Handrolled Cheroots and Tea

While we were staying in the town at the end of Inle Lake we roamed the countryside on bicycles exploring every nook and cranny. One day we rolled through a little village and were beckoned up onto the verandah of a beautiful old teak house where two women were rolling cheroots at a low table.
I was happy to find them because I read a lot of books about Burma, both fiction and non fiction, and in nearly all of them cheroots were mentioned. I read Burmese Days by George Orwell, Amy Tan's Saving Fish From Drowning, The Glass Palace and a few others.
They served us tea and wonderful rice crackers and even gave us a try at rolling. They had the most primitive and effective handmade tools that made it look much easier than it really was. The younger was the neice of the older and they lived together in the house. We visited for nearly and hour, talking amid the bustle of rolling. They were so friendly and eventually asked about my sunburned face offering to put some of the ground bark on me.
The bark was ground on whet and applied in quite a liquid state. When it dries it's really cooling and protects the skin from sun. I didn't look nearly as lovely and exotic as the women of Burma with their brown skin providing more contrast.
Philip bought some of the cheroots and for weeks afterwards we gave them as gifts to folks who considered them a real treat and normally couldn't afford them!