Fred Frederikse: Place where the boys light up

TAKING NOTICE: Having a breather in historic Georgetown, Malaysia, a World Heritage site.

IN New Zealand my brand of 20s is nearly $25, and you have to wait while they are retrieved from a plain grey cupboard.

The most expensive cigarettes in Asia are in Singapore ($15) and they are displayed in full view but there are severe restrictions about where one can smoke.

In Malaysia they drop to $5 and people smoke where they like. Crossing to Sumatra (in Indonesia) a soft packet of 12 filterless (hand rolled) cigarettes costs just over a dollar.

One of the pleasures of Indonesia is the food and there is nothing like finishing a warung meal with a kopi susu (coffee and sweetened condensed milk) and a Surya filter ($2.20 for a packet of 16). Apart from a little clove they are pure tobacco grown on a fertile Indonesian volcano - a connoisseur's cigarette.

The other men in the warung would be doing the same and the cooks and wait staff smoked while they worked. Around 60 per cent of Indonesian men smoke but only 5 per cent of women do. Only "wild women" smoke, I was told.

It is hot in Sumatra and apart from a roof a warung is completely open to the air. It is permitted to smoke on the buses, the driver and conductor certainly will be, but all the windows would be open.

About the only place you see a "dilarang merokok" (no smoking) sign is in a petrol station (regular petrol 70c/lite).

Flying from Medan in Sumatra to Penang Island in Malaysia we discovered that historic Georgetown was completely "Smokefree" - streets, buildings, everything. It was part of the terms and conditions of becoming a Unesco World Heritage Site, but that everyone ignored it.

We happened to be in Georgetown for Malaysia's militaristic National Day parade. The soldiers, posted to protect the dignitaries on stage were lounging around smoking under a "Smokefree Georgetown" sign.

In 17th century Japan, the Tokogawa Shogun banned tobacco smoking in 1609, 1612, 1615 (twice) and 1616. By the time of the fifth ban, the Shogun's own bodyguards were smoking openly in front of him.

In 1625, the ban was repealed and within 15 years the Japanese had adopted the Native American custom of offering visitors a pipe of welcome. Currently Japan has the world's longest average life expectancy and world's third highest smoking rate.

The duty free tobacco allowance for Singapore is zero and at the other end of the scale China, Japan and Vietnam allow you to bring in 400 cigarettes and Laos allows 500.

New Zealand has an allowance of only 50 cigarettes. Tobacco doesn't show up on a baggage scanner so - at 1000 per cent mark-up - it is not unusual in Auckland to see cigarette packets with health warnings written in Mandarin.

**When Fred Frederikse is not building, he is a self-directed student of geography and traveller. In his spare time he is co-chairman of the Whanganui Musicians Club.