The other was because both of our flight options to Southeast Asia stopped in Taipei.

In any case, we were not going to miss the opportunity to experience Taiwan’s most famous (and expensive) tea. The flavour – rich, crisp, yet delicate – is perhaps only eclipsed by the tasting ceremony that all purveyors go through before you would buy any tea. Nobody who knows anything about tea buys tea in Taiwan without a tasting.

Pouring tea from pot into serving pitcher

So it was with great pleasure that we found ourselves high atop Alishan, one of the most famous mountains and top tea-growing mountains in Taiwan. We were even more thrilled to find Lian Xing Tea Shop, and better still, with our new friends Janet and Sean to share tea with us. And translate.

Lian Xing Tea Shop

High mountain tea is grown at over 1200 metres of elevation, although the higher the tea was grown the more desirable it is. The tea we tasted on that chilly night in January was a brand new winter harvest (winter’s cooler temperatures yield more succulent leaves; spring harvests are more floral), grown at 1700+ metres. It is a variety of oolong, but the effect of growing at high elevation – cooler temperatures, clean air and an abundance of mist – changes the character from other oolongs grown at lower elevations. The result is a tea that is very crisp, yet it has a creaminess, a richness, that gives this tea remarkable complexity.

Pouring hot water into the tea leaves

All high mountain tea has whole leaves that are left intact. The better teas, though, do all of the picking by hand. The resulting harvest includes multiple tea leaves still attached to a stem or bud. When a machine harvests the tea, you get a lot of individual leaves. This makes a big difference to connoisseurs.

Used tea leaves, unfurled

The tea is made in small batches in a very small pot by western tea sensibilities. Usually, the pot sits in another dish that has hot water in it, which insulates the brewing pot. After brewing, the tea is poured into a serving pitcher, which serves two purposes. One is that it is easier to pour into the small teacups from the serving pitcher. The other is that the tea mixes, which results in uniform servings. The tea cups are also very small, sort of large thimbles. All of these pieces are typically beautiful, and often intricately designed or painted.

Wang Hui-Chuan conducting our tea tasting in Taipei at the Alishan Rinchu Store

The shop owners we worked with were all wonderful people who clearly loved tea and what they did. High atop Alishan we found Tu Lin Che running the Lian Xing Tea Shop and she conducted the whole tasting with a big smile on her face, even though it was the end of what was probably a long day. Perhaps it was because she doesn’t see a lot of white people come through with a passion for her tea, or maybe she was putting on an act for the sake of business. rIAm’s theory is that there were preservatives in the cool, crisp and fresh mountain air. Maybe it was all of those things, but it was obvious Tu Lin Che loved her tea, and I think she loves every chance she has to do a tasting.

Tu Lin Che pours the hot water onto the tea leaves

In addition to the elevation, weather and growing season, the flavour of the tea is affected by the processing methods. Based on grower preference, the elevation of the tea, or to satisfy a variety of tastes, different amounts of oxidation and roasting take place. The process begins by leaving the tea in the sun to dry. After initial drying, the tea is put into large drums and bruised slightly, in order to begin the oxidation. Then the leaves are coaxed into curling up into tight balls (seemingly by magic, but I’m assured there is a method). This process can be repeated several times. Typically, the amount of oxidation is fairly low in order to retain the natural crisp flavour of the tea, but some people enjoy the flavours of different amount of oxidation, and we tried some with 20 and even 40 percent oxidation.

Another feature of the high mountain tea is that it is meant to be brewed multiple times, and all tastings continue through until the tea has been fully experienced. Each brewing takes a bit longer and the character of the tea changes over time. Some people have favourite brew numbers; rIAm, for example, came to really enjoy the second and third tastings, finding the first was too crisp for her liking. The process provides ample time to learn a lot about the tea and the person serving the tea. Of course, for the vendor, it also give them lots of time to make their sales pitch (which was never aggressive).

This great tea can be found in North America; visit tea shops in your Chinatown, but know that it often isn’t easy and isn’t cheap (even in Taiwan). Often, like in Taiwan, it can be difficult to converse in English. It helps quite a bit if you can recognize certain Mandarin or Taiwanese characters (especially the ones for “high,” “mountain,” and “tea”), but unless you really know your stuff, it will be difficult to know the difference between a 300g bag that is $10 from one that is $40 from one that is $80 (note that in Taiwan, good stuff up on the mountain can be $25-$40 for 300g). This makes it likely that the $10 bag is bad quality or a fake coming from China; the $80 bag is probably the real deal, but still, are you getting your money’s worth?

If you’re not sure where to go, your local TenRen Tea Shop, is a good start. Be very clear about what you want and make sure you do a tasting before buying because then, at worst, you buy a tea you like.

The best place outside Taiwan I’ve been to is in San Francisco, the Red Blossom Tea Company (”Formosa Oolong” link for high mountain tea), and oh boy it is well worth a visit. There will be no language barrier, and the store is as elegant as the ones in Taiwan. They have a wonderful selection of teas from around the world, and excellent teaware, but their knowledge and selection of high mountain tea is unrivaled because the owner visits Taiwan – and the tea plantations – in order to buy for the store. Go, taste, buy, enjoy and learn more than you knew there was to learn. Or simply buy online.

Of course, you could also just hop the next flight to Taipei, get on board the extremely efficient intercity train to Chiayi, take the gorgeous narrow gauge train up Alishan (past tea fields), and then find the beautiful Tu Lin Che at her tea shop. I do recommend this option. Afterward, of course, find yourself back in Taipei and visit the Alishan Rinchu Tea Store (pick up some free samples in Alishan from the tea shop of the same name, if you like) where Wang Hui Chuan will navigate your way through an impressive selection of wonderful tea.

Tu Lin Che and her sister in their tea shop atop Alishan Mountain. If they could, I’m sure they’d say “Happy Drinking!”

We had to get a YouTube account! So it is with great pleasure that I introduce you to the new pastabroccoli. The one that talks to you and provides moving pictures! Yes, over at YouTube, you can find us under pastabroccoli.

So what does this mean for you?

Discover when to walk – or run – through a Taipei crosswalk!

Visit an Indian wedding celebration!

Test your knowledge of Laotian cuts of meat!

Be glad you can’t smell the durian as jft tastes this SE Asian delicacy!

And so much more!

We hope to feature more of our videos from Asia in this space, but if you’ve got the itch, go check out our YouTube channel for yourself. It’s commercial-free TV!

And check your local listings for fresh content; we’ll keep filming videos in North America.

We were on flights operated by Southwest Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Lao Airlines, Air Asia, Thai Airways, Aeroflot and British Airways. We traveled by bus, train, boat, motorcycle, car, tractor and elephant. And, I’m sure you’ll be shocked to know, through it all we had our trusty Leica C-Lux and Canon Rebel XTi (18-200mm and 50mm lenses) digital cameras.

As you know, our year was extremely well documented with photographs:

30.1 GB, or 14,423 photos, all from Asia (and our brief stop in Los Angeles)
2.22 GB, or 974 photos while in Toronto and Chicago last summer
3.08 GB, or 1,488 photos during our month in France
4.00 GB, or 68 videos from the entire trip

For a grand total of 39.40 GB of photos and video, comprised of 16,953 photo and video files. In case you’re not clear on this point, that’s a lot of photos, even by our standards.

Of course, the actual number of photos we took was substantially higher – though we’ll never have an exact count – because we deleted countless photos in the camera that didn’t turn out very well. And, to be fair, of the nearly 17,000 photos we retained, a goodly portion of them are probably expendable.

But now, one year and one day since we embarked on our grand journey, we can say that our year in photos is up on flickr. The collection has been narrowed to 2,379 photos from Asia, another 313 from France, and 74 from our visit to Toronto and Chicago this summer.

You’ll find lots of photos of food

Not to mention everything else that inspired us to use the camera. And don’t forget, in many cases, the photos come with captions, to provide further insight into our experiences.

We have the photos grouped together in an Asia set, as well as sets for each country we visited: Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, India, Toronto/Chicago, and France. Or you can just click through the regular pages, where you’ll see them in the order uploaded (within the sets, they are in chronological order, oldest to newest).

If you want to leave comments on the photos, or download them for yourself, you need to sign in with a flickr account. Signing up for one is free; it uses the same login as yahoo, if you have a yahoo account.

In any case, with 2,766 photos from our trip on flickr, if each is worth 1,000 words, we leave you with 2,766,000 words (not counting captions, of course). Enjoy.

OK, so the “best of” list we have at times been working on could probably be thrown out the window. France, its people, the food and, oh, the wine, are second to none. Since arriving I have been surrounded by such wonderful people. People who for the most part, don’t speak English.

I’m left to listen to the rapid dialog of rIAm and her relatives, with occasional breaks for translation. You may think this sounds boring, but you couldn’t be more wrong. You see, it leaves me three simple things to focus on while visiting: 1) smile, 2) eat fantastic French food, 3) drink lots of excellent wine.

Basically, I’ve arrived at my Dad’s vision of what Heaven will be.

So this morning, before heading off to another grand lunch, I took a break from the foie gras and pasta with porcini and chanterelles (hand picked by rIAm, Robert and myself yesterday morning, in the woods). I took a break from the 1995 Chateau de Phenomenal Chardonnay and Red Wine.

I took a break and considered for a moment that the Colorado freakin’ Rockies are in the World Series, and while it’s anything but over, there’s a decent chance they will be playing the Cleveland Indians! I couldn’t help but think that Fox must be rooting awfully hard for the Red Sox to pull off a miracle akin to their downing of the Yankees a few years ago because a Rockies – Indians World Series is seemingly unfathomable. I mean, more TVs would be tuned to the game from within the ballpark than in the rest of the world combined!

But then my mind drifted back to the lunch we had the other day. Salad with lettuce fresh from the garden, alongside a pheasant sausage/pate sort of thing terrine, made with pheasant hunted by the husband at that house. This was followed by a roasted leg of lamb, rubbed with a wonderful mustard and sliced generously. This was accompanied by fresh from the woods mushrooms, incredible green beans and a garden squash baked to a creamy deliciousness I could not have conceived previously. All this was followed, of course, by a course of cheese and excellent dessert, in this case a homemade chocolate mousse that was the mother of all mousses. Oh yeah, and the meal started with some homemade cassis mixed with champagne, and was followed by a red from St. Emillion that sure went down easy.

So I’ll crawl back into our new little world of France. I think there is another meal waiting for me anyway.

With all that in mind, I can’t help but think of seeing all of our friends and family in the coming months. Although we got a little bit less of these questions than I was expecting in July and August, it seems inevitable that we will get lots of questions upon our return about what was the best country, the best food, the most amazing thing we did, and so on.

These are not easy questions to answer, but at the same time, totally understandable. In fact, they’re the sort of questions we’ve even considered ourselves. I have a nice long list of superlatives that I was going to turn into a post while in Toronto as a “best of, so far” kind of a deal. Alas, it didn’t happen, and now it is left to be a “best of the year” sort of a deal.

So, what do you want to see included? Let us know through comments and/or by email.

Be creative with these. We’ve got things like “best cultural experience,” “best post system,” “grossest snack,” “best busses,” “nicest people,” and “wateriest beer.” And many others. We want serious, funny, wacky, and whatever else comes to mind. Good things, bad things, strange things and so on.

The trip isn’t over yet, although Asia is, but we like thinking about these things, and we like to make notes about these things so we remember them later on. It’s good plane/train/etc talk.

We can tell you that we both found Taiwan and Vietnam to be most captivating, felt the greatest affection for Thailand’s food, but also feel that if you just want to experience the best and worst of everything all at once, you should go to India.

But what else? Let us know.

Of course, where there are tourists (Indian or foreign), there are people trying to sell things to tourists. In Kanyalkumari there is an endless supply of guys walking around selling sunglasses (and sometimes some other things). The market seemed supersatured to me, so perhaps that goes some way to explaining the following, frequent, interaction (which is typically happening while we are walking). It starts with an Indian salesman and alternates between him (as it’s invariably a him) and me.

“Hello Sir (holding sunglasses).”
“No thank you.”
“Sunglasses sir? (now holding sunglasses out to me)”
“No.”
“Good price.”
“No.”
“Sun cooling.”
“No.”
“Unbreakable (while stretching the sunglasses out to prove his point).”
“No.”
“Sun blocking.”
“No.”
“Very good quality.”
“No.”
“Sun cooling.”
“No.”
“Unbreakable.”
“No.”
“Very good…. (trails off as he gives up following, but still calls out his sales pitch)”
“No.”

Instead of being here until just before our visa expires on 9 November 2007, we leave here on 15 October 2007.

My cousin Michal’s death is certainly a significant instigator in this new plan, and perhaps this is one of the good things that I can try to take from his passing. Changing our plans will mean that we will be returning home one month earlier than planned, and more important, that we will be present for many family gatherings in Chicago and Toronto in November and December.

And besides the gatherings for celebrations, holidays and admittedly some grieving, our new plan will enable us to see many friends and family sooner rather than later.

Early tomorrow we board a train that will take us on a more than 24-hour journey to cover the vast distance between Delhi and Hyderabad, the former being where we leave India from and the latter where have we have spent yesterday and today as we head north from Kanyakumari via Chennai.

Our original plan to head to France after India has not changed, simply because some of those family and friends we want to connect with are scattered across this delightful country. We already had booked our flights to Paris and figured out the itinerary for our month in France long before Michal passed away. All we did for $50 was change the reservation to take us to Paris next Monday instead of a month from now. Thankfully, our family and friends there have been very accommodating in this rather last minute change in plans.

Believe it or not, I am not sad to leave India earlier than plannedanticipated. As I told jft and my family, I have made my dream to see India come true. Whether or not I see another Hindu temple, visit Kolkata and Varanasi and explore another market bazaar will certainly not make or break me. As much of a beautiful and inspiring experience I’ve had, in particular in the last two months of completing a meditation course and then exploring very green, lush and much more laid-back south India, I am also done with the dirtiness, the traffic congestion, the haggling to get a fair rickshaw price and even some of the Indian food, like vegetables cooked to mush in thick gravies. I am proud of myself for pursuing this dream and making it come true, but I can admit, with much thanks to my cousin Michal for putting some things into perspective, when I need to wake up from the dream and move on.

I’m a little sad that while Michal’s funeral is going on in Toronto, I will be on such a long train ride instead of being able to go somewhere more spiritual or special to grieve, pay my respects and acknowledge the moments my family is passing through. I realized though, that train rides in India can actually be something quite special. The landscapes you race and chug past can often be breathtaking, and you often see village and city, slum and mansion dwellers just living their life as you pass by, from taking care of toilet duties by the side of the track to young and old waving at the train, trainspotting being an integral part of the day. And I can’t overlook the interesting people and things you see on the trains themselves. Whole families and lone travellers unpack whole meals, snore and often share their rich, ghee-filled sweets with us. Life proceeds as usual on the train as much as much as it does in the often anonymous places we pass by rail.

So I will celebrate life as I witness it from the train and on the train while Michal is laid to rest. And I will thank India for showing me a slice of her, even if sometimes I didn’t like what I saw or experienced. Good-bye to the land Gandhi fought for. I cannot say when I will return, but I hope when I do, it will be to reconnect to the many friends I found here.

For now, I am ready to go home.

Although I haven’t become fatigued by our current lifestyle, we are not so absorbed in our travels that we haven’t thought about what will happen when our year abroad ends. We are thinking about things like where we might work, and where we will live in Toronto.

Today, however, these things seem quite trivial compared to where I will dine when I am back in Toronto.

You see after more than two years spent living on our own in Chicago, and unearthing so many of Chicago’s culinary and cultural delights, I have a certain, well, inclination towards what I have come to know so well.

Of course, having been born and raised in Toronto, there is plenty I know about what the city has to offer, but I feel a little embarrassed to admit I don’t know Toronto in its present-day form quite as well as I have come to know Chicago. As a result, I am a little nervous about what I will find there when I finally start doing some exploring. I already know the Italian food is excellent — I just need to knock on my grandparents’ or parents’ doors, or just about any other relative’s door for that sort of authentic and delectable nourishment. And there are certainly many Italian restaurants and cafés that will help when I want to venture away from home-cooked meals (it’s been hard for me, but I have come to see the benefits of paying someone else to make me an Italian meal).

I am especially nervous about the Mexcian food scene in Toronto. It is so wonderfully delicious and bountiful in Chicago, and so many authentic ingredients can be so easily had at local Mexican grocery stores. The articles are no longer available, but the Toronto Star ran several pieces outlining Toronto’s abysmal Mexican food options, and even going so far as to point out just what fine food can be had in Chicago, including that offered by our favourite chef, Rick Bayless. I should point out that at least two of the pieces talked about the opening of several new Mexican-themed restaurants, which seemed to hold promise, as well as where to find Mexican food in Toronto. A small consolation, though, when the Mexican population of Toronto is but a few thousand, while Chicago boasts hundreds of thousands of these fine folk — enough to keep up the demand for the real deal, whether fresh foods like poblanos or tomatillos, or the ubiqutous fresh corn tortilla (you can even visit the locations where these are made and shipped from in Chicago) or a restaurant meal, like chiles rellenos, horchata, or one of jft’s favourites, tacos al pastor.

I admit my outlook is rather poor, and even childish. Toronto is home, after all, and I have known it to be a great city — truly understood what a magical place it is — for many, many years. Seven months in Egypt in 2000/2001 helped me realize just what an amazing and successful experiment multicultural Toronto had become, and if anything, things have only gotten better and more colourful in subsequent years.

I will admit that my grumbling stomach is not making it easier to focus on what awaits for me in Toronto restaurants, in particular, since over the last few days I’ve been craving many of my favourite tastes of Toronto the Good that I usually get at home, like perogies and pasta e broccoli. But I will also concede to having a small hankering for things I can’t get at home like Toronto’s street meat albeit it in its veggie form.

As I caught up with the backlog in my inbox today, I came across some of the Toronto Life newsletter dispatches I started subscribing to a while ago, something I had done to begin to get back in the loop with Toronto happenings.

And much to my surprise and delight (but my stomach’s chagrin!) several short pieces rated some of the best to be found in Toronto (according to Toronto Life food critics, of course) of some of my favourite eats:

• Perogies
• Crepes
• Fancy Sunday brunch

Realizing I know many of the places listed in the best of lists I’ve linked to, I am feeling mentally satiated (my stomach growling seems to just be getting stronger and louder) already.

Oh Toronto, I was so foolish to doubt you! I am trying hard now to look past by current hunger pangs to recall I will be able to pick up several local publications — magazines and newspapers — as well as dozens of web sites. And in this printed matter and online places I will be able to examine what food critics and everyday citizens have to say about the Toronto food scene, whether rating a new, ambitious restaurant, or devining about a hole in the wall joint still going strong after several decades. And how could I forget all the delicious meals I’ve had in Toronto at places like Salad King, Ethiopian House, Commisso Brothers and dim sum in Mississauga, just to name a few?

And those best of lists I linked to above? Toronto Life has gone ahead and created a whole section they call “Quest,” all in search of some of the city’s best eats.

Toronto, I think I will be just fine when I explore you with fresh you new eyes and tastebuds. I have the south of India to finish savouring, and then I will unleash my gourmand tendencies in France for a while, then on to Chicago to get my fill of Mexican and Hot Doug’s, along with some ravioli making with jft’s dad, but I look forward to reaching your streetcar chiming streets again in the new year. I will be there soon, I’m just getting there one bite at a time.

UPDATE: I’ve added a new links section to the right called “we [heart] this city, too” featuring links about Toronto, much like our Chicago section just above it. I also added a link in our food section to Chatto’s Digest, the blog of Toronto Life food critic James Chatto. If you have any food, cultural or other interesting links about Toronto please send them way so I can build up our Toronto list.