SPEAKER_02
0:42
I want to talk about Sri Lanka because it was probably one of the I I've been very blessed enough to visit, you know, a few different countries in Sri Lanka. I didn't know what to quite expect, um, but it I was blown away at the hospitality, at the food, at um also just the affordability, especially as an American coming there and being able to, you know, take part in certain activities. It's, I mean, it it's if you think of like if you've been to like a Caribbean island, imagine like an Indian Caribbean island. Um that that's essentially what we got to experience with like the best seafood, the best curries. Um, and this is also an area of the world that has thousands and thousands of years of trade history. Um, one of those, and one of their top commodities, especially from a historical standpoint, is tea. Um, the country used to be called Ceylon based on the Ceylon tea. And that's what uh uh Britain called it. And that was um I I don't know how many folks are aware of like the opium, the original opium wars um that took place between Britain and uh China, but China held on to like the tea dominance for uh you know hundreds, maybe thousands of years. And so a lot of the secrets around like cultivating tea and brewing it and um you know, not just shoving it and grounding it in a powder and putting it into you know a bag, which is how most of us experience tea, um, but like hand rolling it and picking off different leaves during different parts of the you know the cultivation process and how it makes white tea. And then if it oxidizes, it makes uh you know green tea. If it oxidizes even more, it's black tea. It's all of these different variations that are all grown in a very hyper-specific climate. And so when Britain did their corporate espionage, they actually sent a botanist, um, made him like grow out his hair and shaved it in like a way that traditional Chinese men uh shaved like most of their head and then had braids, you know, coming out for like one um area of the head where the hair was allowed to grow. The spotanist from Britain like grew his hair out, um posed as a traitor from another part of China and was able to infiltrate, you know, certain parts of the country to find out where foreigners were not allowed, to find out the cultivation practices uh in order to had you know be able to take this these tea secrets, which this drink was exploding in popularity over in Britain because I think one of the kings in Britain had married uh a woman from Portugal and she was already in the tea game, which Portugal obviously has a very you know complicated colonial past and colonial history. Um, and they were in you know, sort of the Southeast Asia of the world uh long before Britain was. And so because the queen was, you know, drinking this tea and and loved it so much, naturally other people started, it started becoming like a fashionable thing. So the demand for tea just exploded through the roof. But China did not want to give up the secrets of growing it and cultivating it because that was their, you know, an economic powerhouse for them. So Britain gets the spy, they he infiltrates it, spends years with the different tea experts that and he found documented everything on how they were growing it, the environments they were growing it. It requires a specific like uh altitude and humidity, and so then they took all of those trade secrets and then they brought that to a certain part of India, but mostly Sri Lanka. Um, and so it a lot of people will think, well, oh, all the tea farms were just brought over to India. India is a big ass country, yeah. Um, but Sri Lanka, the entire island, has the perfect uh growing environment for tea. And so it used to be that the country, I think in the 1800s, they grew coffee, but disease wiped out all of the coffee plantations. And so that's when they switched over to tea, and it was called Ceylon. Um, I don't think the, I think it was around the 70s, uh, 1970s that uh the country's official name was changed to Sri Lanka. They also went through a bunch of like um internal issues, civil war, things like that um over the last hundred years. Um, but tea has become their number one commod, well, yeah, their number one commodity in addition to cinnamon. Um, so uh for folks who may not be aware, like cinnamon is also like just one of these products that really only grows. And in Ceylon cinnamon in particular, uh, is used in a lot of cooking, used in a lot of uh spice trade. In fact, the spice trade was around um was originally was the first trade route that was established before the Silk Road. Um, so the spice trade, you know, uh pepper and um uh God, cloves and question is is cinnamon like come from the ground?
SPEAKER_00
5:58
How does it like grow? Is it good question?
SPEAKER_02
6:01
It comes from a tree, and so uh basically the the the tree grows, and if you chop it off, um the way it's sort of manufactured is that you you chop that part of the tree off and then another one will sprout up, but it's the bark. So I have some some Ceylon tea here that um we bought there, and basically what it is is that it's the outer layer.
SPEAKER_00
6:24
What's up? Does the tree like smell like cinnamon or cinnamon, or is it kind of so it smells like cinnamon?
SPEAKER_02
6:30
And if you look at you know the uh a piece of like raw cinnamon, so this is the the bark from around the tree, and so what they do is they make a small after they chop the tree down, they make a small cut into the side of the tree and they rip the bark from from the outside of the tree itself, and so that you can kind of see like the shape of a cinnamon stick, it's from that bark that has been cut off of the outside of the tree, and then when it dries out, it shrinks. And so the middle of it is also other parts of the tree that they kind of stuff in there. So that's it's the manufacturing process of both tea and cinnamon have to mostly be done by hand. Um, but it also requires these very specific growing environments, and um, you know, the the the people of Sri Lanka have spent, you know, hundreds, probably thousands of years, you know, perfecting a lot of, especially the cinnamon process, um, but uh a lot of their other spices, uh pepper is another one that fueled the the spice trade as well. Um, I know that there's a couple of other spices that cloves is another one. Uh I'm blanking on the name, but I know it starts with a C. Um, but a lot of these different spices all originated in Sri Lanka. And for I'm also, I guess, you know, caveat. I'm reading this incredible book. So it's called A Splendid Exchange, and it basically talks about the history of supply chain and how all these different trade routes were started. I'm only I'm less than a hundred pages in. I don't know if you can see like how many dog ears. Oh, wait, here, like how many dog ears I've already made. But apparently, like the furthest China is very much has been famously in like an isolationist type of country. Um, but when they did start sailing, the furthest west that they will they would go was Sri Lanka. And so they would essentially bring, you know, their silks and their teas and all of their different commodities. They would bring them to Sri Lanka. And then from Sri Lanka, um, they Sri Lanka is like seven, even modern day, like 70% of the country is all transshipments. And so things are brought to Sri Lanka, and then Sri Lanka is a divvying up point. And so freight moves through um the Suez Canal, freight moves through India, um, especially from you know China to the Middle East. That is um like Silk Road Heaven. And so where the spice routes originally formed also fueled where the silk trade took place as well. And what I think is like the the coolest part of uh, you know, this story is like not only, you know, how long this country has spent, you know, cultivating and perfecting um some of these commodities that are just staples in our homes, but it's also from the lens of how they used all of the different trade routes and how other countries discovered all of these different spices that it just fueled public interest into this area of the world. And so it's just um I was blown away at like the hospitality of the country as well. Uh just I will say doing Japan and Sri Lanka on the same trip, like Jap the Japanese people were not by any means rude or uh not welcoming, they were very, very friendly. But I would say that the Sri Lanka people were uh just they wanted you to be uh engulfed in their culture. Yes. So they wanted to teach you, they wanted you to learn. Um whereas like Japan, you can almost uh I don't want to say like I don't want to be, I don't want to sound rude. Um they and because they weren't rude by any means, but it it didn't feel if I had to compare the two. One was very welcoming and one was just kind of reserved.
SPEAKER_00
10:13
The niceness I think of Japan is almost a tourist niceness because I because they under I think they understand their economy kind of runs on that. Yeah, that makes sense. So it's like I'm not saying that they aren't being they're being nice as they have to, but I think it's like it's that that's the sense. It's like your visitors, we treat visitors this way, where I it sounds like um like yeah, like well, and I and I I was also gonna ask you too, like Sri Lanka that uh going there with family, you know, seems like very interesting as well. Like being a that's like a country where I would almost like want to go with someone I knew who lived there or something, so I could like fully be in it. So that's awesome.
SPEAKER_02
10:54
And then um I showing another uh image here from the Sri Lanka, like then versus today sort of uh history, their textiles are also incredible. So like think like linens and um things like that, like buying like quality products, coconuts as well. Like I if you go to the the Caribbean, uh coconuts are they've become so much of a a standard com not a standard commodity, but a high demand commodity, where it's very difficult to like just walk through the jungle and like find a random coconut kind of you know sitting on the ground to the point where like you can regularly have access to to coconuts if that makes sense. And Sri Lanka are freaking everywhere. Uh we have my cousin is is from Jamaica and he was talking about um how in Jamaica, like if you see coconuts on a tree, like someone is climbing that freaking tree and taking down all of the coconuts and keeping them. Um but in Sri Lanka they were everywhere. So coconut trade was uh, you know, another like huge thing for them. Um gems and jewelry, so there's a lot of like sapphires that you know are only found in Sri Lanka. Um tea is obviously what's up.
SPEAKER_00
12:04
It makes sense too. It just so it makes total sense to, I mean, India is quite small on this map, but like it is the center, you know, and not having to go completely inland to India to like for trade, like I think it's like 50 nautical miles that separates the two countries.
SPEAKER_02
13:14
Like, obviously, you know, this is an AI-generated image of what's on the screen right now, but it's um it's much smaller, obviously, than than India.
SPEAKER_00
13:22
There is like a center of like Southeast Arabia, etc. Um it would be interesting as you like read that book too, if like um the politics of it all, because like uh you could use Sri Lanka as this like like um like kind of safe haven, right? Not have to worry about like getting too deep into India or too deep into you know something and and refuel whatever they would consider that back in the day.
SPEAKER_02
13:50
Yeah. I mean, I I definitely think there was a lot of like uh you know complications as well, um, especially under British rule. For I think that kind of goes without saying. Um, but there's I I guess from like a big business standpoint, it still feels like a country that has largely been ignored, um, with the exception, I would say, of tea manufacturers. And there was one um video that I was watching before this um that was talking about how, you know, like Lipton, like the the guy who like Mr. Lipton himself, like had a uh had a farm, had a tea farm in Sri Lanka. And but what they did is that they took all of the tea and they just sort of mass-produced it. But now there's a movement that's going on within Sri Lanka because harvesting cinnamon, harvesting tea is very labor intensive. And like we've seen with other commodities, especially cocoa, um, like we've talked about on this show, where the farmers are the ones that are making the least amount of money. That is very much the case here um with Sri Lanka too, where it's it's I think it was the quote was is like you look around at different tea farms and it's all older people that are doing this job. Younger people are not doing this job. But one association that is trying to um make a difference in that is called uh CADA, and that is the Ceylon Artisan Tea Association. So they're trying to teach the not to get your tea in like these small little ground-up powdery bags where it impacts the taste, but to go to our the artisan route of that supports you know, actual farmers, actual people who are taking the time and dedication of you know thousands of years of knowledge, and then to be able to keep that practice still alive. So um I'll I'll put a link in the show notes, um, but it's C-A-T-A.lk. Um, but that is for the Ceylon Artisanal Tea Association, and they aim to elevate tea farming communities, uh promote environmental sustainability, deliver exceptional quality artisan teas or artisanal teas. Um, and that was one of the big things too that I wish I would have been able to do like in Sri Lanka is like take a tea tour, but just driving throughout the countryside, all we saw were like these farms of of tea, of cinnamon, rice patties. Uh, another amazing thing, too, is you just have freaking elephants just walking around everywhere, just like wild elephants off the side of the street. Uh they have safaris there too. So it's very much like this um the this this country that I I didn't know would like touch my soul in the way that it did. But it it just this one of those places where it's like I will absolutely be back um in order to to be able to take part in stuff like this, you know, though with the you know, the tea plantations and things like that. And it I think um I'm not alone in this sentiment as well as like especially with um a country that sort of like just hits you at a a soul level, whereas like Japan, I loved and I had a fantastic time. Didn't hit my soul like the Sri Lanka trip did. And going with family definitely helped a ton. Um, but with I shared a picture standing in in the their capital, which is Colombo, and their port city of Colombo. You can see like the port and the trade lane in the background, and friend of the show said that a lot. We're we're lucky enough on uh everything is logistics to have a lot of friends of the show, and one of those is uh very near and dear to both of us, and that's Janet Labuda. Um, she is the head of trade and customs, I believe at Maersk, and she shared with me that she has um she she commented on the on the LinkedIn post and she says, I have a wonderful dear friend there that I've known for 40 years. She is a holy family sister. Right now I'm doing a fundraising for her to help a destitute family get a house built and a place where village children can gather for studies and extracurricular activities. Um she talked about, you know, I'm glad you had a chance to visit, uh, but they had a devastating cyclone hit earlier this year, which flooded much of the country. Um, and so she has been working with this organization, uh, Sisters of Sri Lanka. Uh, I guess she met them about 40 years ago when customs transferred me to the Netherlands. My job was to sew goodwill in the European Customs Services. Um, I just had to, she had completed a tour of various ports and border areas in Italy, uh, but she was flying back to the base and she shared her flight with the two Holy Family religious sisters, Sister Rita and Sister Rainey from Sri Lanka. And they were on their per on their way to Peru, another, another great country, uh to do missionary work. Um, but she was she developed a relationship with these people. Um, she has since helped to raise a lot of money for different causes. I think, you know, one girl she talked about was going blind, so she helped, you know, fund surgery in order to help her, just you know, it an organization that she likes to partner with and raise money where, you know, if you donate a hundred USD to Sri Lanka, and that that could make, you know, that's we're I think the app we looked it up where like the average citizen in Sri Lanka earned about 450 USD per month. And so when you think about like how much the dollar could go, um, this was a a perfect use case. And I just wanted to shine a light on it because Janet was talking about how they're raising money um for this um small area of the country where they had the cyclone hit. And then also um, you know, for uh this particular story, the husband left one family and all of the children now, they they don't necessarily have a place where they can live in an appropriate way. It's just basically a bunch of cinder blocks, no roof on the house, um, things like that. So it's, you know, it's if you have any means, um I'm gonna put an address in the show notes of where you can send a check in order to help. Um, but Janet kind of Janet, I think is I I would say one of the more trustworthy people in this industry. She is probably my favorite interview of all time. I think she's featured like on the homepage of everything is logistics. Um, but she talks about is you know, it's very much a grassroots effort in order to raise money on her part. A dear friend is donating $5,000. So wanted to make sure I had a connection to a 501c3 here in the States. She's gotten some other friends to help out with this. So folks are making checks out to the poor Claire monastery. She sends them, she sends the checks to the monastery, and then they do a grant to the sisters in Sri Lanka. I mean, because you have to understand, like, you know, some of these folks like don't even have a bank account. Um, so for a lot of these organizations, like the the logistics of getting funds to the people that need it, um, they rely on a string of uh a string of people to help. And Janet is one of those people that wanted to be able to help, not just now, but she's helped them out previously. Um, so I will put um an address in the show notes in case you wanted to help out with this particular cause. I mean, Janet is more than willing, I think, to help shed light on additional information if you have any. Um, but I just it she's she even says herself it's kind of convoluted, but it works. And three CPAs have weighed in on it just to make sure that she's doing everything on sort of the up and up of you know, donations and making sure that they're getting to the right place and you know, all of all of those different logistics.
SPEAKER_00
21:26
Janet's job for the longest period of time was to like go to on-site in China and make sure that place was legit. So I and you're a thousand percent right. If anyone's gonna tell you a legit charity, it's gonna be Janet.
SPEAKER_02
21:40
So But I just thought it was so sweet that she, you know, shared that story and you know, just the the fact that uh I mean, being in that there were some Uber rides, girl, 13 cents is all that we were charged.
SPEAKER_00
21:53
I was just about to say they have Uber too.
SPEAKER_02
21:56
Well, they it's called Pick Me, um, but it works just like Uber. Um they have you know, even like the delivery for food and things like that, all within the app, and you can order a tuk-tuk, which is like those, you know, almost like a I don't want to say like a golf cart, but it's like the the driver in the front and the seats in the back. And um, I I don't know why we don't see more of those in the States because I think they're superior to golf carts. Um I would love to, I even looked up earlier like on Timu to see if I could find like a tuk-tuk. Because I don't I don't know if you've seen like any of um like the mini boats that Timu sells and like a bunch of rednecks are trying them over the July 4th weekend. They worked surprisingly well, and so I said, let me let me see if they do tuk-tuks as well, and they do.
SPEAKER_00
22:41
Um, but it's you know thinking about getting my aunt a new uh golf cart for her cottage, too. I'm just I'd get her a tuk-tuk instead. She'd hate me. But I thought they were fantastic, so I'm not sure. No, that's awesome. And like I don't know if you're getting to it, but you got to like to see that the port too, like how old that port was. Like it was well, it actually looked fair. So um Sri Lanka is also like 250. I'm sure you go to places like that and you're like, wow, this is like this is cool, you know?
SPEAKER_02
23:16
Yeah, uh, it definitely, I mean, I think just traveling in general, unless it like challenges you, and Japan didn't really challenge us in that way, but Sri Lanka did. Um landed. And you got a there's a bunch of international flights landing all at the same time. It's freaking chaos at the airport whenever we first land. Um, but as soon as we get out of the city, or not we get to the city rather, um, because the airport that you land in and is about an hour, 45 minutes to an hour um from the city of Colombo. But once you get to Colombo, like it is just it's I would say very comparative to like uh like a big South American city where you have some some beautiful parts, but then you also have you know some parts that you know just uh you know a little a little questionable. Um but I I never felt unsafe. Um the people were like I said were incredible. Um, they could not wait to like share stories about their country. Most of them speak English, um, which was a difference from Japan, frankly, um where we were in a major city at like Tokyo, and there were a lot of people that, you know, their English wasn't great. And, you know, obviously that's on the tourist in order to learn their language. But I, you know, when you experience something like that where it's almost you feel a little bit lonely in Japan when it's just the two of you, like just me and my husband, versus when we go to Sri Lanka and most people speak English, in addition to family being there. And so it was like we had this like really interesting group of family and locals, and we got to see a different side of the country that not a lot of people, I think, uh, get to see. Um, so I just 10 out of 10, can't wait to go back. Um, I was super happy. A friend of the show, too, uh, Eric Johnson, he's gonna be a guest on the show soon too. Uh he called Sri Lanka his favorite country in the world.
SPEAKER_00
25:12
He talked about a traveler. That guy has been there, and that's awesome. That's that's cool. Uh, you know, it's it's sad too because I think like my only relation to Sri Lanka would be like the tsunami, right? Of like, what was that three, four, two thousand four?
SPEAKER_02
25:30
2004.
SPEAKER_00
25:31
Yeah. And so it's like, you know, from like a Westerner's viewpoint, you're like, I hope that country's still surviving. And it's like, oh, they're thriving, honey.
SPEAKER_02
25:42
Like the waves are this because for folks who may not know, um especially in the Indian Ocean, for six months out of the year, the the winds flow one way, and then for the other six months, they flow the opposite way. And the side of the island that we were on, we were on the um western side of the island for the most part. Those winds are no joke. And I grew up going to the beach. I know what you know, tropical storm and hurricane waves look like. That was it. That it was hurricane level type of waves. You're not stepping a foot in. I mean, I I dipped my toes in just a tad. Um, but it wasn't five minutes after doing that that another giant wave came in, soaked half of my pants, like up to my knees. Like that is how aggressive the ocean was. So I did not take a step out outside of that one time. Um, but there was no swimming in the ocean. Um, I I know Sri Lanka is also like a surf haven as well, but that was probably on the other side of the island. It damn sure wasn't on the side we weren't because you would literally die. Um it was scary. Like it and I don't I don't mess with scary waves. Uh it was very scary. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
26:55
Well, happy to have you still here. Yeah, it looks awesome. The wedding looked great, the dress looked great. I showed my mom too. She's like, wow, beautiful. So uh yeah.
SPEAKER_02
27:05
Congrats. And shout out, I'm I'm excited to try uh some of the Ceylon tea. I didn't get a chance to to show you guys on the screen, but look how cool that little tin is a little elephant-looking tin.
SPEAKER_00
27:15
Um the cinnamon, have you tried it yet? Like, does it taste better? I always thought cinnamon has like a very artificial taste.
SPEAKER_02
27:26
And I'm just wondering if it's like I would say, so I haven't tried the the cinnamon yet. I was waiting to to do this this episode first. Um, this I actually opened it right before um we we started hitting record. Um, but it doesn't taste as it doesn't smell as strong as I guess other variations. And I wonder because Ceylon, you can only get Ceylon cinnamon in from Sri Lanka because of the environments and the altitude and all of the different components that you know you can actually grow that particular tree. But I will say that they put cinnamon on so many things. They even make like cinnamon toothpicks that are apparently perfect to use after eating any kind of curry dish because it gets rid of the curry taste in your mouth. And then you can actually eat the toothpick as soon as you're done with it. So we brought back some toothpicks as well, um, lots of different spices that I can't wait to try. We're actually, um, as soon as we, you know, get done with this recording, which is any any minute now, we're gonna go over to um the Asian Mart and we're gonna try to pick up, you know, a bunch of things so we can recreate the things that we had there. Um egg hoppers is one of them. There's also this like coconut relish that was to die for. They put on everything. It's called Pulse and Bowl. I'm gonna try to get the ingredients to to make that um just so I can have it in the fridge and start putting it on everything. Uh so yeah, that's uh we're gonna do some green curry too. So yeah, we're we're we're gonna have a little adventure time um trying to recreate our Japan and Sri Lanka experience and try to get some of these get some of these staples in in the house. But uh, I guess that's my um my my tourism plea. Uh to any folks that are considering in Asian country, uh choose think about Sri Lanka because it is it was incredible. And like I said, the people were even better.
SPEAKER_01
29:21
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Everything Is Logistics where we talk all things supply chain for the thinkers in freight. If you like this episode, there's plenty more where that came from. Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you never miss a conversation. The show is also available in video format over on YouTube just by searching Everything is Logistics. And if you're working in freight logistics or supply chain marketing, check out my company Digital Dispatch. We help you build smarter websites and marketing systems that actually drive results, not just vanity metrics. Additionally, if you're trying to find the right freight tech tools or partners without getting buried in buzzwords, head on over to cargorex.io where we're building the largest database of logistics services and solutions. All the links you need are in the show notes. I'll catch you in the next episode and go jazz.
