In the early days of agarwood searching for the wholesale business, we encountered alot of fun and interesting bits of stuff. I will share some over here, hope it will be useful, if not good for a smile :)

The Real Tigerwood

There are many agarwood hunters hiding in various forest to search for the highly resinated pieces to sell for a high price. Among all, most of them are very skillful, able to spot agarwood trees in the area just by looking at tree leaves from a far distance.

Some of them are recruited by their friends or families into the harvesting, of course in business, some may ventured into their own group of agarwood harvesting once they know a tricks of two in getting them. There was this particular newcomer group who contacted us and ask us if we need some agarwood, we told them on the phone, if the wood are legally harvested with proper paper works from the forestry department, we will be interested, so we told them some grades and tigerwood would be ok for us to go down for sample viewing. Over the phone, they seems to be very confident of meeting our requirements and promise we will not be dissappointed when we go down.

Once we reached the rural areas, there was a few bags of wet white and yellowish wood, maybe not agarwood but when we asked about tigerwood, their reply was, "the tiger has just left our forest area, we will trace down the tiger to find the tigerwood.."  Maybe the crawls has something to do with tigerwood resination? lol :)

Images credit to Shahbaz.111287 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Read more about Tigerwood type agarwood over here


On the List number 2 : The unexpected "treasure" during wood harvesting trips


If you frequent the villagers or hunter's home for agarwood purchase, you are in for some little suprise on the range of products they offer besides the usual agarwood: Here's a small list of them, not the full version.

Product Number 1 besides agarwood :  Porcupine bezoar.

These are very good natural products for chinese medicine,only if the thing is real..most of the time,you will find lots of fake products, all with painkillers added, some uses flour, added some grasses on the surface and many more. The real ones are grind in powder form and a small amount cost alot of money.




Product Number 2 besides agarwood : Gecko

These Gecko are like the Philippine agarwood of the lizard spieces.


Image credit to youtuber taylor nicole dean, very cute.

They became "famous out of the blue" and there are high prices for certain gecko which grows to a certain weight and size. I highly suspect that there was a group of businessman behind their "mlm" style business model to earn some good profit out of these cute gecko. Some even says it can cure AIDS, stories about using gun during business deals are quite creative, a bit pity that some cash rich hospital group didnt have one giant gecko in their consultation room for a quick bite and miracle treatment for their patients.


Product Number 3 besides agarwood : Tongkat Ali




Now, this is a very good herbs for guys, promotes better blood circulation and among all the treasures offered at the Asli's mini mart, Tongkat ali is very affordable in price and safe to consume, depending on various individuals. Tongkat ali has been the booster for man for many years, taste bitter and used in various products such as coffee mix.  Comes with white, black and red color, some are very artistic shape roots which we keep some for decoration.


Product Number 4 besides agarwood : Gemstones



A small  number of Agarwood hunters or villagers are very artistic people. You can see from the rings they DIY themselves, gemstones are very common products which they would love to share with you.

Again, some are real and some deals are too good to be true. Open your eyes wide if you intend to buy some expansive gemstone from them. I love gemstones and we have quite a collection at home, if it is not expansive, why not support the Asli or villager's new business venture besides the not so easy agarwood trade?

There are endless of wonderul products from the forest and when i have time, i will add more of this to my agarwood information portal. Hopefully these products may improves the life of agarwood villagers and workers.