hot spillage and endurance

[INQUISITOR63]

why is it that when you drink "a nice hot cup of tea" you can suffer ( and enjoy) the enormously high temperature of it as it enters your mouth and slides down your throat --- and yet if you spilled some of it at only half of that temperature on to your chest you would go though agony with skin burn ?

[juandelacruz]

I don't KNOW the answer, but I assume it's because you sip such tea along with a lot of air, which cools it down before it goes into your mouth. After all, blowing on a spoon of hot food does the same thing.