Teh Obeng for Sweet Ice Tea

Temukan versi Bahasa disini: Teh Obeng atau Es Teh Manis

Indonesian loves tea, deal with it. :-)

Teh Obeng for Weet Ice Tea

Indonesia is very famous for its tea. The tea has a very rich and unique flavor. Nowadays, Batam people used to say “Teh Obeng” for Sweet Ice Tea, and “Teh O” for warm and sweet tea. This will confused some local tourists at first. For your reference, Obeng is Indonesian word for “screwdriver”. For local tourist who come to Batam at first, they will usually confused with the word. Why you ask a screwdriver with tea? Is this some kind of joke? Are they trolling me? That will be some thoughts local tourist may wonder.

Don’t worry, BD also confused when we first came to Batam. Here we are now, to tell you about the history.

Batam is populated with a fair amount of Chinese descendant, which means they talk in Mandarin, Hokkien, Theochew, or any other dialect. For them, they usually call sweet ice tea with their own dialect, teh apeng. Peng means ice. Due to many local residents who found it difficult to pronounce apeng, they usually call it openg. For the sake of simpler pronunciation,  the letter p is changed into b, and so they will call if obeng. From that time, the legendary name of Teh Obeng was born.

So, especially for local tourist, don’t get confused with word obeng. That means sweet ice tea, and don’t worry, we don’t put any screwdriver nor screw inside your tea!


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