cigars Archives - Wandering North

Kuwait Mongolia-Kuwait-Bahrain trip 2025

Kuwait: Quick and Quiet

I had wrapped up my time in Mongolia and flew to the next country on this trip, which was Kuwait. You may be thinking what I was when I came up with this preposterous itinerary, which is, “Kuwait is nowhere near Ulaanbaatar.” And you would be right. After deciding to visit Mongolia, I wanted to visit another country that I had not been to before, but there wasn’t much around Mongolia, so I looked West and decided it was time to time to hit up a couple of Gulf microstates. Next stop Kuwait.

Almost every blog or social media post I see from people who have been everywhere and feel the need to rank countries, ranks Kuwait near the bottom. Boring is the consensus. No problem. I didn’t plan to spend much time there and, in my experience, everywhere is interesting for a day or two. I would be in Kuwait for about 36 hours.

I landed in the middle of the night and took a taxi to my hotel, the ibis Sharq (so called because it is in the Sharq district). Uninspired, but it was cheaper than a lot of options. I have no idea if there is a better area to stay in Kuwait City; something walkable and affordable. I feel like it does not exist, but I am open to suggestions. The ibis was fine. I slept for a few hours and headed out. I wanted to get an early start because I was there only a short time and I knew the afternoon would be hot.

I wasn’t sure what to wear in Kuwait. I heard mixed things about how covered up and conservative I should be, so erring on the side of caution, I wore a light black abaya and matching headscarf with some black beading at the hems and underneath I had leggings and a t-shirt. I don’t know that it was necessary to be so conservative, but I think I would have felt conspicuous walking around without it. But the thing was, it was very hot. It was at least 45°C and I think at one point it went up to 48. It was not pleasant for walking. Throughout the day, I kept tucking into air-conditioned establishments or sitting on the sidewalk in the shade and drinking lots of water trying to get my temperature down. It was intense.

My main stop, and I think every tourist’s main stop in Kuwait City, was the Kuwait Towers. Three retro futuristic sipe-like towers built in the 1970s. Two of them piece blue spheres. One sphere is a water tank, one is a café, and one is divided in its lower half as a water tank and its upper half is a restaurant. I did not pay the money to go inside and I don’t regret it. But they were cool to see in person. During the day they are blue and white but at night they are lit up in different colours. I was able to walk there from my hotel and took a bit of a stroll along the bay, again until the heat overtook me.

Thankfully they have Uber in Kuwait, and I called a car and asked it to take me to another area of town so I could visit a big mosque and the souk area.

A couple of problems with Kuwait: One problem is that it is a car culture. It’s not designed for walking, so the streets don’t have much life them. The distances are long and there’s not a lot of things to engage with along the way. Also, it’s hot, so walking isn’t great to begin with. The other problem was that I was there on a Saturday; a Saturday being sort of like the equivalent of a Sunday in a Christian nation and pretty much everything was closed. So a city that wasn’t super exciting to begin with felt even more quiet. The business district was a ghost town.

I did wander over to the souk and that was a little bit interesting although most of the shops were closed. Fortunately, some of the cafes were not, and I found a café (Dalalwa Café) with lots of outdoor air conditioners and men lounging outside, drinking tea and smoking shisha in crisp white thawbs (locally called dishdashahs). I joined them and drank tea and smoked a cigar. They refused to take my money. I attracted a lot of curious looks, but they were polite and no one was no one made me feel unwelcome. (I’m not sure if the looks were due to my gender, the cigar, or the face that my face was so red and sweaty.)

The mosque I wanted to visit wasn’t open. All I could do was walk around the outside. I walked around some streets and took in more of the atmosphere, such as it was. I tried to visit the museum, but it was closed, as was the aquarium. There really aren’t a lot of designated tourist attractions in Kuwait.

What Kuwait lacked in museums, it made up for in cigar lounges. I was able to visit two. Both were in commercial buildings: one, simply called No.21 high up in The No2 of the two Pearl Towers; a bit difficult to find, but worth it. (UPDATE: sine I was there it has relocated to the 4th floor of the Four Seasons Hotel Kuwait at Burj Alshaya. The other, the Cabinet Club on the second floor of Salhiya Mall. They were nice lounges. Very well appointed and with excellent selections of cigars. Not cheap. Nothing in Kuwait is.

I enjoyed the respite from the heat, and I was able to chat with the employees of the two lounges. It wasn’t easy to engage with people in Kuwait because there weren’t a lot of them around but the people working in the lounges were all from other countries and spoke English and were happy to chat for a bit. I was the only woman in the two lounges. The others there were men, again dressed in gleaming white dishdashahs with designer sunglasses and perfectly groomed facial hair. They looked very fancy. I felt bedraggled by comparison.

At some point in the day, I started to feel a bit unwell. I wasn’t sure if it was heat stroke or if it was the subtle food poisoning that I had been experiencing yesterday at the Istanbul airport, but my stomach just wasn’t right. I went back to my hotel to have a bit of a rest before dinner. Because I had some big dinner plans.

The most interesting thing about going to Kuwait was that I was having dinner with someone that I have been working with for over 10 years but had never met. If you don’t know, I’m a lawyer. In 2015 we took on a case involving members of the Kuwaiti royal family and their deceased father who had invested in some properties in British Columbia Canada. Several of the children ended up suing each other including in British Columbia and we became lawyers for one of them. (I’m able to write about this this because there are several reported decisions in the Supreme Court British Columbia, so all of this is public information.) At the time of writing, the case is ongoing. Anyway, I had never met our client, the Sheikha, and I was excited to have dinner with her and her daughter. A Sheikha is effectively the equivalent of a Princess. She and her daughter selected the restaurant and picked me up at my hotel in a black window tinted SUV. And we went to a restaurant called Dar Hamad in Salmiya, which is its own city, but really seems like part of Kuwait City.

Again, to be respectful I was wearing my abaya with my headscarf loosely draped over my shoulders. The Sheikha was also wearing a black abaya with her hair covered but the daughter was wearing a more western style outfit, although still quite modest. The restaurant we went to was gorgeous. Beautifully designed and fancy. We had a table that looked like it was meant to seat ten but it was just for us. I didn’t understand why we had such a large table until they started bringing out all the dishes. The Sheikha had ordered a feast. Not a veritable feast but an actual feast of different things for me to try. She knew ahead of time that I was a vegetarian so most of the dishes were designed to be vegetarian.

*some of the dishes i was too sick to enjoy*

This would have been heaven, except that by the time I went to the dinner I was feeling extremely unwell. I had been suffering from terrible bouts of nausea and feeling like I was going to throw up. I hadn’t eaten anything all day, but I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep anything down. I politely told them that I wasn’t feeling that well but that I was excited to try all the food. And I did have the smallest nibbles of all of the different dishes but every time I did, I felt really ill. On two occasions during the meal I urgently had to leave the table and I went to the bathroom to violently vomit. This was not the first impression that I wanted to be making, but it was a very enjoyable dinner and I felt very privileged to be able to experience it.

They drove me back to my hotel and I went to bed. I had a flight early the next morning.

Apart from my dinner with the Sheikha and the cigar lounges, I didn’t love Kuwait. It wasn’t the most interesting of places, however, I think being there on a weekend was a bad decision. For that reason I would like to go back and get a better sense of what the country has to offer. So while it’s not high on my list of countries that I’ve visited, I’m not sure I gave it a fair shot. But that was my visit and my next flight would take me to another new country of similar size, Bahrain.

Asia Mongolia-Kuwait-Bahrain trip 2025 South Korea

Hello Kitty to the Rescue: A Layover in Seoul

I don’t know why, but in the last few years my travel planning has become a little bit more chaotic. I used to book my trips many months in advance, and I would spend time refining the itineraries and learning phrases in the local language and getting organized. But more recently I find myself booking the trips with just a few weeks’ notice. I still make a good itinerary, but it all feels a little rushed. I don’t think I can conceive months in advance of actually being able to take time off work, but then something happens and I just need a holiday and then I book it without much planning. This was one of those trips.

I had decided that I needed to go somewhere, and I decided to go to Mongolia. But I didn’t just want to go to Mongolia, I wanted to try to visit a couple of other countries. And that’s what I tried to do on this trip. I decided to go to Mongolia and Kuwait and Bahrain. I’m aware that Mongolia is nowhere near Kuwait and Bahrain, but it made for an interesting itinerary. And it started with an overnight layover in Seoul South Korea.

This was my third or fourth time visiting Seoul, although each of those visits has been on some sort of long layover. I’ve never actually taken a trip just to see South Korea. I probably should, but this would be another layover visit.

I don’t love Seoul. I know that Seoul is very popular but, overall, I am not enamoured with it. It does make for a good layover though. I appreciate its excellent public transportation and its affordable accommodations, and that there’s lots going on day and night to fill your time. As much as I don’t love it, I was happy to be back for my layover this time.

*Arex: the fast train into the city. Of course it has a cute mascot.*

I arrived at 4:00 PM and I would have to leave again at 9:00 in the morning, so I just had an evening. I booked myself into the Hostel Drip & Drop, which is conveniently located in Myeongdong and right by the Euljiro 1(il)-ga metro station. I took the AREX Express train (which is only slightly faster than the other train) into the city with my backpack and walked to the hostel and dropped it off.

Before I say anything else, I have to say how impressed I was with this hostel. I have fantasies of designing the perfect hostel because there are so many of them that just have design flaws, like having no lighting options between pitch black and blinding white or showers in shared bathrooms with no place to take off your clothes or hang them up outside of the soaking wet shower. This hostel was close to perfect.

It had an immaculate sleeping quarter. I opted for the girls’ dorm and it was one of those ones where every bed is a pod with a proper curtain, a shelf, lighting, and a comfy mattress inside. For the first time ever, I had a little bunk with a window in it. This hostel also had an adjoining room where there were lockers to put your backpack and your shoes, so you would take off your shoes and get your pyjamas, or do whatever you needed to do, and then you could either go into the room with the beds or into the shared bathroom. What this meant was there was no possibility of anybody in the sleeping room rummaging around in their bags, or getting dressed, or crinkling plastic bags because all of that happened in another room. I’m sorry if you’re not here to hear about effective hostile design, but I was very excited by this. And it was $56 Canadian per night. Not exactly dirt cheap, but pretty close.

I don’t know why it’s called Drip & Drop except that it has something to do with coffee and they do provide you with a coffee pour-over situation and they had a pour-over station in the common area. I mean, that’s pretty great. The downsides were no kitchen, and the common area was very sterile and didn’t really invite one to hang around, but that’s OK; I wasn’t there for long. I would 1000% stay there again.

Once I was finished admiring my hostel, I set out into the city. I decided to wander along the Cheonggyecheon, which is sort of a man-made urban river that runs through the city lined with pedestrian and bike friendly spaces with benches and sculptures. It’s a really wonderful use of public space and provides some serenity into what a busy city is otherwise.

I meandered around taking exploring the streets. There appeared to be some sort of festival happening geared towards children and there were a lot of inflatable things and children’s activities. I have no idea what was going on but it did make for some fun photos. It was blisteringly hot in Seoul, so, to cool off, I lingered by the fans set up outside next to some inflatable children’s water park set up for the event, until I realized that a single adult lingering near strange children is creepy.

I wanted to visit a cigar lounge before it got too late (and I needed an escape from the weather) and so I went to the Resolver Cigar Lounge. It was walking distance from my hostel in a commercial building. The lounge was a little bit difficult to find and I nearly gave up and left but finally I found it and it was worth the effort as it was a beautiful lounge. Dimly lit with comfortable leather chairs, excellent cigar accessories, and a sophisticated atmosphere. I visited the humidor and picked out a Plasencia Alma Fuerte – a cigar made at the Plasencia factory I had previously visited in Nicaragua. They had a decent selection of Cubans and some non-Cubans but the prices were very high, and this was the cigar that I decided best fit my budget and palate. The only downside of the lounge, if there was one, was that it was very quiet. There were a couple of other groups of men smoking cigars, but it didn’t have a very social atmosphere. I’ve noticed this a lot with cigar lounges in East Asia which is that people don’t really seem that inclined to talk to each other. Everyone seems to kind of keep to themselves.

By the time I left the lounge it was dark, but that did nothing to reduce the heat and humidity. Sweating profusely, I walked back to the area near my hostel to visit the Myeongdong Night Market. I was delighted to have a night market to go to. At first, it was terrific to walk around the area with the market. The neon signs were twinkling, throngs of people were out gawking at the stalls and eating things on sticks and there was food and merchandise for sale throughout the streets. It was a fun atmosphere. Except now not only was it hot, but it was hot and I was walking past stalls frying up food and producing clouds of hot greasy air.

I quickly became very uncomfortable. I also desperately wanted to eat something but, as is always the problem with night markets in Asia in my experience, it’s very difficult to find anything vegetarian; plus, I had forgotten to get cash from the ATM. After a while I just needed some air conditioning and relief from the weather and that’s when I saw it, like a beacon calling to me. My savior. Hello Kitty.

I love Hello Kitty and I’ve been wanting to go to a themed cafe forever. And there it was: a two-story Hello Kitty café, open late and artificially ice cold. While I was thankful for the air conditioning, I will say that the interior of the Hello Kitty cafe was so brightly lit that I felt like I was in some sort of alien spacecraft, but I was happy for it. I bought two food items that I’ve never had before and will certainly never have again which was a dragon fruit iced tea and a mango cake that was shaped like an actual mango inside a hard shell. It was delicious; or maybe I was just hot and famished. I sat by the window by myself, my eyes ringed in smudgy black eyeliner; I was looking goth-adjacent smelling of cigar smoke and thoroughly enjoying my Hello Kitty meal.

After that, I took one last spin around the market and then went back to my hostel for a shower and asleep. In a few short hours I would be up again and heading back to the airport to fly to my next destination: Ulaanbaatar.

*Temple at sunrise. Headed back to the airport*

Europe United Kingdom Yemen Trip 2025

London Layover: Belgravia

One of my greatest travel joys is having an exciting destination to visit with the bonus of getting a long layover in London on the way there. I say it so often that’s cliched, but London is probably my favourite city. I used to live there, and have visited it many times so for me it is a perfect place to have a day layover as I already know my way around and I’m happy to revisit it.

The way I approach London as a layover is to pick a neighbourhood that I want to visit and generally stick to that neighbourhood. Sometimes it will be because there’s something in particular that I want to do, like visiting a certain museum or a cigar store, and other times it will be just an area that I haven’t been to in a long time or forever. Obviously, the length of my layover somewhat dictates what I do. On my way to Yemen, I had some time in London and decided to base my visit around a cigar lounge.

I smoke cigars a lot in London, and that usually finds me going to Saint James Street, but I had been hearing about a lounge called TomTom and decided to make that my focus. I took the Heathrow Express into Paddington station and switched to the Tube, and took the underground to Sloane Square. From there it was a short walk to the TomTom cigar lounge. But what a walk.

I don’t know the names of all the streets that I walked down, but if you look at a map and you trace the route from Sloane Square to TomTom, you’ll have an idea. I think one of them was Pavilion Road. Anyway, the streets were ridiculously charming. All bricks with Union Jack flags strung up and every door festooned with colourful flowers. It was a charming neighbourhood. It seemed that every second window had delectable looking pastries and the weather was just nice enough that people were starting to sit outside.

Just as I got to the cigar lounge, I noticed a cute pink tea and cake shop across the street and I couldn’t resist. It was called Peggy Porschen cakes. I had never heard of it before, but they certainly did a good job of drawing me in with their pink floral exterior. I went inside settled on a pot of tea and a slice of a cake that I surely didn’t need but was happy to have. I sat outside and enjoyed my delectable treats feeling very girly. Just then the weather turned and I headed over to TomTom.

TomTom is a bit of an odd cigar merchant. They have a walk-in humidor but in the humidor only one of each type of cigar for sale is on display. I’ve never seen anything like it. Normally the merchant will display a box of the cigars that are on sale this one just one of each. It had a very minimalist appeal. Cigars in London can be quite expensive and none of them are cheap, but while there are options that are hundreds of Pounds you can still get a decent high end Cuban cigar for less than $100. I picked one of those.

Had I not known that they had a cigar lounge, I would not have discovered it on my own. The retail portion of the business was quite small and there were a couple of seats outside but nothing to suggest that there was a lounge, however when I asked about it, they led me through a slightly hidden door at the back of the humidor and I went down a flight of stairs into the basement. This is cigar lounge is quite cool. It’s very stylish and has a little bit of a 1970s flavour. Unfortunately, I was the only one in there when I went so it was a bit strange to have it all to myself, but I appreciated the time to relax and enjoy my cigar. I did that before deciding out of an abundance of caution that I should go back to the airport. I probably could have spent another couple of hours, but I had a flight to catch to Egypt and then another one to Yemen, where I was meeting up with people, and I couldn’t risk missing any of my flights.

I wandered back to the Tube station through Belgravia, which honestly doesn’t even sound like a real place. It sounds like something out of a Harry Potter book. I caught the train back to Heathrow, my spirits high and my energy fueled by tea, cake, and tobacco.

Onwards to Cairo.

North America USA

Where to Smoke Cigars in Detroit

Detroit was a good cigar town. You can’t smoke everywhere, but patios seem to be fine and there are several cigar lounges.

In the downtown core there were four good spots.

La Casa Cigars and Lounge. This place had a well-stocked, walk-in humidor on one side and a bar/cigar lounge on the other. The humidor had the best selection of Foundation cigars I had seen (amongst many other brands) and the prices were very good. The bar side was casual with a pub-like feel. TVs and high-topped tables and bar seating, along with a few sofas. A good place to go and watch the game. What game? Any game. We went there twice and both times it was busy with a crowd, friendly, and a bit loud. A comfortable neighbourhood kind of place. It is also quite close to the baseball stadium, so it made for a good pre and post-game cigar spot.

The London Chop House aka LCH Cigar Lounge. I wrote about this place in my other Detroit post. It is a proper, old fashioned steak joint with all of the manly décor you would expect. It is dark, and fancy, yet cozy, with live jazz and a steakhouse-y menu. Iceberg wedge salads, garlic mashed potatoes, and various cuts of meat. Great cocktails and service. You cannot smoke in the restaurant, but upstairs is a bar with a small walk-in humidor and that bar is cigar friendly. You could go and visit only the lounge, but I think skipping the restaurant would be a mistake. It is just the perfect atmosphere, and I say this as a vegetarian. There was literally nothing on the menu that I could eat apart from asparagus and salad, and I still recommend it for the ambience, music, and service. (And the cigars, obviously.)

Uralli Cigar Bar. This is place is inside the Detroit Club – a private members’ club. The kind of place where there is a dress code and men go after a long day at the office to drink and avoid going home to their families. While you need to be a member to go to the Club, membership is not required for the cigar bar. The Club looks quite exclusive and I worried I would be stopped at the door, but I wasn’t and I was able to go to the second floor to Uralli Cigar Bar. It is a bit of a weird room. The whole building is old, but somehow this room feel less old; maybe like it was renovated (more1980s than 1880s). That said, I had a great time. It was very quiet when I arrived about 10:30pm). Just two people at the bar: a couple from Detroit. They were very friendly and they and the bartender and I chatted for over an hour as I enjoyed a cigar and a cocktail. They did have a small selection of cigars for sale, but I didn’t check them out as I had my own and, after a few cocktails already that evening, my attention to detail was waning. I would have happily stayed for another round, but it was late and I was pushing the limit into being tipsy.

Did it My Way Detroit Cigar and Wine Bar. The newest cigar lounge in Detroit at the time we went, this place is slick. It is fancy in a VIP, urban way with an illuminated bar, stylish lounge furniture, and cool art. Importantly, it has a big walk-in humidor for shopping as well private humidor lockers for cigar storage. We went there twice. The cocktails were great, the music was good, and the bartenders were friendly. The first time we went it was earlier in the day and it was quieter and chill; the second time it was evening and the place was hopping. Both were great experiences.

I found online many other places to smoke in and around Detroit (I regrettably did not get to Byrd’s Cigar Lounge), but only visited these four, all of which were walking distance to each other. Smoking outside in Detroit elicited no negative comments or nasty glances. It was a non-issue. At each of the smoking lounges, not only was there a varied cross section of patrons, but there were even people who did not smoke cigars enjoying the space. It dd not feel snobbish. It was so refreshing to be able to enjoy a cigar without being hidden away or segregated. Sometimes it feels like places like this are disappearing in North America, but Detroit made me and my cigars feel welcome.

Asia Vietnam Vietnam Laos trip 2024

Return to Ho Chi Minh City

I wanted to go to Laos. It was the second-to-last country in Southeast Asia that I had not visited (apart from East Timor), and it was sitting as on my map as a hole that needed to be filled; however, to get to Laos from Vancouver I would have to fly through somewhere else in Southeast Asia. I decided to fly through Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, a place I had been to before, but was happy to revisit.

I would only have a little bit more than 24 hours in Ho Chi Minh, but that was more than enough to soak up a bit of atmosphere and food since my last trip to Vietnam in 2013.

I flew direct Ho Chi Minh from Vancouver and landed late morning. Things had changed since I was last there; last time I had to send my passport away to the embassy in Ottawa to get a visa. This time, I had to only do an e-visa online, which was quick and painless. It was not painless in terms of the giant queues at the airport for people with their e-visas, but I paid a little bit extra to have somebody walk me to the front of the queue. When they first approached me about this, I thought it was a scam, but it was well worth it as it probably shaved about an hour off my airport time.

I took a taxi from the airport to my hotel. I was staying at Little Saigon Boutique Hotel. It was small and located in the interior of one of those dense city blocks in Ho Chi Minh where if you can penetrate the perimeter buildings to get to the centre of the block, there’s a reasonably pleasant network of alleyways, hidden coffee shops, residences, and small hotels. This place was great. It was walking distance to pretty much everything that I wanted to do, it had free Wi-Fi, comfortable beds, an astonishingly good free breakfast, and I had my own room and a private bathroom. It was about $50 CDN per night. There were cheaper options, but after such a long flight I didn’t want to bother with hostels or staying further out of the city centre. I thought this place was ideal and was a welcome change from the egregiously overpriced hostel dorms in Barcelona and Stockholm that I had experienced on my last trip abroad.

I had an agenda visiting Ho Chi Minh City this time. There were no touristy things that I hadn’t done that I felt like I needed to do, and while I wanted to casually revisit a couple of sites, the main thing was I wanted to check out was Ho Chi Minh’s cigar lounges. Last time I went to Ho Chi Minh I did smoke, however, I was traveling with my mother and I did not visit any cigar lounges. Since then I’ve heard tales of an opulent and impressive La Casa Del Habano in Ho Chi Minh and I wanted to check it out.

I left my small hotel and went for a bit of a walk around the neighbourhood, passing some familiar buildings and squares. The city felt a little bit different than I remembered it. My memories of Ho Chi Minh were of a city that felt very exotic and where the streets were so thick with humming scooters, that one could barely cross the street. It didn’t feel that way this time. I must acknowledge it in the last 12 years since I was there, I’ve been to many more places in the world and perhaps it just didn’t seem as different to me as it did before. However, it’s also possible that the city too has changed. In talking to some locals, they said that there are fewer motorcycles now and more cars and that the city is more affluent. Whatever the change, it felt good, if less exciting.

I stopped by the market for a bowl of vegetarian pho with some murderous chili peppers in it and it cost me a couple of dollars for this exquisite dish. I say murderous chili peppers because while I am someone who can usually eat and indefinite amount of extra hot chili peppers without any reaction, I put several of these raw chili peppers into my soup and when the liquid splashed on my face and hands, I felt like it was on fire.

I was walking around the city and looking for a place to grab a cup of coffee and found on my map a place on an upper floor of a tall building. I decided to go up. As I was walking up the stairs I passed on the second floor a cigar store and lounge called “Siqar Lounge”. I thought I’d done my research and pinned all the cigar stores on my maps but apparently, I had missed this one. It was small and secluded, but very stylishly decorated and had big old windows that opened up and allowed me to look out onto the street where I watched a couple of scantily clad girls engaging in a photo shoot. [2025 Update: this lounge is currently closed according to Google maps.]

I walked around a little more before finally deciding to have something else to eat. I’m not even sure if I was hungry, but it was so hot outside I just wanted to escape for a little bit. I went to a restaurant called Nhau Nhau; i just stumbled across it, but it was excellent. I had some kind of a small curry and a refreshing beverage that was both citrusy and gelatinous.

But I was on a mission, I headed to the La Casa Del Habano that I had heard so much about, but first, just around the corner I found another spot. Bakolan. A dark and romantic little cocktail bar that was virtually empty, and had cigar ashtrays on the table. I went in and had a cigar feeling incredibly sophisticated and relaxed. In doing some reading after the fact, apparently it is a “hostess bar”, but none of the young ladies gave me any attention.

Finally, I went to the La Casa Del Habano. La Casas are an international chain of cigar stores that are effectively all controlled by a cigar consortium in Cuba. Unless you happen to find yourself at an entirely counterfeit La Casa Del Habano, which I have encountered twice, in Colombia and in Iraq, La Casas are reliable for having excellent stock and good product and sophisticated lounges.

A friend of mine, Stripes, with whom I had visited Cuba for a cigar festival about 10 years prior, had recently visited this lounge and recommended it to me as one of the best he had ever visited. It was everything you’d expect a normal La Casa except it had extra touches. The walk-in humidor was two or three stories high, with cigars piled high in storage on the shelves accessible only by a tall library ladder. Once you bought your cigar and moved up to the second floor, which was a well-appointed cocktail lounge, you could look through the glass window and watch the tobacconists scurrying up and down the ladder, fetching boxes of cigars. I bought a Punch Double Corona and a vodka martini and sat there for about an hour or so relaxing. I will say that of all the things that were cheap in Vietnam, the cigars at this store were not it. This little venture cost me about $130.00 CDN for the cigar and the martini. It was worth it, but I wouldn’t make it a regular hangout. (On the upper floors of the La Casa that I did not visit there is a supper club with live music.)

I walked back to my hotel, which was only about a 5-minute walk away, and went to bed. The next day my flight was at 4:00pm and I wanted to leave myself enough time to get through the airport, so I really only had the morning. I went back to the market for some local, exotic fruits and wandered around the city.

I found three more cigar lounges or stores that I didn’t know anything about but due to the early hour both of them were closed. (The Saigon Cigar Club, Habanos Specialist, and the cigar lounge at the Rex Hotel – and these are just the ones near my hotel. There are so many more in Ho Chi Minh.)

I thoroughly enjoyed my walk around the city and thought that I would be happy to return, even if just for the food and cigars. But I was Laos bound on the 4:10pm flight to Vientiane.

Central America / Caribbean Guatemala North America

Antigua, Guatemala

Prologue

I try not to mix work and travel. That isn’t always possible, and I will work on holiday if I have to, but I try to keep it minimal. But when the law firm I work at, inspired by the working for home trends we all got used to during covid, announced that we could take an extra week away in a remote work ‘workation’, I wasn’t going to let that opportunity pass by. Yes, I would have to work, but I could do it from anywhere. I realized staying in a relatively comparable time zone would be essential and I wanted to go somewhere I hadn’t been. I put on my digital nomad hat and decided on Antigua, Guatemala.

Because I spent my 9ish days in Guatemala mostly working, I’ll condense it down to three posts: one about Antigua, one about cigars in Antigua, and one about my trip to see the pyramids at Tikal.

Arriving in Antigua

I landed in Guatemala City and took a taxi to Antigua. It is cheaper to take a bus or shuttle, but my flight had been delayed by man hours and I just wanted to get where I was going with minimal hassle and delay. I chatted with my driver, Carlos, who told me mostly about the covid restrictions in Guatemala, which was masks required everywhere. Even outside and even in your own car. Of course, as he told me about this and we discovered we were of like minds, we ditched the masks. As it turned out, enforcement was minimal, so I ended up only having to mask indoors.

I had booked myself an Air BnB in the historic centre of Antigua. I am not usually a self-contained apartment rental person (I like the interactive-ness of hostels and having front desk people to answer questions and give advice; but I was there to work, so a quiet place all to myself was required. I chose well. I little one room apartment with everything I needed, including, most importantly, a pleasant courtyard with a table where I could work and a hammock where I could relax. It was simple, cute, and affordable.

That initial drive into Antigua was fabulous. It is so pretty and colorful. The whole town is a Unesco site, so nothing is out of place. All of the buildings are either low rise, colorful, Spanish colonial or grand barroco antigueño buildings. There are no billboards, no advertising, no neon – even the banks had low key signs that sort of disappeared into the overall traditional design. It looked like a movie. Or a dream.

The streets were cobbled. As we drove in, we passed the leafy central park square, which was filled with people at a crafts market, enjoying the shade, or strolling through. It seems like every block revealed some picturesque church, fruit stand, or building. And high above the buildings in the distance were volcanos – proper ones. Triangular mountains with, sometimes, plumes of smoke pouring out of the top. It was all perfect. I congratulated myself for having chosen well.

It was Saturday and it was late afternoon. By the time I left my room, it was getting dark. I used that first evening to walk around and get my bearings. I had dinner from a food cart near one of the churches (something vegetarian and spicy and crunchy with avocados for about $1) and found a cigar lounge near the yellow arch and enjoyed a Cuban cigar before walking back for bed. Antigua felt totally safe, and I did walk around at all hours of the day and night without issue.

The real sightseeing would be the next day – Sunday – before I started my workweek.

Sunday Sightseeing

As this was probably going to be my one free day to see Antigua, I didn’t have time to waste. I got up and out early. The air was beautiful. Warm and sunny, but not hot. I walked out onto the streets which seemed to be lined with trees and bursts of colored flowers at every turn. And this is on top of the colorful and cute buildings. Everything was charming.

Antigua doesn’t have a bunch of big sights or attractions. The attraction is the town itself, for how pretty and well preserved it is. And it does not disappoint. I walked up and down almost all the main streets that day, stopping into churches and cafes as I went.

The local transportation is even charming: colorful and shiny “chicken buses” (repurposed and highly decorated old formerly yellow school buses) rolling down the cobbled streets.

I visited the market at the park and walked down the street with the distinctive yellow arch, which was originally built as a passageway to allow nuns to get from a building on one side of the street to the other.

It definitely feels touristy in Antigua, but as it was still covid times, the tourists were not overrunning the place and it is still certainly a place where people live and work. Most of the people I encountered didn’t speak English (or spoke only very little). And it didn’t feel like all of the businesses were there to cater to tourists only.

There are museums, but I skipped them. I was worried about running out of time to do my aimless wandering.

I think a day in Antigua would be good to see it; two if you want to do museums and enjoy more of the restaurants; three if you want to relax. I was happy with my one day of walking and didn’t feel like I would be deprived when I sat down to work the next day. But as it turned out it was great to have the week; even though I was working, I got to experience more of the daily life and what it is like to have a routine while traveling, which was a bit novel for me.

Work Week

I’ll spare you the details of my work life, but I enjoyed this experiment in remote work. Every morning I got up ridiculously early and went on a lovely walk, each day stopping at some new café, before heading back to my abode.

I would work all day – smoking cigars the entire time – and then wrap it up around 5:00pm when I could. I work much longer days when I am at home, but I could be a bit more efficient working there as there was no chit chat and time wasting. Plus, I was motivated to finish early to I could go out.

Every evening I would walk, go to a different place for dinner or walk around some street I had missed previously, and I would go for a cigar. I have a bit to say about the cigar scene in Antigua, but I’ll put that in a separate post. Suffice it for now to say that cigars remain one of the best ways (for me) to connect with a group of people in a new place and Antigua was no exception.

Café Culture

A word about cafes: Antigua has a lot of great ones. It was overwhelming, actually. So many that were cute or historic, or trendy, or had excellent offerings of beans and methods of delivery. A lot of them had tasty food and vegetarian or vegan treats. It was great. Occasionally I spent an hour in the morning or afternoon working from the ones with wifi. I could have stayed longer to go to them all. I had this plan at one point to discuss my favourites and write little reviews, but that’s not really my thing. Just get out there and stumble on them, drink coffee, and be delighted.

Reflections

This remote work week was a nice routine. Every day when I finished work I was in a foreign city and that felt like a bonus. Like I was getting away with something.

As much as I liked Antigua, I couldn’t live there. It’s too small and I would feel trapped there not knowing how to drive; and as pretty as it is, that would lose its charm, I think. Plus, I think that when the pandemic ends, and tourism is back to normal I could see it being unpleasantly touristy, like Bali. I could probably have spent another week, but I don’t see myself looking to retire there or anything.

It was, though, relaxing. Maybe my most relaxing trip ever because there weren’t a million things to do, and I wasn’t run off my feet doing things all day. It was just work and leisurely evenings. A vacation with relaxation…what a concept. This is pretty new to me, as I tend to travel quickly. I like to learn about a place and experience it, but I don’t relax much and have a restlessness to move on. This was a different experience.

Moving on

Anyway, the last weekend I had there only gave me one more free day. I needed all day Sunday to get home, but Saturday was all mine and there was no way I was leaving Guatemala without seeing the magical-looking Tikal. But that is for another post.

Tag: cigars