Who you are is who you know. T knows L who is another Australian living in Cox’s Bazaar who knows a local M who knows a hotel owner’s son, so we get to crash at this hotel for free for a few days. Bonus. 
Out and about
M is a Mecca born Bangladeshi, and a very talkative English teacher at a local high school – I think he’s got the hots for L. He took us for a bit of a trip around town on the first day. Cox’s Bazzar is on the Burmese boarder, in fact, quite a few UN agencies here look after the stateless Rohingya refugee camps not far from here. There is a huge Burmese community here with their own temple and stupas, and a “Burmese Market”, which we went and checked out. The Burmese women wear crazy white powder on their faces and are quite plump compared to the Bangladeshi girls.
M took us to the local Bangladeshi markets to check out some local produce. Dried fish seems to be a staple here. Then there’s a huge strip of houses completely free of furniture and interior deco – each of the entire house is hung with giant pearls of bananas at different extents of ripeness, basically when they are ready they get taken away to the markets. Next to the “Banana Street” there was a fairly large rubbish dump in front of a small stretch of land you need to walk in order to get to a line of boats – we got cornered by a number of children diving for mud fish in a square waterhole. We then took a big CNG ride around the quiet beaches and climbed up a hill top with sweeping views of the Indian Ocean. It is actually quite amazing to see open space in Bangladesh for the first time without cluttered houses and crowds of people. The scene reminded me so much of the tramp up Mt Pauanui when I was young.
We took a walk down the beach - I didn't think that the Bangladeshis would like the beach given how they don't show much flesh, but I was totally wrong. Particularly young people like to walk around, children swim and most others get up to their knees. And just like beaches in Europe they hire out little benches you can lounge around in, so we got one and spent an afternoon watching the world go by there drinking coconut juice. Oh man, life!!
Night out at Mermaids
Mermaids is a strippers bar in Wellington, so when I hear of the name Mermaids I always think “dodgy!!”. But Mermaids in Cox’s is quite a different establishment. Its an ex-pats oriented beach front cafe run by a German-Bangladeshi guy, its probably the most worldly and internationally looking establishment I've come across in Bangladesh. Its a classy and lovely little hide out with relaxed deco, a beautiful sand garden and fantastic indy music - and a sit-down toilet, would you believe! We met L there for dinner (it was average, I must say) and some strawberry shisha.
We were meant to leave before midnight but it started to rain pretty heavily, so we shared the rest of the smuggled in beverages with the staff, who were fantastic party animals and didn't treat us like foreigners. As they don't get alcohol very easily here the boys really did appreciate it and were totally in the mood to go hard. I think we almost broke the wooden floor... At one stage the cafe dogs (aptly named Shakira, Yellow, and Brown) came up and danced with us for a wee while before heading back into the garden to guard the place. We raid the kitchen for some light midnight snack. Its pouring down like mad, and the pitch black sky beyond the beach is hollow like the desert ... must be time for midnight swim. I haven't been in such a good mood for ages. The dogs are calling out to me from the beach... aroooh, aroooh, don't go too far so we don't have to come get youuuuh~~
I woke up at 6am in a completely foreign hotel room at a different end of town, and there's a fucking cockroach crawling across my chest. My wet clothes in a soggy pile on the floor. Hmm. The entire room smells like five month old jungle socks and there's broken glass and rusty steel frames lying around in the hall. Well, at least its T who's asleep in the same room and not the guy that likes "Malaysian girls". T&I settled the bill downstairs and hop onto a rickshaw and
headed back to our original hotel.
Out and about
M is a Mecca born Bangladeshi, and a very talkative English teacher at a local high school – I think he’s got the hots for L. He took us for a bit of a trip around town on the first day. Cox’s Bazzar is on the Burmese boarder, in fact, quite a few UN agencies here look after the stateless Rohingya refugee camps not far from here. There is a huge Burmese community here with their own temple and stupas, and a “Burmese Market”, which we went and checked out. The Burmese women wear crazy white powder on their faces and are quite plump compared to the Bangladeshi girls.
M took us to the local Bangladeshi markets to check out some local produce. Dried fish seems to be a staple here. Then there’s a huge strip of houses completely free of furniture and interior deco – each of the entire house is hung with giant pearls of bananas at different extents of ripeness, basically when they are ready they get taken away to the markets. Next to the “Banana Street” there was a fairly large rubbish dump in front of a small stretch of land you need to walk in order to get to a line of boats – we got cornered by a number of children diving for mud fish in a square waterhole. We then took a big CNG ride around the quiet beaches and climbed up a hill top with sweeping views of the Indian Ocean. It is actually quite amazing to see open space in Bangladesh for the first time without cluttered houses and crowds of people. The scene reminded me so much of the tramp up Mt Pauanui when I was young.
We took a walk down the beach - I didn't think that the Bangladeshis would like the beach given how they don't show much flesh, but I was totally wrong. Particularly young people like to walk around, children swim and most others get up to their knees. And just like beaches in Europe they hire out little benches you can lounge around in, so we got one and spent an afternoon watching the world go by there drinking coconut juice. Oh man, life!!
Night out at MermaidsMermaids is a strippers bar in Wellington, so when I hear of the name Mermaids I always think “dodgy!!”. But Mermaids in Cox’s is quite a different establishment. Its an ex-pats oriented beach front cafe run by a German-Bangladeshi guy, its probably the most worldly and internationally looking establishment I've come across in Bangladesh. Its a classy and lovely little hide out with relaxed deco, a beautiful sand garden and fantastic indy music - and a sit-down toilet, would you believe! We met L there for dinner (it was average, I must say) and some strawberry shisha.
We were meant to leave before midnight but it started to rain pretty heavily, so we shared the rest of the smuggled in beverages with the staff, who were fantastic party animals and didn't treat us like foreigners. As they don't get alcohol very easily here the boys really did appreciate it and were totally in the mood to go hard. I think we almost broke the wooden floor... At one stage the cafe dogs (aptly named Shakira, Yellow, and Brown) came up and danced with us for a wee while before heading back into the garden to guard the place. We raid the kitchen for some light midnight snack. Its pouring down like mad, and the pitch black sky beyond the beach is hollow like the desert ... must be time for midnight swim. I haven't been in such a good mood for ages. The dogs are calling out to me from the beach... aroooh, aroooh, don't go too far so we don't have to come get youuuuh~~
............
I woke up at 6am in a completely foreign hotel room at a different end of town, and there's a fucking cockroach crawling across my chest. My wet clothes in a soggy pile on the floor. Hmm. The entire room smells like five month old jungle socks and there's broken glass and rusty steel frames lying around in the hall. Well, at least its T who's asleep in the same room and not the guy that likes "Malaysian girls". T&I settled the bill downstairs and hop onto a rickshaw and
headed back to our original hotel.Its not a holiday untill you've had a fight with locals
The rickshaw lad refused to take our money even after we insisted three or four times, and just rode off. It was quite a weird situation, but we were too tired and hung over to chase after him so went back to our room to catch up on sleep. We re-emerged outside at 12pm quite shocked to find the young bloke waiting for us in the dead midday heat. He demanded something along the lines of 5 hours of pay - - - we of course didn't think it was particularly fair, and this kerfuffle of the three of us "negotiating" drew a huge crowd of other rickshaw drivers to his aid. I felt like a pompy Hollywood actress trying to fight off the paparazzi - I 
should just really learn to accept this sort of occurrence given the situation.... we finally sorted it out with the hotel staff - the guy thought it might be a good way to earn dosh by waiting for us at the place he dropped us off so he could take us to the next spot, and charge us for the waiting time as well, not knowing that we'd be gone for half the day. While I really did feel sorry that he'd missed out on half a day's work, its kinda quite stupid that he'd think we'd fall for his little plan. We agreed to give him money for the ride plus an extra bit just to cover for his "losses" and he left with a bit of a sigh.
should just really learn to accept this sort of occurrence given the situation.... we finally sorted it out with the hotel staff - the guy thought it might be a good way to earn dosh by waiting for us at the place he dropped us off so he could take us to the next spot, and charge us for the waiting time as well, not knowing that we'd be gone for half the day. While I really did feel sorry that he'd missed out on half a day's work, its kinda quite stupid that he'd think we'd fall for his little plan. We agreed to give him money for the ride plus an extra bit just to cover for his "losses" and he left with a bit of a sigh.above: naughtiest kids I've met so far are from Cox's Bazare
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