The old time genuine Thai Buddha Sticks were a ten inch long bamboo or hemp skewer. Small, partially dried marble sized buds would be wrapped tightly to the skewer using a thread of hemp stripped from the outer stem of a plant. The buds would then cure on the bamboo stick and stick together.
The secret was in how it was cured. Poorly sured Thai was still good, but nothing likely properly cured Thai Buddha. It was a pure sativa and I remember the first time I tried any confirmed genuine Thai. In 1980 I was working in oil search as a 'jughound' in far Western Queensland. One of the blokes that worked as Systems Engineer lived in Thailand and flew there on his time off. Back in 1980, systems engineers were hard to find. Two of these guys were paid $700 a day to keep the seismic recording truck running.
Anyway, it happened one day that I was coming back off leave the same time as he was. When we got to the Eagle Farm airport in Brisbane to get the charter plane back out to wherever it was we were working, they'd stuffed up and had four more people than the twin engine Beechcraft would hold. They solved this by giving the sys engineers a hire car. So one of my mates, the two sys engineers and I jumped in the car and headed west. Once we were out of the city and heading on the highway towards Toowoomba, these guys broke out four one paper joints and passed one each around.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, Me mate and I in the back seat laughed for an hour and slept for four. By the time we woke up, we were half way to where we were going.
How did he get the Thai sticks into the country you ask?
This guy looked like a typical computer geek of the day. He was also about 6 feet 6 inches tall. He always had a set of those big arsed headphones around his neck, attached to a Sony Walkman Cassette player (I think it was a Sony). Before he left, he just broke up all the sticks (four of them), wrapped the buds up in plastic wrap and stuck it in his headphones. He was *never* searched because he had a Thai passport and resided in Thailand. He was also a regular flier, going to different countries all year if needed. Australian Customs were easy back then too apparently.