Cigar 'diary' trip report (overdue)

I was supposed to go to the bar and watch UFC 100, but I've been feeling ill lately, and decided to just putz around home instead after work. Adampc22 has been demanding cigar pics for a bit, so I thought now would be as good of a time as any.

Anyway, I frequent Indonesia, but never really sought out the local smokes. This year I decided to make the trip a bit different. Other than bringing my brother along, I also cleared out 2 of my humidors and brought about 60+ sticks to hand out to friends of mine there. Cigars in general are expensive for locals, and I figured this would be a rare treat for some good longtime friends. They were well enjoyed, and did not last long at all! Now I get the joy of refilling some humidors.
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At the very start, we stopped in Taiwan and had a look at the duty free. Even though we knew that the prices were pretty high for those fancy isoms there, we made the plunge anyway and picked up a box of Monte #2 and #4. I kept one of the boxes to show how Taiwan and Malaysia are packaging all tobacco products now:



It's basically a "collect them all" type of situation, as you can get a random cancerous or gangrene image on any box or pack of smokes. My favorite was the cancerous mouth on the cigarette packs... We also picked up a pack of 20 Cohiba Minis, but the empty box was unfortunately forgotten after a night of drinking. The Montes definitely didn't last long either, through daily smoking and gifts, I'd say we got a good two weeks out of them. I don't want to say what we paid.





Once those Montes were gone, we turned to local smokes. The Bali Legong were pretty decent, but really nothing to write home about (even though I'm sort of doing that now). Had a decent kick for the size, but didn't notice too much for flavors beyond tobacco. The box is nice and hand carved though which makes up for the "high" price of $25 a box for 25 petite coronas.

Also in the picture is the Adipati. These super coronas were pretty straightforward... you definitely knew you were smoking tobacco. Given the length, it was sort of a chore to get through, but by the last end it started to get a bit more enjoyable with light hints of pepper, but that might have been imagined as I was pretty tanked when I smoked one. A box of 10 was about $12.

The single smoke you see in the pic is the Ramayana. We smoked a lot of these because of the price. A pack of 5 coronas go for about $2.50. Easily found at the CircleK, it became a staple. These sticks were so bad, I almost didn't want to bring the single back.

The only enjoyable smoke I had out there was the Wismilak (unfortunately didn't bring one back), which was a definite treat. Much like a Pepin blue, the peppery flavor and smooth silky draw put a smile on my face each time we had one. Beautiful construction, terrific burn... it was surprising this was hand-made in Indonesia. The unfortunate part was that this cigar was $7-8 a single smoke.

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I did pick up a potential humidor project while I was out there.



After haggling, picked this up for about $8. I like the simple look, and just need to get some spanish cedar and some hinges for the side so it doesn't fall all the way back. But we'll see, maybe I'll just use it as a standard box or something.

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I'm sorry this wasn't terribly exciting. The trip was fun, and seeing friends is always a good thing. Brought some tattoo ink for one of my friends and got some more work done and my brother also got his first tattoo. When I'm feeling better I'll get some pics of those up if anyone wants to see.

So I hope you are all having a better evening than I, and at least got a kick out of the cancerous lung pic. Have a good night.