After office hour, it was about 7 pm, going with another three women by car, drove fast split the freeway. "let's go ladies" Yupiii...Our destination is a well known cigarette museum of the biggest cigarette factory in Surabaya. Located in old city, north part of Surabaya, at 6 Taman Sampoerna street, House of Sampoerna is one of cultural travelling place which use one stop tourist destination concept.
Before moving towards 1st building called museum, at glance I saw the old roll royce car stand toughly outside building as memorized of how wealthy the family was on Japanese agresion in Indonesia. Entered the 1st part of this building,tobacco flavour touched my memory about my childhood. My father worked at tobacco company some years ago, so I was familiar with this plant. My father often asked me to accompany him to go around the tobacco field, and warehouse. I could touch, smell, and see proccess from leaves to go to bamboo box packaging and be ready to be sold to cigarette fabric or being export to Bremen,Germany. It was really a wonderful time for me and I felt to rewind that memory.
Beside tobacco leaves, I could see clove, cigarette packed from years to years, cigarette machine, pictures of the Sampoerna founder and their history from past till now. So far I felt it's like going to Cuba and visiting a cigar factory.
This museum described in details about Sampoerna family trading history and offered a truly unique experience for visitors. This place is still doing its function as cigarette factory as well in the back side of this compound, but in manual and traditional way on covering cigarette.At the morning to noon visitor can closely watching a real hand-roll production facility and ending up with an unforgettable experience of rolling a stick of Dji Sam Soe cigarette. visitors can join the 3.900 women in this plant, hand-rolling cigarettes using traditional equipment. They do it at a speed of more than 325 sticks per hour. It was good idea. The museum itself was built to accomodate many requests from university students and others to visit factory as they wanted to share with the public the history of Sampoerna, the struggle of the owner and family to make Sampoerna a success
Another part of this Sampoerna complex are art gallery, souvenir store, empty old house of Sampoerna family and cafe.
The cafe itself are located besides the museum. Past and modern atmosphere combined in one air harmoniously. With the touch of art deco, a splash of creativity and a dash of history, the café offered a unique sensory and culinary experience. Waow! Blending original painted and leaded glass windows and century old carved teak panels with clean modern design, the café is indeed and experience that you should not miss. A wide selection of Western and Asian flavors is especially prepared to satisfy even the most discerning of visitors.
It was our last tour by going to Sampoerna cafe. Felt fascinated, impressed and proud of the interior make us keep in silent and just said wow!wow! Dark light brought us to candle light dinner someday with our lovers. There were two places separated for smoking and non smoking area. They offered western and traditional food in good taste and look.The price is fine for cafe level. To complete their existance, "A" logos are always used on glasses and plates. Logos of Sampoerna.
Hmmm, as we already had dinner outside, before arriving here, so we just ordered light meal, a cup of hot chocolate, french fries and meat bread. It was enough to accompany us feeling different air! Heard from the waiter that on selected evenings, live music performances will accompany visitor dinning experience. We were not lucky this time.
Good trip for that night. Hoping to go there again, keen to experience another style and atmoshpere.
Inspite of having bad judgement that smoking is not good for healthy, we just want to spend our time by adding some experience of our city history. Great nations will appreciate their culture! Correct?? Absolutely!
