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...)

Bangladesh

Ok everyone... we've been bad at this blogging thing for the last little bit because... well because we are traveling and sometimes you don't have either the time or the access to the Internet that one would like. We've also had alot of logistics to figure out for the (quickly approaching) end of our trip. Anyway we are back on the road and working hard to play catch up, so this post will be more in bullet points than in paragraphs... and of course pictures. Welcome to Bangladesh. Read the rest...
Bangladesh is a weird place with little (read-no) tourist industry, making getting around a bit tricky. Also its the most densely crowded country in the world... to give an example of how crowded it is if you took the world's population and put them all in the US Bangladesh would still be more dense. Tee odd thing about Bangladesh is that it doesn't feel THAT dense but it slowly began to dawn on me that there simply always people around and that tucked into every corner of the country side was another house. It wasn't a jammed place with no space but every inch of space they had was being used as much as it could.

Another interesting point was that Bangladesh is the first almost entirely Muslim country I've been to. Malaysia is technically a "Muslim" country as well but there were also Chinese, Indians, and some Christians there, not the case in Bangladesh. Their weekend runs Friday to Saturday, which consequently closes down everything... a situation that lead to several problems during our stay there. Another interesting aspect of Muslim influence is the great difficulty in buying alcohol (or so we were told), as no one can get a liquor license. But there are places where if you pay enough they let you into the back room with old Bangladeshi men sharing a bottle of Myanmar rum.

We arrived in Bangladesh, expecting monsoon (as it has chronic flooding) and we weren't disappointed. Dhaka (the capital) get about 18 inches of rain during the month of July and our first day there was no exception. We heard on the radio the next day that between 1.25- 1.5 inches of rain fell. We thought that seemed about right.

We actually spent our first day there wandering around the city. This was a fairly challenging task given the immense and continual downpour of rain and that the city is about as "old city" as you can get. Who needs straight streets anyway?

We spent some time on what is called "The Rocket Steamer," which turned out to be one of our highlights of the trip. The rocket is a diesel powered paddle wheel ship, that was converted from the old school steam variety (the original hull and engine were built in 1918 and the engine retrofitted in 72). We took it for a 24 hour ride and we were once again reminded why we like boats.

A view from atop the Rocket.

The first class mess hall. At first we found the whole first class thing a little elitist, we had our own dinning area a private deck, etc... But then we really began to appreciate it... Megan is writing more about that.

Us on the first class deck.

After taking the rocket for about 24 hours we landed in a greasy little town that the Sunderbans is next door to. The Sunderbans are the world's largest mangrove forest and one of the few places that still has the royal Bengal tiger still lives. Oddly enough the tigers eat about 6 people a year. Oddly enough the people are all "honey catchers" who go to get honey from locals bees! We didn't see any tigers... I was ok with that. However we did get to see alot of other animals along the way.

A grinning crocodile... he snapped at me later (thank goodness he was in a pen).

Part of the forest has a wooden walkway through it. It lets you see the forest without getting muddy... or that's the plan. It is only about 200 meters long and on the edge of the forest so you don't really see much. But fortunately you can journey a little further (not on a walkway) and hope to see some more...

These are called "tiger ferns." It seems fitting and I kept visualizing that there were tigers in these bushes as we'd walk past, it actually made me a little nervous.

An odd little fish that our guide called, "A jumping fish." Sure... a fish that jumps. He sat there half in and half out of a puddle but when our guide got a little closer suddenly he hopped-hopped-hopped about 4 feet into another puddle. We saw several more of these little guys are were continually amazed at them. Apparently they live a very frog like life moving from shallow pond to shallow pond and somehow developed an odd jumping skill.

The effects of monsoon weather and a dirt path. It actually got so muddy that we gave up on shoes to go it barefoot.

We have decided that Bangladeshis are the worst drivers we've met so far (including Indians). Picture everything done by the Cambodians (and others but we wrote about them) and then change the average speed of travel from mildly dangerous to about 45 miles and hour. So where as before we passed cars/tractors/mopeds on blind corners going up hill in a bus... now we did it going 45 miles an hour and swerving wildly. I haven't been afraid on buses so far since being over here but on our Bangladeshi buses... I was afraid several times. (One time when I was almost asleep I was awoken to a tree branch that was scraping the bus and leaves came flying in and landed on my face!)

After the Sunderbans we came back to Dhaka to pick up Jennie (Meg's sister) who was flying in to join us for part of the trip. Her flight in turned out being as eventful as ours, as it got postponed several times and eventually took off... only to turn around and land again. Of course none of this was communicated to us and we ended up spending 8 hours waiting outside of the airport (because you can't go in without a ticket) waiting for her. Finally she arrived and there was much rejoicing.

A happy trio on the ride to the hotel!

This is the inside of a "baby-taxi" which is really just the Bangladeshi form of a tuk-tuk (pronounce took-took, as in grad. school took alot of my time and took alot of my money). It's basically a three wheel cart with a motor cycle front and a back seat, it makes worlds of noise and is great for the environment (just ignore the blue and black smoke). But one of the nice things about them is that with a determined driver they can go anywhere. One driver we had didn't like waiting in traffic and would pass everyone... he drove on the sidewalks, he swerved in front of other cars, and there were a handful of times we were less than two inches from another vehicle (on the sides). The last point was also great because they sit about level with a bus' exhaust.

There are over 120,000 rickshaws in Dhaka. There were herds of them on most major street corners and outside of large public spaces and buildings. Oddly enough there are "officially" only 8,574 according to the government though. When one reporter pressed an official about the discrepancy of the amounts the official replied, "As far as the government is concerned there are only 8,574 rickshaws. If you wish to prove us wrong, start counting."

Alot of rickshaw drivers take pride and decorate their rickshaws. All the rickshaws are the bicycle variety as well.

Overall an interesting country, so very cool things but it was incredibly tiring... But Megan is going to write about that in our next post so stay tuned... (I don't know if it's possible to tune into a blog... but just check again in a day or two ok?

P.S. Because I married an architect... here are some architectural photos.

This is a 55 domed mosque. Its apparently an architectural wonder because it was made well... a long time ago (now I'm told its 1454). I actually found it less impressive than I hoped but it was still quite neat. Also the first mosque I've been in.

This is the National Assembly building, which was designed by Lous Kahn. It was a neat structure, intersecting angles and geometric shapes, it sits next to the "crescent lake" and is a source of pride among Bangladeshis. We wanted to go in or at least get closer but apparently they don't ever let you in and they don't even let you get near the thing on Fridays... and we were there on a Friday.

Just so you know...

In a recent 48 hour period we spent 27 hours on (or waiting for) buses. Real posts to come.

Right, we have a blog...

We will try to post something more substantial and photo-filled later, but for now, let's just stick to an exciting update about our where-abouts in rare and slow Internet land!

We did finally make it out of Bangkok and to Dhaka, Bangladesh. After a very, very wet and flooded day in Dhaka, we took a 24 hour steam-driven paddle wheel boat south to Mongla. Yup, pretty cool! From there, we visited the Sunderbans, the world's largest mangrove forest, the city of Khulna, and Bagerhat, a world heritage site with the famous 77-domed mosque.

Heading back to Dhaka, we spent a lovely day making friends with the guards at the Dhaka International Airport awaiting my sister Jennie's arrival from Delhi. We were too cheap to pay the admissions fee for the arrivals hall, and they were gracious enough to let us sit on a bench just inside the gate to avoid some of the beggars and stares we were experiencing. The reason we had time to make friends is because Jennie's flight was also delayed, eventually cancelled, and replaced with a completely different one. Of course, no one could tell us this, and in the end, we picked her up the next morning after an inquiring phone call to GMG Airlines at 7:30am, an astonishing answer that she was landing in 10 minutes and that we should just call her cell phone to confirm she was on the flight, and then a frantic taxi ride to the airport. Despite a very long night in the Delhi airport, she made it!

We spent some time exploring Dhaka with Jennie before taking a night bus North to the border with India. The border crossing required the writing of our information in massive logbooks a total of 6 separate times, a few more cursory passport checks, and one cup of cha (tea) while waiting for Josh to return from the bank with certificates that we'd paid the travel tax (Jennie and I were waiting with the one uniformed official trying to be as charming as possible). The whole thing only took 2 full hours!

We are now in Darjeeling, India, enjoying misty mountains and lovely cups of tea. We take the "Toy Train" tomorrow back down the mountain and head off to Nepal and Kathmandu! We have plenty to say about Bangladesh, so watch for that when we get a chance to post again. The country was beautiful and full of helpful and friendly people. On the other hand, we experienced more shortchanging, overcharging, and lieing to than ever before. But, if you want to feel like a celebrity... this is the place to visit! We stopped people dead in their tracks, including one bus so that a passenger could snap a photo of us, and had more stares... a stop to check a map produced an audience of 3-4 people, to buy two mangoes about 25, and a stop to ask for directions about 45 (plus the 13 children who were already following us). No, I exaggerate not!

A quick and funny update...

Just a heads up this is going to be out of order, but its what's happening to us now and we just want to share it as its going on...

We are stuck in Bangkok! When we flex out of Myanmar we were looking forward to being in a new country and being on a new part of the contient but lo and behold our plans as such have failed and we are sitting in Bangkok, again.

So far we spent ALL day (yesterday) in the airport only to discover that our 9pm flight (which was pushed back from 5pm) to Dhaka was delayed until 5:30 am, this morning. Of course, the counters here only open 2 hours prior to departure, so we didn't find this out until 7pm even though I bet they knew it. So... we all (all 12 of us on the flight) checked in and waited for a van to a hotel, expecting to go across the street or something. Instead they took us a FULL HOUR away to the OLD airport, where apparently they still have hotel connections or something. The new airport and the old airport are fully off the maps of bangkok- one off the top of the map and the other off to the right, which tells you how ridiculous this is, especially since to get there you have to drive through the middle of Bangkok and it's glorious traffic. Anyway, they fed us at 10pm and said the pickup time was now 6am. Then they called in the middle of the night to say it was at 10am. Then we got up for breakfast and found out the flight leaves at 4:30. Now... who knows! BUT they are feeding us (bad food) and we stayed in teh first real hotel room of the trip- with towels and a tv and everything. We stayed up and watched "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last night, which somehow made me feel better..."

So it could be much worse. When we first heard about the delay we were preparing to spend ANOTHER 12 hours in the airport (thank goodness we found where the employees eat, about 1/3 to 1/4 of the price inside the airport). But right now we are still scheduled to go so hopefully by the time you read this we will be in Bangladesh. I hope this doesn't serve as a premonination for the rest of our travel in Bangladesh, otherwise we will never make it out of Dhaka!