Surprisingly, one of the key cottage industries in Inle Lake is the making of cigarettes. I have seen samples of these cigarettes in the market earlier in the day and here our boatman has brought us to another place to observe the making of these cigarettes. Just like the weaving center we visited earlier, the house here is spacious, though a bit dark with no artificial lighting. However, their windows are large enough to let the light in.
The owner of the cigarette making center was very friendly and accomodating. She spoke good English, no doubt through endless rounds of practice in introducing the craft to tourists. What makes this unique is that they use actual leaves to roll up the cagarettes, the tobacco is that packed inside the tube until it is quite stiff. I don’t smoke at all so I don’t really know if it was a good cigarette or not. The lady actually gave me a stick as a souvenir but it got crushed in my bag so I had to throw it away. Too bad.
As usual, the cigarette factory doesn’t only sell cigarettes, they also sell all sorts of souvenir items, even clothes. I wasn’t really in the mood to shop for these things but it was still quite fascinating to see them. Village life here is really quite peaceful and you really forget about the outside world when you are here.
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