September 4th 1984

After we woke, I went downstairs to se about getting some food, + asking about going to the Immigration Dept to extend our visas – we hadn’t had time to arrange it in Bangkok, so at present are in the country for just one week under their standard entry permission.  I was knocked out by the discovery that it was already 2.15 in the afternoon, however, effectively destroying any plans for the day – obviously we had been more knocked out than we thought by our week in Burma.  So we used most of the rest of the afternoon taking it easy + getting our washing done.  There was loads of it, + by the time it was draped all around the room, + with the weather being so hot, + with the fan circulating all that hot air around all that wet washing, it was like living in a Chinese laundry.

We had a couple of visitors, young men working in the hotel.  We had bought whiskey duty-free in Rangoon, which we now sold to these fellers.  It’s not so easy to sell the stuff on the streets here, it being a Muslim country, so we were happy to get rid of it without any fuss.  We were, as it turned out, precipitate, + sold it for a song (tho’ we did, naturally, still make some money on it) but I can’t say I’m really sorry about it.  Babul, one of the recipients of our haste, did show us across to a fine little café (the Caviar) where we had a tasty curry.  We also sampled a couple of their local desserts, like tiny doughnuts covered in honey – very nice.  And then we wandered out to the night market.  It was amazingly busy, Dacca obviously comes to life at night.  But it wasn’t as exotically different as some we have seen – Taiwan, parts of Indonesia, just a profusion of more of the same.

One is inclined to be judgmental about the muslim attitude to drink, but actually they are no more hypocritical about such things than the rest of the world.  Clearly we were needing to recharge our batteries somewhat, so no bad thing to have had a lazy day.