Wednesday, December 14, 2005

the quest for Shillon Tea

I suppose I should be keeping this a secret, since it involves a gift for my buddy Mike, but today's comedy of errors deserves a blog entry.

Dad and I went around northern Virginia's Koreatown today to do some gift shopping. One of the items I wanted to buy was "Shillon Tea," which is a Korean brand of Ceylon (Sri Lankan) Tea. It comes in little, dark-red cans and has the brand name written proudly on it in both English and Hangeul. Mike loved the stuff when he was in Korea in the mid-90s. I thought about buying a case in Korea and carting it over with me, but the idea seemed silly: Shillon Tea, I reasoned, would be available in Koreatown in Virginia. Why add extra weight to my baggage?

Turns out I was a fool: Shillon Tea proved un-findable after attempting three different Korean stores here: Super H-Mart, Lotte Plaza, and Grand Mart. All three stores have huge stockpiles of Korean products, but strangely enough, none of them seemed to carry one of the most popular canned teas in Korea. I plan to expand my search tomorrow; we'll see whether we can't rustle something up.

Am still shaking my head in disbelief. How can you not have Shillon Tea?


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4 comments:

Jason said...

I asked the wife about that tea, and she knows it but has never seen it at any of the NoVA Korean stores she's been to (of which there are many).

Will keep an eye out.

Anonymous said...

Wow. I'll have to remember to stock up before my next visit to the States.

Jelly said...

Hi Kevin,
Congrats on the EMceeing. You're mom looks like such a stylish lady. You're lookin' good too!
I'm going to the post office tomorrow, so if you want, I could send you some tea. E-mail me if you want to make it so.
Those lawn ornaments are scary! Especially when one house has 500 of them out front. I'm sure you haven't priced them for your own lawn, but I wonder if they're very expensive.

The Maximum Leader said...

Damn... I had forgotten how much I liked that stuff when I was over there. Now that you mention it, I am craving some...