idea there were so many types of tea and so many grades. If you haven't done so, you must visit a tea plantation if or when you travel to Asia.

On our visit to the tea factory high in the mountains of southern Sri Lanka, we were first shown the wilting, then the sifting and crushing. We missed the picking because we were tehre on a Sunday, a day off for pickers and factory workers.

Also, they do not do flavoring at that plant. So the fruit flavored and Earl Grey and others are made elsewhere.

But we learned about the highest grade called Pekoe, or you can have orange pekoe (OP) or broken orange pekoe (BOP) or broken orange pekoe flowery (BOP F), and so on.

So back in Colombo we found ourselves browsing through the tea sections of stores. There we found the shelves sorted by the grades as well as tea plantations. And plantations could make a difference because climate and elevation are factors too. This was as complicated as choosing wines!

We tried to order tea - just ordinary black tea - wherever we went. In a country where English is not a first language, ordering tea the way we like it is not easy.1"

Here is a typical scenario. We ask the server for tea. He (usually a man) is about to fill our order and we stop him. "Wait," we say, "we want it with no sugar. no milk, and very weak."

Guess what. None of those translate into Sinhalese or Tamil. He looks at us puzzled. We repeat, this time with dramatic hand gestures. And he replies, :no sugar, no milk." We confirm and add, "very weak." He confirms in return.

Moments later, he arrives with a tray containing two tea cups with milky tea, and a bowl of sugar. "We do not want milk," we tried to explain. He has a confused, pained look, and takes it back to the kitchen. After a while, he shows up with tea - no milk, no sugar. We drink it and gasp. "Oh that is way too strong!" Oh the poor waiter. So we ask for hot water and dilute our tea.

This is repeated in every place we travel. Yesterday, the guy in Orbits in Majestic Centre mall food court, after not understanding my order, said, "Oh you want black tea!" So I will try that, although that is not exactly what I want.

We look forward to one last outing when we will visit Upali's cinnamon plantation and the old Dutch fort of Galle.

Please join us.