The Dirty Plastic Bucket

Bakkhali, Bengal, India, April 2017.

The little coastal town of Bakkhali is probably the place, so far anyway, where we have been furthest from our comfort zone. Despite the unique positioning of its beach, jutting out due south into the ocean, meaning that both sunrise and sunset are across the water, this is not a seaside town as we know it. Suffice to say that virtually everything is unfamiliar. We loved it. Eventually.

But the arrival at the hotel kind of set the tone, nobody on reception until a young boy shouted for help; a giant handwritten ledger to log arrivals rather than a computer; not a word of English anywhere; confusion over who we are, and what is the strange card with which I’m trying to pay.

Bizarre was an appropriate word to describe the hotel. As if someone somewhere had decided that what Bakkhali needed was its first luxury hotel, then either ran out of money or lost interest long before its completion. Bags of rubble blocked the staircase, the breakfast room had stacked furniture in all but one corner, something had been ripped out of the wall of our room and the hole only roughly plastered over. The aircon sounded like a labouring helicopter.

And yet there was concealed lighting around the headboard, ornate decorative coving at ceiling level, gold painted balustrades next to those bags of rubble. It was a place of extremes.

Our bathroom, fortunately, wasn’t extreme either way, it was serviceable and reasonably OK but not artificially grand either. We could, at least, use it.

Apart, that is, from the dirty, vile plastic bucket sitting proudly in the middle of the floor. I couldn’t bring myself to handle it, instead pushing it into a corner with my shoe, until it was out of sight, and advising Michaela to try not to look at it.

A couple of days in, and getting used to our digs and really starting to love Bakkhali, I picked up my day bag ready for loading. Something moved. On top of the day bag was the biggest cockroach I’d ever seen, claiming its territory and goading me to take it on. I shook it off the bag and on to the floor, where it scuttled noisily over to the wall. 

With the skills of a zookeeper I managed to get the dam thing around the room and out the door, where I kicked it some distance down the hallway. 

Next morning, I’m reading the faithful Lonely Planet book. It said this: When in cheaper hotels in Bengal, you will often find a plastic bucket in the bathroom. This is to place over plug holes to prevent cockroaches from entering the room.

Now why didn’t I read that before we got here….

For more on our Indian adventure click here