Opinion: Why Bangladesh might as well ban international tourism

Luke Damant has convinced me we need to ban foreign tourists from Bangladesh.

Who is Luke Damant? Prior to the Kalu Mia incident, I had never heard of him. Turns out he is a small-time Australian travel vlogger. By small-time I mean he is not ranked among the top 100 YouTubers who travel – not that he does not have a million followers. He arrived in Bangladesh last month, going around and filming like any other travel vlogger.

The Kalu Mia incident, as you may have heard, is where Damant released a video of him walking around Karwanbazar and getting hassled by an elderly man who offered to act as a guide, followed him around despite his firm no, and in the end straight up begged him for some money. The video gained millions of views, and angered the mobs who took to Facebook to call this Kalu Mia a thug, fraud and gang member.

Tourist police, who are one of the handful of government offices with some social media savvy, took notice and called on the local police. So, as a result, this 60-year-old man – who essentially begs on the streets – received the high honour of being picked up by an entire team of police and getting a case filed against him.

So I checked out Damant’s channel. He is a white Australian from Sydney in his early 20s who has been recording his travels around Asia for almost three years. He is somewhat popular – fourteen of his videos have crossed the million views mark, including the Kalu Mia one. All 14 are filmed in India, Pakistan or Bangladesh.

This is an emerging strategy in social media content, where content creators in search of views tap into markets like India or Bangladesh, or some other Asian nation with a large, enthusiastic, young internet audience. The theme is simple: white person appreciates/experiences/reacts to brown culture, or food, or country, or something. Usually these are sit-at-home creators doing “reaction” videos.

This sort of content taps into our potent colonial mentality, a deeply ingrained craving for white people’s approval as validation of our nation’s worth. In Bangladesh (and in the rest of South Asia), we see a person of European background, we run at them tails a-wagging. Hustlers are the more sensible ones, as they are merely sniffing around for some dollars. We, the educated class, want something more elusive: do you like it here? Do you see how nice our country is? Will you be our friend?

Even the diaspora, which lives in white majority countries, craves for cultural visibility in those landscapes. They drag their white friends to “desi” restaurants, shops, weddings, and events, feed them, fete them, and whip out their phones for views. Heavens forbid one acquires a trophy white partner. It is unbelievable how much love a Romanian girl can garner from chewing on muri on YouTube.

All of this translates to millions of views, likes and comments – the currency of the content economy. I am not judging Damant for doing whatever he can to boost his views. This is his living after all.

I am, however, concerned about our eagerness to please him at the expense of our own dignity. Needless to say, this same sort of crack police team and justice response is not afforded to non-white foreigners, as evident from the experiences of Kyrgyz vlogger Davud Akhundzada, or the many Africans who have documented facing discrimination and racism here. And we all know that as locals our only resort when getting harassed on a trip is to call our uncles, those mamas and chachas who guard us against the evils of this land.

People clamouring for actions against Kalu Mia are arguing that his conduct is really bad for that precious unicorn that we all want for the country, “vabmurti”, the image. But guess what?

Tourism in Bangladesh

My point is this. We have no obligation to uphold our image to the world by providing safe and pleasant experiences to backpackers and meeting their expectations of civil treatment and safety from scams and tourist traps. We are unable to do that for ourselves. In fact, to ensure any kind of decent travel experience in Bangladesh, the amount of money we as locals need to dole out is far out of proportion to even the cheapest destinations in South Asia.

If my memory serves me right, it was around 2013 that some people from the Dhaka University Tourist Society discovered that the Ratargul swamp forest was a unique natural phenomena in Bangladesh and a suitable destination for people who want to get away from urban bustle and take a break.

I went there for the first time in 2016 in a large group, and remember how difficult it was to reach. People of Gowainghat, while we haggled with a motorboat guy to ferry us across the Goyain river, stood around ogling at us. They had likely never seen city kids like us before, though none of us were pampered English medium types in outlandish attires or tainted accents. It was that remote.

The last time I returned was in 2019. Any guesses as to what I found?

The usual trappings of an overcrowded tourist destination had all popped up in this remote marshland as if by magic. Sleazebags carrying large speakers with blaring Bollywood music, gangs of service providers with overpriced wares and services, interlopers trying to morally police women, litter, noise, pollution, stench…you name it.

For those who have been members of various small “travel addict” communities for a while, the painful experience of a ruined destination is all too common. Either the crowds become too large or powerful people and institutions take over the place and exploit locals and tourists; and either way the natural charm of the place is replaced with either jarring geometric constructions labelled “resorts” or a mess of shops, shacks and traders.

If I am being practical and not looking at the country through a pair of orientalist goggles, the most practical thing for us to do is severely limit foreign tourists and to try to improve the abysmal state of our own tourism experience.

I am not advocating for some sort of North Korean insular guns-aimed-at-borders situation. Foreigners do come to Bangladesh for work, family, business, and many other reasons, and the organizations or people who bring them have the means and methods to ensure they have a safe and reasonably pleasant stay.

But tourism is not for us.

In our neighbourhood, Bhutan is the country that should be our model. You pay a high tax just to visit there, unless you are from South Asia. The kingdom strictly controls how many people visit, where they go and what they do, and foists an official local guide on them. When Anthony Bourdain went there in 2018, he succinctly observed: “Basically, they don’t want you to come here.”

Can we imagine a place in Bangladesh where people can travel without risking running into hustlers, paying exorbitant sums for basic services and low quality food, having to produce marriage certificates, standing in long queues and endless traffic, and suffering through terrible road conditions?

Most international tourists know this and stay away from Bangladesh. In 2020, according to the World Bank, only 323,000 foreigners came to Bangladesh as tourists. We were 167th in the world in terms of number of visitors that year. Almost all of these tourists (89%) are Indians. Nevertheless, in the last budget, the government allocated 1,000 crore Taka to the tourism sector as an additional incentive package.

On the other hand, Bangladeshis travel abroad in hoards – roughly three million each year. If the Tourism Board’s aim is to improve experiences for our citizens, they can work to reduce the hassles at embassies, various ports, and the prohibitive costs imposed by destination countries.

Here’s a fun fact: it costs less for a South Korean to travel to Thailand than it does for a Bangladeshi. He pays less for a longer flight and zero-visa fees despite being the citizen of a much wealthier nation. These sorts of costs are nothing but the failure of our government to demand and negotiate better treatment of our citizens from neighbour and partner countries.

Even at home, we pay far too much for far too little, and get hustled all the time. Sometimes this is a simple reality – we do not have the natural beauty and the space to provide affordable comfort. Below is a side-by-side comparison of a hypothetical destination in Bangladesh versus one in Bali:

This is no fault of the entrepreneurs who were bold enough to build such facilities. At some point we just have to accept that we do not have what it takes to attract international tourists. We also have to accept that no authorities ever respond to ordinary travellers getting hustled in their travels.

None of this is the fault of a 60-year-old beggar from the streets. We are a nation of hustlers trying to squeeze money out of the pockets of everyone we meet. Why else would someone try to sell fried dough soaked in syrup for $200 a kg?

This article first appeared in Dhaka Tribune.