Category Archives: Travel

A Homage to Steamed Buns

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One of our favourite street foods in China are steamed buns (包, bāo in Chinese) and scarcely a day went by on this trip when we didn’t have them for either breakfast or lunch. They’re cheap (around £0.15 each), served fresh from the steamer and easily portable so good for a picnic lunch.

P8198933.JPGStacks of steamers outside a steamed bun shop in Wuhan

The most basic version is a plain piece of steamed dough which is good on the side with a meal but mostly we got the filled buns. There are a variety of fillings, our favourite was a pork mince version which was like a juicy meatball encased in the soft dough. Others include a beef version, spinach and tofu, pork mince with a hard boiled quail’s egg or sweet varieties like red bean paste or custard (a favourite of ours but not available everywhere).

IMG_3885.JPGSteamed buns (clockwise from top left): steamed bun; mince pork filling; in Chengdu we found a version which was pan-fried after being steamed; the different fillings are identified either by a different crimping pattern or, as in this case, with a small piece of vegetable to mark it

IMG_3875_2.JPGMe buying steamed buns on the way to the Airport Express for our final breakfast in China

23 random observations about Japan

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One of the best things about travelling is noticing the differences. In many ways Japan is similar to the U.K. which only added to the contrast when we spotted the weird and the wonderful. Without further ado, here’s a random list of things that made us smile during our 3 months in Japan..

  1. There are drinks vending machines on just about every street corner. Sometimes they stand together in pairs and have staring contests with the pair of vending machines on the opposite corner.
    2. Vending machines have taken over Japan. This one was lurking at a temple, and they even climb mountains. Rumour has it there's one at the top of Mt Fuji..

    Vending machines have taken over Japan. This one was lurking at a temple, and they even climb mountains. Rumour has it there’s one at the top of Mt Fuji..

  2. Japan is a very clean country, but you’ll rarely see a litter bin. There are bottle bins next to most vending machines, and we occasionally found recycling bins, but public cigarette ashtrays are more common than general waste bins. We later learned that the Japanese thinking is this: rubbish bins attract rubbish.
  3. Yes, it’s true – the Japanese queue in an orderly fashion for everything, especially trains and subways. It made us a little homesick.. ;o)
  4. The red and green men at pedestrian crossings are smartly dressed and wear hats.
    5. It's all in the details. Pedestrian crossing lights in Japan are properly attired

    It’s all in the details. Pedestrian crossing lights in Japan are properly attired

  5. Train guards bow when entering each carriage, and turn to bow again before leaving.
  6. Toilet seats are heated and often include bidets and spray functions. This should be the standard across the world – they’re fantastic!
    7. Japanese toilet controls

    Japanese toilet controls. This one also includes a “flushing sound” to mask one’s embarrassment of a Delhi belly

  7. Speaking of toilets, bathrooms often have their own slippers to save getting your normal slippers (or socks) dirty, even some public bathrooms in palaces, temples or shrines!
  8. Most restaurants don’t have English menus, but it doesn’t matter because either the menus have pictures or there’s an elaborate display of fake plastic food outside. Note that the more expensive food is generally pictured in menus and the translated menu may not have all the choices of the Japanese version.
    9. Plastic food outside a restaurant in Japan

    Plastic food outside a restaurant in Japan

  9. “Hai” means “yes” in Japanese, but it’s used so frequently that it’s more akin to “yep”, “OK”, and “right” or “correct” in English.
  10. Ink stamps are everywhere. Every museum, historic point of interest and hiking trail will have at least one custom rubber stamp on a chain with an ink pad. Top tip for visiting Japan – take a small notebook with you to collect the stamps in!
    11. Ink Stamps

    Ink Stamps are everywhere and make a great free souvenir – take a small notebook with you to collect them all

  11. Business hotels often provide yukata, which are simple wrap-style Japanese nightgowns, and slippers.
  12. Manhole covers are often specific to the town, city or area, and have wonderfully creative and colourful designs.
    13. Different designs on the manhole covers around Japan, often in colour and usually feature a motif or landmark of the area. Clockwise from top-left: Gassho-zukuri houses in Shirakawago; Deer in Nara; Momotaro fire-fighting in Okayama; The peony from Kumamoto

    Different designs on the manhole covers around Japan, often in colour and usually feature a motif or landmark of the area. Clockwise from top-left: Gassho-zukuri houses in Shirakawago; Deer in Nara; Momotaro fire-fighting in Okayama; The peony from Kumamoto

  13. As well as the fantastic public gardens, we’ve found that the Japanese take great pride in the appearance of their private gardens too. We’ve yet to see one that wasn’t beautiful and well organised. The same goes for their allotments!
    14. Japanese private gardens and allotments are as well ordered as the public ones

    Japanese private gardens and allotments are as well ordered as the public ones

  14. The Japanese love their bicycles. They like to ride them on the pavement, they rarely have lights (or if they do, they rarely use them) and when it’s raining, they can cycle while carrying an umbrella!
    15. Japanese man on a bicycle holding an umbrella. Even if the bicycle has a bell, the Japanese are too polite to use it, instead they purposefully neglect their bicycle so the chain and gears are rusty and the brakes squeal so you as a pedestrian can hear them coming up behind you

    Japanese man on a bicycle holding an umbrella. Even if the bicycle has a bell, the Japanese are too polite to use it, instead they purposefully neglect their bicycle so the chain and gears are rusty and the brakes squeal so you as a pedestrian can hear them coming up behind you

  15. More people smoke than we were expecting, and smoking in restaurants and bars is still permitted. There are restrictions being applied to shopping centres and streets, and some restaurant chains have glassed-off smoking areas or are completely non-smoking.
  16. Japan is a very safe place, and there’s very little theft – we even saw people leave their cars running with the doors unlocked and windows open outside convenience stores while they nipped inside!
    17. This max'd out Nissan 350Z was left running in the car park of a 7-11 while the owner nipped inside for a pack of cigarettes. We saw so many cars left running outside shops, and delivery scooters with the keys in them!

    This max’d out Nissan 350Z was left running in the car park of a 7-11 while the owner nipped inside for a pack of cigarettes. We saw so many cars left running outside shops, and delivery scooters with the keys in them!

  17. Digital cameras and camera phones are required by law to make a shutter noise, to deter sneaky snapshots (source).
  18. Fruit and veg are priced per piece and not by weight, including apples, onions and even potatoes!
  19. .. and speaking of apples, they’re huge, like the size of lawn bowls huge.
  20. School seems to be more day trips than sitting in classrooms because we saw so many groups of schoolchildren visiting historic sights and museums.
    21. Us with a group of schoolchildren having just practiced their English with us in Kyoto. We saw so many groups of kids that school in Japan must consist entirely of day trips!

    Us with a group of schoolchildren having just practiced their English with us in Kyoto. We saw so many groups of kids that school in Japan must consist entirely of day trips!

  21. Cash machines only dispense ¥10,000 (£60) notes, but we’ve never had trouble getting one changed even in small shops and restaurants.
  22. Babies and toddlers are often transported in trollies!
    23. Woman pushing a wicker basket trolley of toddlers

    Can you think of a suitable caption? Post a comment below!

  23. Street maps are already orientated, which is very handy once we’d realised it, but we were initially confused why North pointed in seemingly random directions!

15 month summary

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Here’s our summary of the last three months.

20140629-111216-40336354.jpgClockwise from top left: at the spring float festival in Takayama, beautiful cherry blossom at Kenrokuen garden in Kanazawa, beside Lake Motosuko with Mt Fuji in the background, at Ginkakuji temple in Kyoto

Countries visited in the last three months (1st April to 30th June)

Singapore, Japan (total visited to date on this trip = 14)

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

Nowhere near, we knew before we departed that Japan would be expensive but it still came as a shock after a year of travelling the rest of Asia, although to be fair it’s probably no more expensive than travelling in Europe would be.

Our average daily spend over the three months has been £99.83. Our daily spend to date since we left home has been £69.67 which is exactly what we’d hoped – our savings to date were enough to balance the overspend in Japan.

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  • Accommodation is yet again the biggest expense at 38.0% – for most of the time we stayed in business hotels which as a couple usually work out cheaper than hostels with the added advantage of an ensuite bathroom. The downside compared to a hostel is you don’t get to chat with the host or other travellers and there’s nowhere to prepare meals (not that all hostels have kitchens but some do).
  • Food is next highest at 24.0% – we’ve eaten really well in Singapore and Japan and while it’s possible to find relatively reasonably priced food it certainly can’t be described as cheap.
  • Intercity transportation was high at 18.5%. We had two flights in this quarter, from Dhaka to Singapore, and from Singapore to Nagoya (Japan). When moving long distances in Japan we usually travelled by Shinkansen, the famed bullet train. Very fast, clean and comfortable but not cheap. We kept costs as low as possible by taking occasional buses or travelling by local train when moving between nearby cities.
  • Local transportation was comparatively high at 5.2%. Although buses and trams are not too expensive (usually £1-2 each per trip) they do add up. We also did a few long distance day trips which were possible because of the speed and efficient timetabling of buses and trains, for example to Kamikochi from Matsumoto and to Ibusuki from Kagoshima
  • For the first time on this trip the visa spend for the quarter was absolutely nothing – no spend and no stress! Both Singapore and Japan allow UK passport holders to stay for 3 months visa free.

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

If you listen to the continental Europeans or Americans they’ll have you believe that the British are plain weird for driving on the left, pretty much unique. Well, in the last 9 months we’ve visited no less than 6 other countries who also drive on the left (Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Singapore, Japan) and while it could be argued that for some of these countries, though certainly not all, this is due to a colonial British heritage I don’t think we should let that detract from a good argument.

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

Not much to be honest. Travel in Japan and Singapore has been pretty easy, with all our creature comforts adequately provided for. Although we both love trying new foods we do get the occasional hankering for a good cheese sandwich or a plate of fish and chips.

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

Julie – I loved Okunoin cemetery in Koyasan. The huge cedar trees amongst the gravestones of all ages, the surprising statues that we came across and listening to the monks’ morning chanting all added up to an experience I won’t forget.

Andrew – My preconceptions about Japan were fast trains, commuter-packed metros and high tech everything, so the most memorable sight is the amount of greenery and scenic beauty here. Julie won’t let me have that as it’s not specific enough, so I’m going to pick Mt Fuji, the iconic mountain of Japan.

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

On our first day in Kanazawa we had lunch at Omicho Market and bought a small cake each for dessert before walking across town to Kenrokuen garden. Inside the garden we found a bench from where we could admire the view while eating our cakes. Suddenly, I flinched back as I caught sight of a bird seeming to swoop very close. When I turned to Andrew to see if he had seen it, he was looking in disbelief at his empty hand which had been loosely holding his cake. A Black Kite had swooped in and taken it without touching him! Since then we’ve always been very watchful when eating out in the open…

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

Our host in Singapore, Diana, was such a pleasure to stay with. We booked her spare room through Airbnb and it was an ideal place for some R&R after the somewhat challenging travel through Bangladesh. She made us feel right at home, from her comfy sofas, fast wifi and well stocked kitchen (Julie seriously lusted after her top quality pans and knives), to her friendly conversation and introducing us to the TV programme Grey’s Anatomy which we watched avidly for a week! As an added bonus we discovered that she had lived in Japan for 6 years and didn’t mind us picking her brains. Her suggestions on where to go basically established our itinerary for the first month of our stay here.

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

Julie – Struggling with the budget again. We’d really got used to staying in fairly nice places and basically eating wherever we wanted while travelling through SE Asia and into Bangladesh and it’s been a hard habit to break, needing to think twice about stopping at a cafe for coffee and cake, or whether to organise a packed lunch rather than relying on finding something while we’re out. We don’t compromise on sights and activities so accommodation, food and drinks tend to be where we try to save money.

Andrew – We’ve found that booking last minute budget accommodation as a couple has been hard in Japan, especially as we usually want to stay for three or four nights. It seems that as well as all of us foreign tourists, the Japanese also like to travel a lot, which meant we had to quickly firm up our plans and start booking 3 to 4 weeks in advance, rather than the 3 to 4 days we’ve been used to so far!

Tips for visiting Bangladesh

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We’ve found Bangladesh to be an incredibly rewarding destination. Its sights are varied and its people are friendly, however it can also be challenging and tiring, and there are some parts of the culture which it’s good to know about in advance. Here’s our list of top tips to get the most out of a trip to Bangladesh.

Clothing

For women, wear long trousers (or skirt) and a loose fitting top with sleeves (3/4 length is OK). You’ll get looked at anyway and not wearing tight or revealing clothes will make that a little less uncomfortable. You could even buy yourself some local clothes. Unless you’re visiting a mosque, wearing a headscarf is not necessary – not all Bangladeshi women wear them although most do. For men, long trousers and a shirt or T-shirt is fine. Only little boys wear shorts…

20140422-175315.jpgCulturally appropriate clothing

Eating

Eating is usually done without cutlery although most restaurants will give you a fork and/or spoon. If you want to try the local way (we highly recommend it!), make sure to only use your right hand as the left hand is considered unclean (its use is in the bathroom). It’s OK to use both hands to tear off a piece of bread but don’t put anything into your mouth with your left hand. An excellent consequence of eating with the hands is that a washbasin is almost always available, and if not someone will be able to help by pouring water from a jug over your hands.

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Drinking

We don’t usually drink mineral water as we object to paying for water and dislike the amount of plastic waste from all the bottles. In other countries we’ve boiled water or refilled our bottles from filtered water in the place we were staying. We boiled some water in Dhaka and although it didn’t make us ill it tasted really bad so we were pushed towards mineral water for our stay. Most hotels provided a large bottle in the room although it’s a good idea to check that it is sealed as some hotels refill bottles from the tap.

Offering and Receiving

When giving or receiving anything (money, bill, shopping, gift…) use your right hand (similar reason to above). We found this one needed quite a bit of concentration, especially when trying to take whatever we’d bought from the vendor and pay at the same time!

Be friendly

You won’t have much choice about talking to people – Bangladeshis are incredibly open and friendly. Be patient with people, everyone wants to say hello, and we found that shopkeepers were rarely trying to sell us something, often they just wanted a short chat and a photo of us with them. It’s really easy to take photos of locals too, if the market vendors aren’t calling out for you to take their photo then just waving your camera and smiling is generally enough to get their agreement.

20140424-165053.jpgInvited into a shoe shop for a chat in Khulna

Say yes sometimes

We had some great experiences by agreeing to accompany locals places when usually we might have been a bit more reserved. Hasan, a student we met in Dhaka, spent a day and a half showing us around and wasn’t afraid to just walk into places we’d normally just try to peer into if we knew they were there at all (craftsmen’s workshops, schools, onboard a docked ferry to name a few!). We met Khoken and Nilu at a tea stand and got chatting, afterwards they invited us to their home where we met their children, ate homemade sweets and got photographed many, many times as well as having a good chat.

20140422-175107.jpgNilu, Julie, Oishi, Andrew, Shish, Khoken

Prepare your answers to the following questions

Most locals don’t speak much English and so conversations usually proceed some way down the following list until they run dry…

  • How are you? – the standard response we got when we asked the same question was “I’m fine, thank you”
  • What is your country? – if they weren’t sure how to ask that they would call out country names as guesses, “Canada”, “Australia” and “Germany” all seemed plausible but “China” and “Japan” were just as common?!
  • What is your purpose/function in Bangladesh? – saying we were tourists always went down well
  • How are you feeling about Bangladesh? – the only possible answer here is ‘very good, Bangladesh is a very beautiful country’ which fortunately was also the truth most of the time
  • What is your service/profession? – how you earn your money is a source of interest and denotes your social standing, we came across some very impressive sounding job titles

Lower your accommodation standards

Most places are not set up with the expectations of foreign tourists in mind. Apart from the capital, Dhaka, where there are more options, the swankiest hotel in town will probably be fairly clean and have aircon and hot water, but in other hotels expect grimy bathrooms, hard beds and cold showers. Bringing your own sleeping bag liner is a good idea for any time when you’re not convinced by the cleanliness of the sheets although most times we found the floors and bedding looked OK but the walls had never been touched since the hotel was built. On the positive side rooms are incredibly cheap, a double room with ensuite bathroom in a middling hotel was £10 or less, and even the ‘swanky’ business hotel option was only £20-30.

20140424-170516.jpgOur room at the not so salubrious Hotel Hera in Mymensingh

Baksheesh

We already wrote about how difficult we found the whole concept and workings of baksheesh (or tips, or gifts, or bribes…) and I’m not sure that we ever felt comfortable enough with it to be able to offer advice although one useful thing that we read said not to feel pressured into giving if no service had actually been rendered.

Internet access

Finding wi-fi access points was a constant struggle. The only accommodation with wi-fi tended to be the higher end and business hotels, and while these weren’t really expensive it did seem a bit crazy to be paying an extra £10 per night just for internet access. Many of the smaller towns didn’t have that option anyway. Our next favoured option was to find a cafe or restaurant with wi-fi, these were thin on the ground and tended to be more expensive than (and not as tasty as) our usual eateries so we generally nursed a cup of coffee or Sprite for as long as we needed the internet! Failing that, internet cafes do exist but there weren’t many of them and they were small. Suffice to say most of our internet usage in Bangladesh was just keeping up-to-date with emails etc and falling behind with blogging and photo uploads. I suspect that a 3G SIM would be a good option if you had a smartphone with you. Mobile coverage was excellent and data packages looked to be quite cheap.

20140424-155536.jpgChecking emails in an internet cafe in Dinajpur

Ride in a rickshaw

Cycle rickshaws are the main form of transport for anyone needing to travel across town in Bangladesh. They’re great fun to ride in, you’re up nice and high so you can see what’s going on but travelling slow enough to take photos. They’re super cheap too with most journeys being less than £0.50. We have a few tips to avoid getting ripped off (in local terms…) but we also tried to remember that these guys have to work really hard for the few pence that we were paying them:

  • agree the price in advance so there are no unpleasant arguments at the end – drivers often ignored our ‘how much?’ and tried to make us just get in but we were persistent
  • try to have correct change – a few times drivers wanted to keep the difference as a ‘tip’ (there’s that baksheesh again…)
  • we once successfully used the guide price in the guidebook – the driver was asking for Tk100, we showed him that the Lonely Planet said Tk10 and he just agreed!

20140416-225343.jpgSeeing sights like four people in one rickshaw made us feel slightly better about getting into one with all our bags!

Bring a carrier bag

We heard that plastic bags were forbidden by law, certainly they’re uncommon. Anyone who has seen the mounds of plastic rubbish which can accumulate in developing countries will attest to this being a very good thing. Street food was usually served either on a small plate to eat at the stand and then pay, or in a twist of newspaper to takeaway.

20140424-160249.jpgJalebi served in a small dish on the streets of Dhaka – I guess we need to eat them straightaway then!

Appreciate the art

Bangladesh is home to the kind of professional painters who no longer exist in most of the developed world. Everywhere we went we saw handpainted signs advertising goods and services, everything from the name painted above a shop’s entrance to a whole wall the size of a billboard. The rickshaws are an art form in their own right, they are colourfully decorated with paintings of film stars, birds, animals, even the Taj Mahal.

20140424-155750.jpgHandpainted fruit juice advert on a wall in Sonargaon

Bus travel

I could probably write a whole post about this. Taking buses in Bangladesh is something of an extreme sport. It can be extremely scary, bus drivers drive crazy fast, definitely haven’t been on the fuel efficiency course (both acceleration and braking is done hard), they sound the horn often, and seem unconcerned for their own safety or that of their passengers.
As a side note, make sure to insist your luggage goes on the roof, the conductor only wants it to go inside the bus so that he can try to charge you the price of a seat for it.

20140424-155523.jpgIt’s not just luggage that travels on the bus roof in Bangladesh

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.

20140404-130450.jpgMeeting 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!

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  • 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

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!