I don’t know if Burma is famous for its cheroots, but we certainly saw lots of them and saw lots of people smoking their cheroots. So for starters, a cheroot is not a cigar. Why not? Cheroots contain many ingredients besides tobacco, so they do not qualify as cigars. Cheroots contain tobacco, honey, rice flour, tamarind, banana and anise (and possibly many other things too). They might also be soaked in rum or honey and dried first. Whatever the ingredients were, they smelled really good.

The women in the factory have to roll 1000 cheroots in order to earn $3. I don’t know how long that takes them but I would still be there trying to earn my first three bucks.

1. You can see two of the ladies rolling cheroots in the factory that we visited. They just sit on the floor with their ingredients in a big shallow basket and their tools and roll away.

2. Vicky took them up on their offer to roll a cheroot. You can see her rolling one in the second photo.

3. Now she has just about finished and is cutting it off.

4. She is showing us her finished product. You can see the woman’s cheroots in her basket.

5. Someone had to smoke Vicky’s cheroot for quality control, so I stepped up to the plate. She did a fine job on this one.

On a side note, Vicky and I now have three young grandchildren, all boys. Two were born right before this trip and one was born right after we got home. Their parents have a sleeping technique that is new to us. They call it “swaddling”. We never swaddled our babies. Anyway, you put the baby down on a blanket and tightly wrap them up in the blanket with their arms tight by their sides. We are told that babies like it because the tightly wrapped blanket all snug around them reminds them of the womb. Prior to going to Burma, Vicky and I were not very good at swaddling our grandsons. But NOW, those grandbabies are going to get quite a swaddling the next time Grandma Vicky swaddles them. They are going to get her new Cheroot Swaddle!