Tip
Walk into the fish market
Harry's stated rule that fish-market people are the friendliest anywhere and that almost every visitor walks straight past — a market that costs nothing to enter and reliably explains the local economy.
Walk into the fish market
One of the few pieces of advice Harry states outright as a general rule rather than leaving it to be inferred: the people in a fish market are the friendliest anywhere, in every fish market he has been to, and almost everyone walks past it.
It is not really advice about fish. A fish market is free to enter, it is where the working day is visible, and it is where the questions Harry actually wants answered — what things cost, who does the labour, who gets paid what — have obvious answers lying around. It is also, in his experience, the one place where a camera produces welcome rather than suspicion.
How Harry applies it
He goes in without a plan and lets the reception carry it. In Dhaka he found the market by smell before he saw it, and it gave him the best reception of the day. In Al-Mukalla he went early enough that the boats were still landing, and calls it the main thing to do in the city.
The pattern he draws out is the same each time: the market answers questions about the economy that nobody would answer directly. Dhaka’s produced the observation that the enormous ice blocks packing the fish are the same ice going into the street drinks. Al-Mukalla’s produced the fact that a large share of the workforce is Somali and that they are paid in dollars, which means they earn more than the Yemenis working alongside them.
Demonstrated in
- First Impressions of DHAKA, Bangladesh (Busiest City on Earth) 🇧🇩 — the first one on the record, and the one where the market turns out to share its ground with carpenters, steel workers and a live railway line that anyone can walk on.
- Chaotic $10 Challenge in Dhaka, Bangladesh 🇧🇩 — where he states the rule as a rule. He was about to walk past, went in on impulse, and came out generalising from it.
- Inside Yemen: A Country in Freefall 🇾🇪 — the rule applied in a country where almost nothing else is open to a visitor. Fish at around 6,000 a kilogram (from video – unverified), about $6 for a big one, and the Somali labour force that is the most revealing thing he learns in Al-Mukalla.
Related
Videos featuring Walk into the fish market
Video
Chaotic $10 Challenge in Dhaka, Bangladesh 🇧🇩
One thousand taka, one day in Old Dhaka — jalebi, a salted mint lemonade, beef pulao he isn't allowed to pay for, a no-oil back massage, and a Burberry jumper that finishes the budget exactly.
Video
Inside Yemen: A Country in Freefall 🇾🇪
The second half of the Yemen road trip — widows in Wadi Doan on what the ranking actually means, a khat market, and al-Mukalla's fish trade, sesame camel and Saddam Hussein portraits.
Video
First Impressions of DHAKA, Bangladesh (Busiest City on Earth) 🇧🇩
Harry's first day in the most densely populated city on earth — sugarcane juice off a wasp-covered press, chicken biryani for $1.50, a fish market with a live railway through it, and a cycle rickshaw that outruns the traffic.
Linked from
- Dhaka Place