Tea Houses surround the lake and here you can watch hundreds of locals mess about in little rowing boats while you drink tea and get a massage or your ears cleaned. Ear cleaning is a bizarre process in which a metal rod covered with cotton is inserted and then twanged & vibrated with something that looks like a tuning fork. It looked way too scary for us but we heard later that Luke had been brave enough to try it and survived with eardrums intact!
The Tea was okay for the first few sips but as the leaves steeped, it got disgustingly bitter… definitely an acquired taste….or maybe they just gave us the dregs since we wouldn’t appreciate it anyway!
