Celebrity

What's the excitement? Oh, that's us they're taking a photo of!

We knew after that first loud belch (from a middle-aged woman) on our plane to Dhaka, Bangladesh that we'd be experiencing yet another new and different culture. We'd read that the Bangladeshis might also think we were new and a little, well, different, but we didn't realize just how interesting we are. The phrases listed in Bangla in the front of our Lonely Planet guide included the usual "Hello", "Thank you", "How much", but then, curiously, there was also "Stop staring at me." Hmm.

Bet you didn't realize how interesting we are...I might as well start with some typical Bangladeshi experiences. Our second day in Dhaka, we thought we'd buy some fruit for our long Rocket steamer boat trip. This apparently was a full-out event for the Bangladeshis, as crowds of twenty to thirty gathered to watch us try to buy mangoes. We'd stop to check the map, and two to three people would stop to watch us check the map. We'd look at a mosque, and two to three people would stop to watch us looking at the mosque.

Once in Khulna we started walking from the bus station towards our hotel and ended up with anywhere from 12 to 15 kids trailing behind. We stopped to ask an adult if we were going in the right direction (we weren't and ended up taking a rickshaw- price decided on by the handy "people's court"), and a crowd of no less than 40 people not including the children eventually gathered around. Busy looking at the map with the one English-speaking fellow, I glanced up to find a sea of dark faces and eyes just staring blankly at me. This photo is blurry and doesn't do the crowd justice, but after our rickshaw pulled away, Josh quick snapped this photo of the crowd disbanding.The crowds can help, as invariably someone speaks some English and they form a sort of impromptu judge for setting mildly fair foreigner prices, but it is certainly a bit disconcerting to be the focus of that much attention. And the attention is always the same blank stare. We rarely detected emotion in the faces/eyes, positive or negative. There was little "sexual" attention, as is often the case with male Indian stares. Even curiosity didn't seem present. Just, well, blankness. It was frustrating to wave and smile at a child and get not a blink back. I think this was the first time I've ever encountered something like that from children.

Every now and then the blank stares showed intense fascination. We literally stopped people in their tracks. It's an odd feeling to see a woman, child, man walking along the street towards you, notice you, and completely stop to stare as you pass by. We even stopped a bus! A big coach was pulling out of a station, someone yelled something, the bus slammed to a halt, and then a person leaned out the bus window to snap a photo of us with his camera phone. We were also asked by a complete stranger at a hotel if his sister could take our photo (we were the only guests there besides them) . Sure, we said. Well, what she really wanted was half a dozen photos with us in a number of different settings and poses. Ironically, she looked stunning in her bright colored saree and we looked, well, like backpackers- a bit tired, sweaty, and dirty! (The photo below is not this woman. This is another new "friend" from the Rocket steamer, but the beautiful saree + tired-looking American still holds true!)


On the boat, the other people on our deck discovered we had a camera and insisted on taking photos with us. One man sat down, finger combed his hair, buttoned up his shirt, and then asked for a snapshot. This guard at the airport (since we spent 7 hours waiting for my sister Jennie's flight which never came that day, we made good friends with a couple different police battalions!) gave us his address, and this hotel manager had his picture taken with each of us and with the hotel sign and then asked us to mail the photos to him!

Needless to say, if you want your 15 minutes of fame, visit Bangladesh. You will be stalked by your own personal camera-phone paparazzi, encounter unending stares, cause a commotion whenever you try to do anything (walk, eat, stop walking, breath). It's exciting, but, good grief, is it both annoying and incredibly tiring!

(just stopping to look at a mosque on this side street...)