Cox's bizzare

It was high time to get to the seaside. Hollie, Joe and me were reunited with Abi and Chris in the un-charming seaside resort of Cox's Bazaar, home to the longest natural beach in the world. Hotels are being thrown up on every spare centimetre of the place, and a stinking black stream runs parallel to the beach. But once you get to the beach, it all melts away.

It is a strange place indeed. The sun beats down, but the galeforce winds make it feel more like Norfolk than Bangladesh. People walk fully clothed into the warm, lolling ocean - Hollie and me wear our pyjamas. A man emerges from the waves brandishing a giant jellyfish. Two lifeguards lie together on a sun bed, stroking each other's faces. Huge dried fish hang on market stalls, the smell mingling with the putrid black stream which runs parallel to the sea to linger in our memories forever. Young men gallop past on ponies and, at one point, an elephant. We pay a boy of about 12 for sunbeds and umbrellas - whenever a small crowd gathers to stare at us, he beats them away with a stick. One girl fights back with a brick. On the third day we sit in someone else's patch by mistake, and our boy cries.

Like the rest of Bangladesh it's nigh-on impossible to buy alcohol anywhere. It just feels a bit more wrong by the sea. We do manage to find overpriced Gordon's gin and tonic in a hotel bar, served by a surly, judging barman and forced to listen to an Ace of Base album on loop as punishment for our wicked ways.