The bong has its origins in Thailand, Laos and the surrounding areas, where it consisted basically of a hollowed-out length of bamboo shoot which was used to inhale the smoke from herbal mixtures through a filter of water, which also acted to cool the smoke and could be scented for an enhanced effect.
The bong is probably the ancestor of the hubble-bubble or hookah, transforming and developing as it passed along the old trade routes, and is familiar in this form in the cafes and bazaars of Syria, Iran, Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries.
The basic bong is so simple that you can easily make one yourself from an air-tight container with a hole in one end for the air and a slide apparatus to trap the smoke before it filters through the water. It is a little trickier than Blue Peter projects but simple instructions can be picked up from many places on the web.
However, why go to the trouble when there are so many cheap kits available? You can get the equipment and the herbs from any one of a vast number of websites dedicated to promoting legal highs in one form or another, and they will be delivered straight to your door. Websites also contain information on use and various advice and tips from fellow users.
If you are looking for a relaxing smoking experience without the harmful side effects of cigarettes and large quantities of alcohol, try a bong and see what you have been missing.
Bongs of one kind or another have a long and fascinating pedigree, and the bong is by no means a modern innovation. While some people in the West believe bongs to be a relatively new innovation, bongs have been commonly used across the Far East for many centuries, and are only “new” to Western users.
Bongs work by the essentially simple method of filtering smoke from various herbal mixtures through a water interface to rid it of harmful substances. This is known to be safer than breathing the smoke in directly, and in fact the water itself often contains aromatics designed to soothe and relax the user, so the herbs and water complement one another.
The bong is a relative of the hookah, and like that hubble-bubble it is available in a wide range of shapes and sizes, and many are still made from traditional materials. These traditional materials may be favoured by the purists and collectors, but may not be as convenient or as cheap as those made from modern synthetic materials.
The glass bong is the most popular type used nowadays, at least in the West, as there is no chance of contamination by the material, such as is the case with wooden bongs. Even aluminium and acrylic, also commonly-used materials for modern bongs, contribute some residue to the smoke before it is filtered.
Bongs are popular with aficionados of legal highs, although vaporisers deliver a faster and stronger hit because the mild hallucinogens in the vapour are not filtered out by water.
The bong has a long and distinguished history, having been first used hundreds or even thousands of years ago in the Far East, around what is modern Thailand and Laos, and it is the oldest way of smoking herbal mixtures.
A traditional bong consists of a metal tube which is inserted into the body of the device; a pipe head called a chillum is on the protruding end of the tube. The far end from the pipe head is inserted under water in order to filter the smoke and cool it down.
The preferred shape of a bong is spherical with a projecting tube, but almost any shape will produce the same effect. The original material for bongs was wood, but nowadays acrylics, plastics and glass are used in their construction, with glass the most favoured because of the reduced contamination.
Acrylic bongs are less expensive than glass ones but are more difficult to clean. In fact, any equipment that involves smoke being produced is going to leave a certain amount of tar residue. This is partly why many smokers prefer to use a vaporiser which involves no smoke at all and is widely regarded as the healthiest inhalation option.
Metal bongs can be expensive, but the big advantage they have over the other types is that they will outlive their users in most cases, unlike glass bongs which break relatively easily. They are also quite easy to clean and will not discolour as acrylic bongs do. The only drawback is that they can make the smoke taste a bit metallic.
Smoking or inhaling the particular herbal substance of your choice is an effective way to get a legal high. Therefore, many people these days are looking to buy a vaporizer or bong in order to get the best legal high they can. Smoking a bong or using a volcano vaporizer is easy.
A bong has a chamber in which water is placed. This chamber helps to filter out harsher substances and protect the smoker’s lungs. Then there is the stem, which is a piece of tubing which takes the smoke from the chamber into the cone piece, from which it is inhaled. Bongs can be made of glass, ceramics or acrylic; they can be decorative items, and can be found in a variety of patterns and colours. They also vary widely in price. You can buy them in specialist shops or online.
Glass bongs usually allow the legal high to taste best as there is less contamination. Also, glass bongs tend to look best, and be of the highest quality. Acrylic bongs are an economical choice for legal highs, whereas ceramic bongs can be found in the widest range of designs. Double chamber bongs are also popular for giving a better tasting smoke, as they allow more impurities to be burned away before you inhale.
If you don’t want to buy a bong but still want to smoke your legal high, you can make your own bong from household items. They may not be as high quality or as effective as a shop-bought bong but they are cheap and portable, as all you need is a bottle, hose and cone. These are easily replaced when necessary.
A bong, also called a water pipe, is similar to a hookah except that the bong is smaller and can be carried about. This means that the user can use the pipe and get a buzz nearly anytime and anywhere. The construction of a bong can vary slightly from unit to unit, but all consist of the basic air and watertight vessel, screened bowl and air pipe.
The word itself is derived from the Thai word ‘baung’ and refers to the bamboo apparatus used by the Hmong people in Laos and Thailand for hundreds of years to smoke hemp or other plants.
Smoking substances by using a bong is claimed by many people to be a safer and healthier alternative to cigarette smoking. Users say that the effect of the cool water prevents burning of the mouth and airways, as well as preventing much of the tar and other dangerous substances from reaching the lungs. The filtration system, it is alleged, makes what is inhaled less damaging to users than other types of smoking. Others, after testing, say that smoking using a bong is as dangerous as any other method of smoking.
Bongs have been transformed since the first bamboo pipes. Nowadays you can buy a bong made from a range of different materials including acrylic bongs, glass and ceramic. You can also buy a range of legal high substances to use with your bong that will get you in an easy mood or have you jumping and seeing stars.
Bongs are a type of water pipe that are used to smoke tobacco or herbal shisha, or a mixture of both. A bong looks similar to a hookah and serves the same purpose. The difference is that a bong is smaller and is therefore easier to carry around.
They have been used for centuries by the Hmong, an Asian ethnic group who live in regions of Thailand, Laos, China and Vietnam. We get the word bong from the Thai word baung, a word that referred to the smoking device that the people made from bamboo. In 1944, it was recorded that the Hmong used bongs to smoke the kancha tree hemp or the hemp plant.
The device works by adding a covered bowl and slide to any air and water apparatus. The slide pushes air downwards below water level which causes the upward bubbles. It is generally believed that smoking tobacco or herbal shisha through the mouthpiece of a bong is healthier and safer for the user. Some tests have confirmed this.
There are dozens of different designs of bongs, and dozens of materials that they can be made of. So, not only can you enjoy the pleasure of smoking your bong, you can spend hours admiring how good it looks.
You can choose a big bong, a little bong, even a pocket bong that is ideal for water pipe smoking wherever you are. It will fit easily into a jean pocket or a handbag.
The rather fetchingly named bong is essentially a water pipe of the type that has been used for many hundreds of years across countries of the Far East to purify smoke from herbal mixtures through a water filtration system. This is considered safer and certainly more fun than inhaling it directly and various aromatic elements can be added to the water to create soothing effects for the user.
Herbal mixtures and tobacco blends can be used in bongs, as well as other materials, and bongs are really variations on the hookah type of water pipe, coming in many shapes and forms and made from a wide range of traditional and more modern materials.
Glass bongs are often considered by purists to be the bong of choice because there is no residue given off as the smoking material burns, such as happens in the case of wood, aluminium and acrylic, which are the other materials mainly used in their manufacture.
It’s actually quite simple to make your own bong, if you want to go the whole hog, as all you need is an air- and water-tight container, to which can be added a screened bowl; then simply cut a hole in the bottom part of the bowl to allow the air to get in.
The whole idea of the bong is that the water has a cooling effect and keeps the larger molecules associated with carcinogenic effects out of the lungs. The downside is that the filtering out of tars is less efficient than the herbal filtration, so achieving the temporary high which smokers are looking for takes longer than if one were using a vaporizer, for example.
Veteran smokers will often tell you that smoking multi-pipe bongs for attaining legal highs is considerably safer than smoking their natural herbs and plant materials in blunt or joint form. These types of bongs are also called “multi-chamber” bongs and are characterized by multiple smoke accumulation chambers and multiple pipes. They were designed to facilitate multiple smokers at a social gathering so that everyone concerned would be able to enjoy their smoking experience at the same time.
College students are the primary users where legal highs and multi-pipe bongs are concerned; however, these types of bongs are popular with smokers of all ages. You can pass multi-pipe bongs around the table but they were designed to be placed in the middle of the table and enjoyed by everyone simultaneously. They are definitely a more convenient way to enjoy legal highs in a group setting. Additionally, you can find a wide array of multi-pipe bongs when you are shopping online. Just make sure that the website you are considering is one that is safe and secure.
In addition to having multiple pipes, there are also pipe channels in the interior chambers which help to filter out any of the impurities that the smoke produces. The typical multi-pipe bong is manufactured out of glass. However, they are also made from acrylic materials, ceramic materials, metal, and even wood. It’s simply a matter of personal taste and preference when it comes to choosing the type of material you want yours constructed from.
Blunts and bongs describe two objects familiar to those who like to indulge in the occasional legal high to help unwind from the rigours of everyday life and attain, for at least a couple of hours, a degree of peaceful detachment. The odd legal high helps many people keep their sense of priorities right in an increasingly demanding and often deeply alienating world.
Blunts originated with Jamaicans in New York City in the early 1980s, and are essentially cigar wrappings stuffed with a mixture of tobacco and certain herbal mixtures or blends. Some cigars are more popular than others for this purpose, and indeed the name ‘blunt’ is derived from Phillies Blunt, a popular brand of cigar, although other brands used for the same purpose include Dutch Masters and White Owl, amongst others.
The cigar leaf or paper wrapping slows down the rate of burning, so the smoke lasts longer, and also it can be extinguished and relit at will, so it is more economical than some other methods. The nicotine is said to add a kick to the herbal mixture’s hallucinogenic properties too.
The Phillies Blunt brand tastes sweeter than other brands of cigar wrapper and is apparently less harsh to the taste buds.
Bongs are a rather more sophisticated way of inhaling smoke, and are unlikely to be found in the luggage of hard core rappers, who regularly use blunts filled with something a bit stronger than aromatic herbal blends. Blunts are essentially water pipes in the style of hookahs, though they derive from the Far East rather than the Middle East.
Many people have not given a lot of thought to the advantages of using bongs compared to blunts, pipes, or vaporizers when enjoying their legal highs. The three key factors that come into play where smoking with a bong is concerned are economics, health, and variety.
Economics – when you smoke a blunt or a joint, there is considerable waste because the material you are smoking tends to burn up when you are passing it from one person to another. There is almost no waste with a bong. There is only the need to reload the bowl occasionally. The effect of smoking your herbal and plant materials in a bong is also stronger than smoking a blunt or pipe. Additionally, if you want to save some for later, it is easy to extinguish what is in the bowl and relight it later.
Health – it’s a known fact that smoking herbs for legal highs is healthier when using a bong than if you “roll your own” or make a blunt. The water in your bong will filter out the harmful impurities when you are smoking your special blend. Additionally, it cools down the smoke so the hit is smoother and you are not inhaling any tars from paper like you do with blunts or joints.
Variety – as was mentioned in a prior article, there are acrylic bongs and glass bongs, both of which are manufactured in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Be prepared for a challenge when it comes to selecting one whenever you are shopping for a bong offline or online.
