Best Place To Buy An Opium Bed

For the better part of this decade, Steve Rhodes has scoured the countrysides of India and Indonesia for traditional and ceremonial furniture, instruments, and artwork. He's carted back teak jodang boxes that are used to carry offerings to Indonesian temples and village chiefs' ceremonial drums. He's bartered for Indian tables and cabinets made from the mahogany doors of abandoned mansions located on remote stretches of the opium road. And he's obtained intricately carved opium beds, where aristocrats of yore spent entire days on their backs smoking drugs. But you'll have to pay to indulge in such exotic fare. Prices range from about $500 for a jodang box to $5000 for an opium bed. Rhodes stumbled into his livelihood in 1988 as a way to make his travel bug pay. "It was a simple plan at first: Bring back some things from a trip and sell them," the 36-year-old entrepreneur says. But simplicity has eluded him. He now has two showrooms in Miami's Design District, a Lincoln Road restaurant, a Biscayne Boulevard club, and a warehouse stocked with artifacts. He makes two trips per year. "I love discovering the traditions of other cultures," he says. "I'm very interested in how other people around the world get through life."