A room with a view...Shrimp ponds in Bangladesh. © Mike Lusmore
I’ve been in Bangladesh for just over a week now with Benjamin from duckrabbit and in that time seen some wonderful things, met some lovely people and experienced some things I probably never would have anywhere else in the world. To add to that I have on occasions laughed pretty hard. This evening was no exception to that as after three days of shooting my way through all the cf cards in my bag it was supposed to be a special evening. Our videographer supremo and unofficial Bangladesh fixer Rajib had been trying to track us down a beer since he arrived a few days ago in Khulna. Ever since we arrived in the dry country (that would be Bangladesh if your not up to speed) Benjamin had assured me that Rajib was our man and would secure us some proper liquid refreshment just when we needed it. After a few failed missions including the promise of beer at a hotel in town only to arrive to the possibility of warm take away cans of Fosters for twice the price of our dinner (each!) at the Hotel Royal (Benjamin’s new fav hotel) we thought we had it nailed. One of the guys at our Hotel had arrange via a whole host of mobile phone calls passed back and forth with Rajib to deliver 8 cans of Heineken to the hotel in the day and put them in the fridge for our arrival at dinner. The day was long and I was looking forward to that beer a whole lot when Milton the manager of the hotel approached us in the lobby to say there had been a problem. It transcribed that our beer hadn’t been delivered but Milton had arranged for it to come now..only it wasn’t Heiniken anymore and it wasn’t fosters and it wasn’t anything I had actually ever heard of. ‘Was Royal Dutch beer ok?’ Having never heard of it we asked about the percentage to which Milton beamed a big smile and replied ’6%’. The six turned to eight and by the time the beer arrived it had changed it’s name to Barons Extra Strong and become a whopping 11.8% can of of warm lager. Naturally we declined the offer of what would be affectionatly known to me back in the UK as tramp juice and returned to the dinner table. I searched the beer online and found a review that described as ‘like knocking your head against a wall’. As a photographer I spend most of my days doing that already so a beer is supposed to have the opposite affect for me!
So having a beer wasn’t to be, and we settled for a couple of cold cokes, well a microwaved warm coke for Rajib and tucked into our rice, dahl, shrimp and oily potatoes. It’s a pretty basic menu here at the hotel but it’s been good food considering some of the stories I have read including the one I found when I typed in ‘Khulna’ and ‘food’ into google. The story of two women who went out to get food and died within hours of food poisioning two months back. Hmmm….yeh that kept everyone quiet for a bit, that was until our encounter with Ali Baba’s.
Rajib (right) looking for a beer. © Mike Lusmore
Ali Baba’s was it’s name – and strange looking food was it’s game. Now I don’t do restaurant reviews but I haven’t laughed so much over dinner as I did at this place, so for entertainment value I’m going to give it a four out of five. In the car on the way to the place we were told by the guy that recommended it that we weren’t getting the shrimp that we had pre-ordered (everything needs to be pre-ordered here in Khulna) as the last two people he had brought to this place had gotten food poisoning. I think these are the sort of things we should discuss before heading over to a place but by this time we were pulling up at Ali Baba’s. It said ‘Chinese Food’ in big letters on the doors which was a bit ominous as I figured we would be eating Bangladeshi cuisine but we pressed on and as I entered the place I realised half of the restaurant did Chinese and the other half did the rest. I say the rest as you seemed to be able to order fried chicken, burgers, dahl…infact it looked a bit like most kebab houses in most cities in the UK with an extended seating area and way to many balloons tied to the ceiling. Come to think of it I have never seen a kebab house with any balloons on the ceiling but this place was obviously celebrating something. We waited whilst our food was cooked/prepared/killed/warmed and Benjamin entertained us all by trying to read the back of a kebab box which he thought wa a menu – very funny. As we were no longer allowed the shrimp our mutton curry arrived looking like it was in a sauce made up of the chesty cough I have had all week (not good) and served with a dose of everyones favourite here, a lot of oil. To be honest I wasn’t hungry by now and picked away at my rice like a five year old as Benjamin tried to work out what had happened to the real Bangladesh cuisine we had come for. ‘I told you this restaurant couldn’t cook’ was the only words forthcoming from our host which I think just about summed up Ali Baba’s. I don’t think I’ll be heading back there anytime soon.
Dinner
It’s a shame Ali Baba’s was so damn random as when you step outside Khulna into the countryside of Bangladesh the food seems so plentiful and obvious it’s amazing. Rice paddies being planted and harvested all year round, vegetable plots, shrimp and prawn ponds, freshwater fish, saltwater fish, coconut trees, wonderfully sweet Bananas and fresh date juice being tapped from every other tree are just the things I managed to see on my small trip. I’m not saying every one of the estimated 170 million people here in Bangladesh are eating well but the farming methods are really something to marvel at. The mixed use small holdings are just how small time farming should be and provide within the villages and further afield it’s hard to imagine that anyone reading this wouldn’t have eaten some shrimp or rice that came from somewhere here in Bangladesh. I only mention it because it seems to always be mentioned how poor it is here in Bangladesh and I think that is a very relative thing. Don’t get me wrong it IS very poor here in a lot of ways. There aren’t many cars or modern machines, the roads are very poor and the mobile phone is about the only bit of technology I see on a regular basis but they are rich here in other ways. I have never seen people work so hard in my life, it’s almost like a race to get all of the fish fished or build as many things as possible before dinner coupled with the wonderful contrast in the villages that are so peaceful and unspoilt. I think we would all be jealous of the beauty and simplicity of some of the lives here.
Farming with a view east of Khulna. © Mike Lusmore
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