Bangladesh
The Bunderbans are in the north east of Bangladesh- probably the best place to head in the country because there's some mountains. With the mountains come 1) scenery and 2) a blissful reduction in population density. My chum John and I were staying at a hotel with nothing much to do. It being New Year, the owner of the neighbouring hotel invited us (the only foreigners in the region) to a shebang at his place.

Bangladesh is a dry country, so the party was to be local style entertainments, but we weren't prepared for a chappie playing two notes on his electric bass guitar, another chappie thumping a tambourine and a third chappie wailing into a mic. We perched a chappati and some sloppy curry on our knees and sat thinking about how much we really missed the wonderful things about England, like Croydon.

The curry was a bit horrible, so we thought we'd wash it down with some of the coke we'd seen in a fridge. John innocently asked "Any chance of a drink?" sparking a most satisfactory change in our host. He gave a cartoon style shifty glimpse left and right and mumbled "meet me downstairs in ten minutes".

"Hello," we thought, "something is afoot!"

Sure enough when we head there a collection of unlikely looking wallahs were in the basement, illuminated by a bare bulb, passing around bottles of mineral water. They courteously welcomed their pale faced new friends and bade us join them. A sniff of the bottle made the seed of hope planted in our bosom burst forth into joyous bloom. Hurrah! Illegal Moonshine!

What made the situation infinitely more satisfactory was that our drinking buddies consisted of the judge, police chief, editor of the local newspaper and other sundry nibs. They were hiding from their constituents with a couple of backpackers, drinking hooch.

Sorry, just realised that wasn't particularly relevant to the qotw, so might as well add that the hotel owner gave us scabies.

Apologies for length and all.
(I grew it myself, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 5:40, Reply)