Yearly Archives: 2014

The Markets of Bangladesh – a photo essay

We love wandering through markets, and the ones in Bangladesh stand out for two reasons; firstly, they’re very raw – by that I mean everything and it’s working are on show – live animals tied up or in cages witness their fate as butchers work at the same stall; and secondly, perhaps because we’re so obviously foreign, the stallholders invited us to take pictures of them, or of their fellow sellers.

Just by being curious, smiling, and saying a few words in Bengali, we got some amazingly candid photos. Here are some of our favourites from the markets of Bangladesh..

The first seller in Bangladesh to request his portrait from us – Betel leaf seller, Dhaka

Then the two guys at the next stall wanted their photo taken too – Betel nut sellers, Dhaka

Butcher having a cigarette after a hard days work, Dhaka

More friendly butchers, Dhaka

This whole spices seller saw us taking photographs and quickly nipped back into his stall to get his photo taken as well, Dhaka

Florist making a sale, Rajshahi

Jaggery (uncentrifuged sugar) seller, Rajshahi

Entrepreneurial jaggery (uncentrifuged sugar) seller who stopped us walking past so we could sample his wares then happily posed for a photo, Rajshahi

One of Julie’s favourite portraits, a poultry seller, Rajshahi

This lovely greengrocer who was pointed at by all the stallholders around him to have his photo taken. He didn’t say a word or break his smile. Rajshahi

Our favourite of a line of fishmongers in Rajshahi. Cross-eyed and still has all of his fingers!

When this coconut seller asked for his photo, I gestured for him to hold a coconut as his stand was quite sparse, and look what he pulled out – what a lovely pair! Dinajpur

We love the early evening light and the beaming smile of this greengrocer in Dinajpur.

Young chicken seller, Dinajpur

A very happy fishmonger having a tea break, Dinajpur

Fishmonger, Dinajpur

Father and son grocers, Dinajpur

Very good value greengrocers, Dinajpur

Onion and garlic seller, Dinajpur

A herb seller emanating inner peace, Dinajpur

Tobacconist, Dinajpur

Fruit seller hanging bunches of grapes, Dinajpur

Mymensingh and Birisiri, Bangladesh

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Our final excursion into the Bangladeshi countryside was in the very north of the country. We travelled by train due north from Dhaka to the town of Mymensingh and then another 3 hours by bus to the village of Birisiri, close to the border with India.

Mymensingh

Arriving in Mymensingh mid-afternoon we set out for a wander in the town to check out the handful of sights listed in the Lonely Planet. The old rajbari (landowner’s home) built in 1905 is now a teacher training college. As there was no one guarding the gate we just wandered in along with some locals who also looked to be out for a stroll.

Mymensingh Rajbari, complete with classical fountain out front

Around the back there is a pretty pond and the remains of what was the ladies’ bathing house

The next morning before catching the bus to Birisiri we decided to have a look around the market and twisting streets of the old town. At 9am the market was buzzing, it was heaving with people and as we squeezed down the narrow gaps between the stalls trying not to get in the way even we were feeling too overwhelmed to take photos. There was a pen full of goats at one end of a line of butchers shops, fishmongers gutting and descaling fish, and men carrying huge piles of vegetables around on their heads.

In lieu of taking lots of market photos, we stopped at a barbers shop for Andrew to get a haircut. It was under a narrow shelter on a street side and didn’t seem to be supplied with electricty so it was a scissor cut rather than the usual clippers and finished off around the edges with a cut-throat razor.

Birisiri

The bus to Birisiri left from the chaotic Bridge bus stand in Mymensingh. As buses in Bangladesh don’t have any English signage, and in any case this bus stand was more like a field haphazardly filled with buses rather than a well ordered bus station, we took our usual course of action in such a circumstance: wander around saying the name of our destination to anyone who looks at us and following their vague arm waving until we reach a bus where the conductor is shouting frantically and gesturing like “Come on, come on, the bus is late and you’re holding it up”. As if any bus in Bangladesh has ever run to any kind of schedule, actually he’s just trying to fit as many bodies as possible into its creaking shell.

I was alarmed when getting off the bus to notice these holes below our seats where our daysacks had been stowed…

By the middle of the afternoon we arrived in the village of Birisiri to find ourselves hemmed in by a group of very keen young rickshaw drivers (there’s obviously a lack of business here and a pair of foreigners is a good prospect). We declined their offers in favour of a stretch of our legs after three hours squeezed into a bus seat, but undeterred they followed us in convoy to the guidebook’s top pick of guesthouse where we found no rooms available. So we walked back towards the main road to our next choice followed by a chorus of ‘Please sit down’ while trying not to get our legs or bags tangled in rickshaw wheels. Fortunately Swarna Guesthouse had a (very cheap and surprisingly clean) room available.

Hemmed in by rickshaws

The people of Birisiri are largely from the minority Garo people who are thought to originate from the Tibetan plateau, we definitely noticed that some of the locals had distinctive cheekbones. Another thing we noticed was that the women seemed to be more forward here than elsewhere in Bangladesh, though we’d found women before who were friendly and looking for a chat they were in the minority whereas in Birisiri the women stared, smiled and shouted out hello as often as the men, I’m not sure if this is a difference between the countryside and the city, or because the Garo people have a matrilineal culture (property is handed down the female line although decisions are still usually made by the men), or because they’re largely Christian rather than Muslim or Hindu as the rest of the country. Perhaps a mix of all three.

Garo lady and shy baby

One of the churches in Birisiri

That evening we (well, mainly Andrew) negotiated with one of the entrepreneurial young rickshaw drivers for a boat trip to the China Clay Hills the next morning. His English was limited, but with the aid of pictures, charades and writing down numbers we had some kind of excursion booked for 8am and an agreed price.

It turned out to not be quite what we’d envisaged, travelling by rickshaw most of the way and then upriver to a mission and back by boat before continuing by rickshaw, but our driver Jewel was a good companion and it was fun to see some of the rural life even if we felt like our bones were being shaken to bits by the bumpy roads.

Pulling the rickshaw up onto a bridge on the way to the river

Jewel showing that he is a man of many talents, expertly rowing the boat

Us looking a little windswept on the Someswari River

Ranikhong Mission: school from the river, church and monument commemorating the first missionary invited to visit the area

Although really the day was more about seeing the countryside, our nominal destination was the China Clay Hills, a small area of low mounds where the clay is mined for pottery and the lakes in the depressions are a startling turquoise.

Lush green countryside from the back of the rickshaw

Lake and China Clay Hills

By the end of the day we felt that we knew Jewel well enough for Andrew to ask him if he could have a go at driving the rickshaw for the last section, something he’d been itching to do since our first ride in one four weeks earlier in Dhaka. It was pretty hard work even on the flat, but he was glad to have had the chance to give it a try. We caused a fair bit of amusement amongst the other rickshaw drivers rolling back into Birisiri with Andrew at the helm and Jewel sitting in the back with me!

In charge of a rickshaw!

Muktagacha

On our last afternoon back in Mymensingh we took a local bus to the nearby town of Muktagacha with another impressive rajbari and a sweet shop which is famous throughout the land. The caretaker of the rajbari was keen to give us a tour, he only spoke a limited amount of English so we couldn’t get into details but it was enough to get the gist of the place. It looks as if the Department of Archaeology is renovating the place so it’s likely to be even more impressive if less atmospheric in future.

Renovation work underway on the facade of Muktagacha Rajbari

Inside the rajbari (clockwise from top left): Shiva temple columns, zamindar’s house, buildings in disrepair, us in the central courtyard

Afterwards we made our way to Gopal Pali Prosida Monda Sweet Shop to sample the monda. These sweets are made from grainy sweetened yoghurt and were nice enough although they weren’t my favourite of the sweets that we tried in Bangladesh (but then I’m no connosieur!). The former zamindar (landowner) must have been impressed though, because when he tried the sweets 200 years ago he promptly employed the sweetmaker as part of his personal staff and it was only with Partition in 1947 that the zamindar’s family left for India and the sweetmaker’s descendants opened up the shop which has been doing a brisk trade ever since.

There’s a lion over the door of Gopal Pali Prosida Monda Sweet Shop, monda sweets

Srimongol, Bangladesh

Day 1 – Cycling around the Tea Plantations

The first day was a self-guided bicycle ride through the tea, pineapple and rubber tree plantations that surround the town. After being shown the bikes we were waved off without a map or suggested route. A little bemused, we referred to our trusty Lonely Planet which, handily, is very small for Bangladesh but nonetheless has a good map of Srimongol and headed off in search of tea.

Hindu woman picking tea in Srimongol. The tea pickers are direct descendants of the original Indian immigrants imported by the British

The pickers often work in groups, and it’s not uncommon to see a family working a section of the plantation together, though typically the women do the picking as their hands are nimbler for taking the two leaves and the bud.

Tea is the main crop of the area, but we also found fields of small pineapples, and on the flatter ground are rows of rubber trees.

Srimongol is also famous for its small sweet pineapples, and for producing rubber

As we made our way back towards the guest house, we picked up an escort of local kids keen to keep pace with us..

Local kids joining us for a bike ride

To round off our day, we stopped at the famous Nilkantha Tea Cabin, where another of Srimongol’s entrepreneurs has created a 7-layer tea – each layer is different in taste and colour!

Julie and I wondering how to tackle Romesh Ram Gour’s famous 7 layer tea

Here are our tasting notes as we tried to drink each layer separately (without the aid of a straw)..

[Top] – Cinnamon or nutmeg, which may have been the powder floating on the top
Milk tea with a hint of coffee. Possibly made with condensed milk
Bad Bangladeshi chocolate, with a very faint taste of tea
Definitely ginger
Dark layer – tastes of cloves
Very sweet milky tea. More sugar than tea
[Bottom] – Lemon, also very sweet

Day 2 – Lowacherra National Park

As we were staying near the end of the main tourist season, the guest house wasn’t busy and we had Tapas all to ourselves for the Lowacherra national park tour. After a very nice introduction to the wider Srimongol area and history of the National Park itself, the three of us headed off on a little used trail that really felt like we were trekking through jungle.

Tapas was great at pointing out the various plants, trees and wildlife as we made our way through the park.

Clockwise from top-left: Very shy but curious Phayre’s Leaf Monkey; Woodpecker; Horned spider (that you can pick up by the horns!); One of countless large butterflies we saw

After a spot of lunch we retired back to our room for a short rest before we headed out to the Madabpore Tea Estate which contains a large man-made lake. This tea plantation is owned by the Government, and as such the lake is open to visitors. Tapas had timed it so that we could catch the sunset..

Sunset over Madabpore “Lotus Leaf Lake”

Day 3 – Boat trip to the wetlands, local village and pottery class

We were the only guests on the final day of our tour, which started early with a trip just outside the town’s limits to the nearby wetlands.

As we were there at the end of March, the water level was reaching its lowest point of the year before the rainy season gets going in May but there was still plenty of water covering the fields. As we waited for our small boat to arrive, we watched the men from the local villages walk past – some with fishing rods or traps and others with a knife and long pole for harvesting and carrying the reeds to sell as cattle feed in the market.

Carrying the reeds to market, and a fisherman with a trap

After a short wait our boat arrived and took us through the narrow channels connecting the water-logged fields. Tapas pointed out the odd sight here and there but it was a lovely relaxing man-powered cruise. As there was little noise, we saw a lot of insects and birds, and Tapas had another surprise in store for us.. as we were on our way back, we veered left into a pond full of spectacular flowering lotuses

Floating through a lotus pond, with the lotuses at eye level was an experience we’ll never forget

On the way home we found our route blocked by bathing water buffalo and cattle egrets..

Water buffalo out for a swim

After a spot of lunch we headed north to a local village to see how local pottery is made. We watched as the very humble potter spent ages working a lump of local clay with his feet before chopping it up into small batches with hands, then setting up his stone wheel which is just that – a large stone wheel that sits on a metal ball bearing.

Once seated, he spun the wheel, deftly threw down a chunk of clay dead centre of the wheel and turned 5 lamps, 3 water jugs and a money box in the space of five minutes..

Mr Master Potter. Clockwise from top-left: Preparing the clay by foot; Setting up the wheel; Water jug; Piggybank

Then it was our turn..

Our first attempt at pottery, out in the Bangladeshi countryside. Where’s Demi Moore when you need her?
Clockwise from top-left: Andrew Potter’s first pottery – a simple lamp; Julie Potter’s first pottery – a simple lamp; Andrew Potter makes a piggybank; Julie Potter at the wheel; Andrew Potter turns out a water jug

I’d always wanted to try my hand at pottery and it was really good fun! As we were saying our goodbyes, Mr Master Potter rushed off and came back with two finished clay moneyboxes which was a lovely surprise and a fantastic memento of our time in Srimongol.

Oh, and we stopped for one more try of the famous 7-layer tea on the way home..

One last glass of 7 layer tea

Bangladeshi food

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If I tell you that Indian restaurants in the UK are usually owned by Bangladeshis and hence serve Bengali food then anyone who knows my preference for Indian takeaway at home will immediately know that I really loved the food in Bangladesh! We found the food to be more mellow and with a more rounded flavour than the bright and sharp tastes of the SE Asian countries, and while it can still pack a punch it wasn’t anywhere near as chilli packed as some of the dishes we tried in Thailand.

Breads

After travelling through the almost bread-free zone of eastern Asia where if you get bread at all it is sweet and with an almost cakey texture, it was great to find bread on the menu again. In Bangladesh, flatbreads are eaten at all times of the day and are often cooked on the street outside the restaurant.

The easiest way to spot a restaurant is to look for the guy at the bread station out front

We came across three main types. Rotis are flatbreads cooked without fat, they’re soft and a nice way to scoop up your curry. Parathas were perhaps the most common, again flatbreads but this time fried on a griddle and sometimes with delicious flaky layers like a good puff pastry. Finally, Andrew’s favourite the naan roti which is cooked stuck onto the inside of a domed oven and puffs up nicely.

Rotis, parathas, and naan roti

Rice

Curry type meals in restaurants are generally served with rice unless you specifically ask for bread and a whole plate of plain boiled rice will be placed in front of you with the meat and/or vegetables served in separate small dishes – a difference to the UK where the meat is very much the main part of the meal, here it is just enough to taste, an indication of the expense of meat compared to the amount an average Bangladeshi has to spend on their meal.

A full plate of rice with a little bit of curry and some vegetables

Biryanis were available all over and were a delicious and filling meal. The rice is fried with a small amount of meat (mutton, chicken or beef) and served with a side of curry sauce.

Beef biryani with curry sauce and salad

Dal

Dal, or curried lentils, became a mainstay for us during the month. Breakfast was usually parathas, dal and mixed vegetables. The lentils used were often chana dal (split chickpeas) but split mung beans were also common. It’s usual to have a side of dal with a more substantial meal too to moisten that mountain of rice.

Breakfast! (Dal front right)

We saw a bean stew being served up from street stands on a couple of occassions too but otherwise beans didn’t seem to be commonly used.

Vegetables

Surprising to us was the prevalence of cucumbers. Both cucumbers and carrots are commonly sold on the street (peeled and partially split to form fingers) from big trays as a snack, usually with a hefty shake of salty spice. And a plain cucumber salad appears alongside pretty much every lunch or dinner meal for no charge – I definitely found it useful for reducing the burn on more fiery dishes!

Cucumber side salad, just watch out for the raw chillis!

A mixed vegetable curry (shobji) is a common dish served at breakfast time. Aubergines, cauliflowers, spinach and potatoes are commonly used as vegetables as well as a small bitter gourd type vegetable which looks a bit like a wrinkled up cucumber.

Fruit

On our first day in Dhaka we saw prepared pineapple for sale. Coming from SE Asia where chopped fruit is commonly sold on the street we thought it would be a refreshing snack – we weren’t expecting it be shaken in a mustard dressing before being given to us – it was so potent that I thought it might have left a hole in my tongue! Otherwise fruit was widely available with bananas, oranges, and pomegranates all providing us with much needed vitamins. It’s just a shame that the mangos weren’t in season.

Mustard-spiked pineapple

Meat

Meat was either mutton (goat more often than sheep), chicken or occassionally beef. We didn’t seen any pork – it’s forbidden to Muslims. These are served in one of two ways, either with a curried masala sauce (of which there are different varieties but often only one at a time available in a given restaurant) or marinated and grilled as kebabs.

Meat dishes (clockwise from top left): amazing fried mutton kidney that we had on our first night in Dhaka, chicken masala, mutton kebabs, tandoori chicken leg

Fish

Bangladesh sits astride the deltas of several enormous rivers. With that much water in the country it’s hardly surprising that fish is a staple. We saw stalls selling dried fish, but fresh seemed to be most common. It was usually served in a masala sauce but we also had it fried and grilled.

A proud fishmonger in Srimongol, fried fish as part of a buffet meal, fish curry

Street snacks

There are lots of different kinds of street snacks, usually a parcel wrapped up in dough and deep fried. Samosas and pakoras you might have heard of, but puri (saucer sized rounds with various fillings) and shingra (balls filled with a potato mixture) were new to us. A favourite of ours were mouglai, large sheets of dough wrapped around an often egg based filling to form a kind of flat envelope shape. Freshly cooked with the ubiquitous cucumber side salad they were a fast and filling light meal.

Clockwise from left: Frying up mouglai on a street in Khulna, masala puris with sauce and salad, shingra and samosa, delicious lentil and onion pakoras for an afternoon snack on the Sundarbans cruise

Drinks

Tea (cha) is the drink of choice in Bangladesh. It’s served in small glasses from street stands everywhere. It comes in two varieties, one with milk (dudh cha) and one without (lal cha, literally red tea), both are very sweet. Milk tea is sometimes made with condensed milk, but is better when made with fresh milk kept at boiling point in a big pan next to the tea kettle. Black/red tea is sometimes pepped up a little with the addition of whole spices, we had at various times, a piece of root ginger, a clove, and a piece of Indian bay leaf. The tea is poured from the kettle over fresh tea leaves in a strainer and into the glass.

Andrew enjoying a cup of dudh cha, tea stand with a pan of boiling milk and a kettle of tea, black/red tea with added Indian bay leaf

Alcohol is not widely available in Bangladesh as it is illegal for Bangladeshis (or Muslim ones at least) to buy it. Many soft drinks are available in restaurants from the familiar Coke, Sprite and 7Up to less familiar local brands. A more traditional local drink is lassi, made from yoghurt and served in sweet or salty versions. It’s a good way to cool your mouth down if your meal was a bit on the spicy side.

Lassi, Bengali for ‘Coca Cola’, Drinking from a coconut

Sweets

Bangladeshis definitely have a sweet tooth and traditional sweet shops are common in every town. These sell lots of very sweet small cakes as well as sweetened yoghurt (misti doi) in clay pots – a favourite of ours! We also tried jalebi, deep fried dough swirls soaked in sugar syrup, for the sake of your teeth it’s probably best to only have one, but they’re very good.

A wide array of sweets in a Dhaka sweetshop

All tried in the interests of research – honest! Including jalebi (top left) and misti doi (bottom right)

Not really a sweet, but the bill often arrived with a plate of fried fennel and/or coriander seeds to aid digestion and freshen the breath

12 month summary

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We have now reached the one year anniversary of our two year trip! Here’s our summary of the last three months.

Meeting elephants in Chiang Mai, pretending to be Buddhas at Sukhothai Historical Park in Thailand, the iconic Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, we commandeered a rickshaw in Birisiri in northern Bangladesh

Countries visited in the last three months (1st January to 31st March)

Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh (total visited to date on this trip = 12)

Have you managed to stay within your budget (£70 per day)? And what has been the expense breakdown?

Easily within budget, our average daily spend over the three months has been £50.59. Our daily spend to date since we left home has been £62.40.

Bangladesh has been an incredibly cheap place to travel with March’s spend bumped up only by flights and our 3 day tour to the Sundarbans. Our record day was just £9.32 including a 3 hour bus journey, an ensuite room, food for the day and a haircut for Andrew!

Accommodation is again the biggest expense at 34.0% – half of the quarter was spent in Chiang Mai and the apartment we stayed in was relatively expensive.
Guides and tours – 16.9%. We took some expensive tours in Thailand and Bangladesh including spending a day with elephants, taking a Thai cookery class and 3 days in the Sundarbans National Park
Food is next highest at 16.4% – just £8.30 per day for both of us. Eating out is tasty and inexpensive in Thailand and Bangladesh, again for much of the time we were living in the apartment in Chiang Mai and cooking for ourselves – also fairly inexpensive.
Intercity transportation was 10.0%. Lower than other quarters as we were settled in Chiang Mai for half of the time, over half of the spend in this category is our flights from Kuala Lumpur to Dhaka.
Alcohol was 7.3% this quarter. This is wholly accounted for by the first two months as alcohol is extremely restricted in Bangladesh and we only had one small can of beer each during our whole month there!
Local transportation was very low at just 2.4%. This includes hiring motorbikes several times in Thailand and many, many very cheap rickshaw rides in Bangladesh.

What has surprised you most in the last three months of travel?

Julie – That we would need to take a break from travelling. It sounds crazy that anyone would need a holiday from a holiday but by November we were pretty burnt out and exhausted from almost constant sightseeing and movement (albeit at a reasonably relaxed pace) and we were craving a place where we could slow down, unpack and catch up on admin (blogging, photo uploads, Skype with family back home). I’m pleased to report that after two months of rest we were again raring to go!

Andrew – How much we rely on the internet. For something that’s only been around for about 25 years to have dramatically altered the way we research and plan our travel is astounding to me. Perhaps it’s because we feel more comfortable about a place or a journey if we’ve got an idea of what to expect, but going from the high-speed wifi everywhere connected of Thailand and Malaysia to the no-speed wifi rarely-where of Bangladesh was both frustrating and liberating. I think it’s definitely more of an adventure to say “we’ll get a bus from here to there” and see what happens, than “we’ll get bus XYZ that departs every hour from ABC station, takes 3½ hours and arrives at DEF station, 1km to the west of the centre of town.” The good news is that even with access to the internet we can still choose to be a little more adventurous.

Apart from family and friends, what are you missing most about life in the UK?

Taking tap water for granted. We boiled water in Thailand, we were encouraged to drink water from the cooler in Malaysia, and in Bangladesh – a country that by one estimate we heard ¼ is covered in water – it was hot and we drank a lot of bottled water. There were a few bouts of the Bengali Bowels after we forgot now and then, but most places we stayed included a large bottle of water with the room rate.

What’s the most memorable sight that you’ve seen in the last three months?

Julie – The temples of Puthia in north-western Bangladesh really blew me away with their abundant carvings but the day I really remember is the day that we were elephant owners in Thailand.

Andrew – The flora and fauna of the Sundarbans is a very close second, but for me it’s the modern splendour of the Wat Rong Khun or White Temple in Chiang Rai. It’s a fairytale palace of decadent detail that I hope I’m still alive to see completed in 2070 – I’ll be into my 90s by then!

Tell us a funny story from the last three months of travel.

Julie – On the train ride from Rajshahi to Joypurhat in western Bangladesh our window was missing the bolt that would hold it open. We fashioned a bit of a wedge from some paper which wasn’t ideal but better than nothing. The two Bangladeshi ladies sitting opposite noticed our struggles and (unprompted by us) mentioned the problem to the ticket inspector when he came round. A couple of minutes later, a uniformed porter appeared, grudgingly fiddled with the window for a few seconds before slamming it shut and then unbolted and shut the ladies’ window as well! The older of the ladies remonstrated with him but he grumpily shrugged and walked off. We caught their eye and all of us burst out laughing which broke the ice and we spent the rest of the journey having a very interesting conversation with them (after we’d re-wedged our window open of course!).

Andrew – Bearing in mind that most English conversations we had in Bangladesh consisted of “What’s your country?”, “How are you?”, with the rare and more advanced venturing a “Where [do you plan to] visit [in] Bangladesh?”, it was in answering this last question that after reeling off a list that didn’t include Cox’s Bazaar (the longest beach in the world, and the proudest place in every Bangladeshi’s heart) that my inquisitor responded in true American sit-com style with a loud “No Cox’s Bazaar? Seriously?!“

Who is the person you’ve met that you remember the most from the last three months?

That would be Hasan, an English literature student we met at the Pink Palace on our first day in Bangladesh. As a precursor to the kindness we were to receive across the country, especially from students, Hasan took us on an impromptu tour of the riverside area of Dhaka into places and businesses we wouldn’t have found without his help – a school with amazing old buildings, a sign-painters, a cinema theatre (just to take a quick look – without paying!), and the markets to name a few. We enjoyed his company so we hooked up with him again on our last day in Bangladesh for a day trip to Sonargaon.

Andrew with Hasan at Sonargaon on our last day in Bangladesh

Finally, what have you found to be the greatest challenge so far?

Navigating baksheesh in Bangladesh. Baksheesh, for those who don’t know, is kind of like a tip or reward for good service, a higher tip to ensure that repeated service remains good, or a sort of Robin Hood payment that the more well-off are to feel pleased to be given the opportunity to give, and in some cases, an out and out bribe. Once we’d worked out if the situation called for baksheesh, we then hit the minefield of having to work out how much to give. There were a few uneasy experiences but they were very short-lived as we reasoned, being tourists it’s likely we’d been a little overcharged already!