Bangladesh

Restart. I’ve written a lot on my trip to Bangladesh already, but with my overambitious attempt to relate every minute detail (a task all but impossible for even the most seasoned of travel writers), with life going on (and, indeed, accelerating), and with copious other writing projects demanding my more immediate attention, I had just put this on the back burner (along with the entries on my other trips) until I ‘had more time’. Which, as we all know, doesn’t happen. You make time. But, in the interest of allowing time (made or otherwise) for other writing projects, I’ve now taken the liberty of condensing my initially conceived scope of a day-by-day breakdown of the trip into a nice summary. For a vividly detailed, intricately plotted recounting of this voyage (and others), I may end up writing a book regarding my experiences abroad, but this is a more immediate medium, demanding more immediate (and thus, less carefully thought-out and edited) writings. So, in the interest of expeditiousness (nearly three months after the fact…), I’m writing the abbreviated version of my adventures in Bangladesh. It won’t quite do it justice, but it’ll do for now.

(Note: I introduced my co-adventurers in my previous entries on Bangladesh, but for completeness’s sake, I’ll reintroduce them here: Asha and Rebecca, both from Canada, and Jorge (from Spain). All of them friends and colleagues of mine, and all with a good number of foreign countries under their belts (including several third-world nations), albeit none that had the impact on them as did Bangladesh.)

(One further clarification: the vehicle I refer to as a ‘rickshaw’ is not a rickshaw in the traditional, Chinese sense, pulled by a footman walking through the streets. This rickshaw is a covered seat that can uncomfortably (and rather precariously) fit two passengers, tacked onto the back portion of a bicycle. Hope that helps in envisioning the story. On with the show!)

So, Bangladesh. Amazing, strange, dirty, impoverished, mysterious, yet friendly country. About 160 million people (population estimates vary significantly, but without a strong infrastructure with proper census-taking capabilities, it’s to be expected that a good chunk of the population wouldn’t be accounted for, especially considering the high birth and death rates in the region) shoved into a country smaller than the state of Georgia. Once the wealthiest and most beautiful Dutch colony on the Indian subcontinent, now one of the poorest countries on earth. Yet, the people were always smiling. At least when they saw us western travelers. Whether this was because we were as much an oddity to them as their unique land was to us, I can’t say for certain, but it was an intriguing paradox. I could philosophize on poverty and wealth, on the mindsets and worldviews of the first-world nations (and their inhabitants) versus those of the third-world nations, but I won’t. At least not here. An interesting dichotomy, to be sure. We’ll leave it at that for now.

When people ask me what Bangladesh was like, the word I keep returning to is ‘authentic’. Dirt, grime, people everywhere, trash, wild animals, the hollowed-out shells of buildings left over from the region’s colonial past, swampland and dense forests, naked children, deformed old beggars, roadside villages populated by corrugated-tin hovels, shelters constructed of worn tarpaulins and black plastic sheets, emaciated cows and goats withering away on the verdant roadside, fishermen eking out a living in hand-hewn wooden boats, rice farmers wading into the disease-ridden waters of the paddy, toothless old grandmothers sitting in a doorway and staring blankly at the world. The Third World in all its glory. Much of what I saw probably hasn’t changed much since Kipling’s day, or earlier (save, of course, for the occasional faded Pepsi sign plastered on a wall somewhere). Truly an experience.

One more fun note: as you would expect of a third-world country, the water isn’t safe to drink. Bottled water is available, of course, and this was an interesting experience: drinking, washing your hands, brushing your teeth, and every other daily activity utilizing water that we have a tendency to take for granted all become far more tedious tasks than one would think. But that’s not the promised ‘fun’ part; this is: even the bottled water (or at least some brands that we ran across, purchased, and imbibed, albeit without reading the mineral analysis on the label that provided the following revelation) includes some interesting substances, such as lead, arsenic, and cyanide. No joke. Whee!

The car ride from Dhaka in the center of the country to Cox’s Bazar in the southeast (that those who read my previous entries on this trip have been waiting so patiently to hear about) took just shy of fifteen hours… to travel all of 350 kilometers. Bangladesh traffic, especially during the exodus from Dhaka that accompanied the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. Buses overflowing capacity, with boys hanging on the back and sides, dozens of men sitting atop. Trains with dozens more men sitting atop them as the vehicle hurtled across the countryside. What was inside, whether freight or more passengers, I don’t know. Rickshaws, men leading cows through the streets on a tether, bicyclists with baskets of full of dozens of live chickens lashed to the back, boys pushing carts full of potatoes through the streets: these were our traveling companions on the long road south. Half-hour-plus queues awaited us every forty-ish kilometers when we would have to stop to refill our car’s terribly small natural gas fuel tank. Bathrooms consisting of a filthy concrete room with a hole in the floor with more far more grime and bugs than one would find in an au-natural latrine in the middle of the wilderness. A waste-disposal policy consisting of throwing your trash (biodegradable or not) wherever suits your fancy (no, seriously, the guy who ran one gas station told me to just throw my tissues on the ground; I opted to carry them with me until I came to a proper trash can). Five people crammed into a tiny sedan, with our luggage, for fifteen hours. With nothing but an occasional apple or snack bar to eat, and a juice box or bottle of water to drink, for the whole day. And I was fevered and dehydrated to boot. If I can offer any advice on this situation, it’s this: don’t go to a third-world country when you’re already sick. It’s just asking for trouble. But more on that in a moment.

We finally got to Cox’s Bazar around midnight at the end of our second day, and found a hotel of sorts in which to stay. Looking out from our room (or from the balcony on which our floor’s rooms were accessed) we could see rice paddies, trash heaps, a small cluster of makeshift huts that the locals called ‘home’, and the decrepit remains of concrete buildings long since forsaken, iron rebar jutting from the edges in rows like dutiful sentries waiting for an enemy that would never come. It was kind of unreal. Our rooms were kinda crappy as hotel rooms go, but when compared to the accommodations of the locals around us, it was the bloody Ritz-Carlton. On the other side of the hotel (visible from the roof), the view was layered: directly below, the two-lane road leading past the hotel, frequented by pedestrians, bicycles and rickshaws, with the occasional car coming past to mix things up; beyond the road, a hedge of tall conifers (whose tops were just below the roof of the seven-story hotel); past the trees, the longest unbroken white-sand beach in the world (120 km), the beach of Cox’s Bazar, could be seen; and beyond that, the crashing waves of the Bay of Bengal and the majestic horizon. I returned to this view several times throughout the trip: during the brightness of the day, with the excited shouts of bicyclists and beachgoers providing audible testament to the busyness of the place; in the awe-inspiring orange and red of sunset, as the hot tropical sun dipped into the sea for its daily respite; in the cool solace of the night, with the occasional faint ringing of the bells of a rickshaw on the street below the only sound breaking up the soft rhythm of waves crashing against the seashore, the perfect sliver of the Eid moon reflecting off the waters of the Bay, the subtly shimmering sands of the beach, the dark treetops casting their silhouettes on the hauntingly beautiful spectacle behind them. This last, the nighttime view, was perhaps the most memorable, its quietude and peaceful sense of solitude washing over me after a long day.

On day three, our first day at Cox’s Bazar, we took it pretty easy. Got up late, kinda missing breakfast, and we ventured over to the pool of the hotel next-door to our hotel. We boogied down with a bunch of guys from Sri Lanka on vacation in Cox’s Bazar. Actually, they were doing most of the boogying, and we were doing the chilling, watching, and enjoying the spectacle. We did meet a few of them, but my fever, worsened by the long, arduous day in the car the day before and weakened by malnourishment and dehydration, made me less outgoing than I might have normally been. We ordered some beef and fried rice and ate our first real meal in more than thirty-six hours by the pool. It actually tasted pretty good, but that was probably due at least in part to my voracious appetite that had not been sated for the past few days.

That evening, the four of us set out to explore the nearby village of Cox’s Bazar, hiring a pair of rickshaws and their drivers from the group of a dozen or more who crowded around the gate to our hotel, clamoring for our business. We drove/rode (for Asha and Rebecca opted to drive for a good portion of the journey, Jorge and myself seated next to our respective deposed local drivers) down several open roads, the cool air of evening blowing in our faces as we cruised, finally arriving at the village proper. Its streets were crowded with rickshaws and foot traffic, increasingly so as we neared the market. Our drivers led us to a set of about ten shop faces, five on each side of a corridor that opened on one end onto the street. Each shop sold slightly different items at arbitrarily inflated prices (for haggling purposes), was tended by a Burmese (‘Myanmarian’?) woman or two, and was owned by the same businessman in Myanmar. Considering the lovely exchange rate of about 50 Bengali Taka to the UAE dirham (or about 180 to the U.S. dollar) and the incredibly low cost of living in Bangladesh (commiserate with the incredibly low wages available), we found some lovely souvenirs at this collection of shops. Our drivers had followed us in and helped us, with our negligible knowledge of the Bengali language (consisting solely of how to say ‘Thank you’) and relative greenness to the customs of commerce in such a place (myself far more so than my more well-traveled co-adventurers), not to get taken advantage of with shoddy product or overpriced merchandise (given, said merchandise at its ‘overpriced’ state was still a pretty good deal, all things considered).

As the sun set that evening, Eid was called (that is, the holiday was declared to have officially begun… although supposedly it was called the day before (or even two days before) in most of the rest of the Muslim world… that’s Bangladesh for you). There’s something magical about driving a rickshaw through the nighttime streets of a village in Bangladesh, trading shouts of ‘Eid Mubarak’ (a greeting like ‘Merry Christmas’… but for Eid) with my fellow rickshaw drivers, ringing my little bicycle bell all the while. I was having the time of my life. We finally got to the hotel, paid our cab drivers (about ten times the going rate, unbeknownst to us, but the guys were good sports and quite helpful, so we figured they deserved it… it’d do them more good than it would us anyway), and went inside. I was hot, sweaty, and increasingly dehydrated, but still riding high from the surreal excitement we had just experienced. Before I got to my room, I knew I wasn’t feeling well, and I attributed it to perhaps being dehydrated or something. Asha insisted I should drink some water, but I thought I should wait, as my stomach was churning. Eventually I relented and drank some water. A few seconds later I saw it again. And that was the beginning of a delightful twenty-four hours of some sort of illness. I won’t go into too many gory details about the episode. It might have been food poisoning, a twenty-four hour flu, or something else. Jorge and I ate from the same plate during lunch that day, but it could have been that my fever (coupled with the lack of nourishment and hydration the previous day) had weakened me and made me more susceptible to whatever I got. Very few times in my life have I experienced such a low following so close on the heels of such a high. I spent most of Day Four, trying to keep some fluids down, sleeping, groaning, and reading. Even when the ordeal was over, I was weakened by having even more liquid and nourishment expelled from my system (and I still had my fever from before!). Additionally, certain smells, particularly ones that reminded me of the beef and fried rice I had eaten the day before (which, for whatever reason, seemed to be fairly ubiquitous in Cox’s Bazar) made me nauseous. Chicken corn soup (basically Egg-Drop Soup with tiny bits of diced chicken and a few kernels of corn dropped in) was my staple for the rest of the trip. Solid food, especially Bengali food, being seasoned like the ill-fated dish I ate on Day Three, was all but unpalatable for me. On a bright note, though, at the end of Day Four, after night had fallen, I discovered the previously described view of the Bay from the roof of the hotel. Perhaps I was predisposed to enjoying the view due to the miserable night and day I had just completed, but that rooftop view, with its cool quietness, its sense of peace and solace washing over me, was, at least at the moment, one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. A rotten ordeal, bookended by moments of joy and peace. Thank God for small blessings.

So Day Four was mostly a wash; on to Day Five. The four of us rode in a ‘tuk-tuk’, a small vehicle with a go-cart-like engine (hence the origin of the vehicle’s name), that has a roof and walls, but no doors. With a tiny backseat and a small front seat for the driver, it can comfortably fit two or three midgets. We crammed all four of us (plus the driver) into the vehicle. Good times. Every time we got into a vehicle in Bangladesh, from the car on the way to Cox’s Bazar, to the rickshaws whose backseats would accommodate only about half of each of the two passenger’s buttocks, to the perpetual fear of being slung from the ‘tuk-tuk’ and onto the street, to the soon-to-be-described boat ride and domestic prop-plane flight, we always seemed to be taking our lives in our hands. But considering the crowds of locals who ride on top of buses and trains, I suppose that’s just a way of life in Bangladesh. This ‘tuk-tuk’ took (ooh, sorry… bad pun not intended) us to the port, an old wooden boardwalk that branched off for docking in places. The number of bedraggled locals, clothed in rags and old t-shirts, who clamored around us throughout the day was somewhat unnerving. Not so much out of a fear that they posed a danger to our persons or possessions, nor really out of any sort of xenophobia, but rather just out of a sense of their sheer numbers and their lack of the Western idea of ‘personal space.’ But then, when you cram 160 million people into a 144,000-square-kilometer space, I guess such considerations never even enter the popular mindset. Unfortunately, this was somewhat exacerbated by their stares (evoked because of the foreign-ness of us relatively rare western tourists to their land), creating a feeling of being on display for these ubiquitous crowds of locals.

Our guide led us to an old wooden boat, already almost filled to its capacity of about twenty passengers. An outboard motor had been affixed to the boat, so we cruised out into the Bay of Bengal, headed for our destination of the nearby island of Maniyashi. We got an interesting view of the coast as we cruised down it, the groups of fishermen fishing from their dark wooden boats, more impoverished villages, more boats and people than I could count, the people probably the builders or ancestors thereof of many of the boats, every one of them wooden and fairly rough-hewn, betraying their indubitably hand-carved origins. As we got sprayed by water from the Bay during our high-speed crossing, I came to the conclusion that the Bay of Bengal is not only the dirtiest body of water I’ve ever encountered (the Hudson River included), but the smelliest. And of course, said nasty smells didn’t do anything good for my wellbeing considering my new sensitivity to them after my fun on Day Four. But back to our story.

On the island, we encountered an even more ‘authentic’ village, with all its exotic and impoverished trappings. The main purpose of our visit to the island was to visit the old Hindu temple (still in use by worshippers when we went) and the Buddhist pagoda atop the hill. A couple of goats were loafing atop headstones and at the foot of mausoleums in the nearby cemetery, the Bay on one side, the staircase up the mountain from the village to the temple on the other. Children and hawkers were all over the path up the mountain. The temple was fairly interesting, although it lacked the architectural wonders that travel books have impressed upon me as being a ‘typical’ Hindu temple. Dirty, dirty place. And we had to take off our shoes when entering the place. Good way to get gangrene, etc. But we didn’t. Thank Vishnu. Or something.

The Pagoda was pretty cool, too. The path up the mountain from the temple was, for the most part, little more than a goat path, the ground on either side sharply sloping into the valley below. In fact, if one of the goats we saw lounging by the side of the path were to race down it while we were trying to make our way along its perilously narrow course, we would likely as not have tumbled down the mountainside. Upon arriving at the pagoda, which was impressive in its own right, it was the view that took my breath away. You could see for miles; villages, rice paddies, farms, ponds, fishing trawlers in the Bay, children playing in a field, a view of everything that I’d seen thus far in my journey, a sweeping panorama of life in Bangladesh. We stayed at the pagoda for about twenty minutes, enjoying the view, interacting with the locals (including about four children) who had followed us up, and snapping the arbitrary photographs of the pagoda and the surrounding scenery.

After backtracking to the dock and then across the bay to the mainland, the girls went to go do their thing, while Jorge and I sauntered down to the beach. It was truly a sight to behold. And I’m not talking about the record-holding beach itself (as we were unable to appreciate its 120 kilometer length from our vantage point, and the part we could see was not all that impressive). The part that impressed us was the multitude of Bengali and other assorted Indian subcontinental peoples who thronged the beach. There were easily tens of thousands of beachgoers, all local (or at least more local than us crazy western tourists) and all fully clothed. Long sleeves and full trousers for the most part. And they went swimming in the same costumes. I felt like we’d stepped out of the forest and into a beach scene in 19th century England or America. Only the attire was more traditionally Indian… and the people were a wee bit tanner. But the number of the people milling about, most of whom didn’t even seem to be doing anything beach-related (i.e. something related to the sand, the water, or the sun), was the amazing part for us. Vendors walking up and down the beach sold everything from seashells to flowers to popcorn. Groups of young men played soccer in the packed sand. A man used a tether to lead a donkey down the beach, while a boy rode a horse the opposite direction, chased by his hooting friends.

Jorge and I took turns swimming in the surf, ignoring the red flag flying to indicate an undertow warning. The undertow wasn’t too bad, and, luckily, this part of the Bay didn’t stink like the area we’d boated across that morning. After our brief splashing about in the Bay, we wandered about on the beach for a while, eventually returning to the trees, finding a shady spot, and cracking open our respective books to read while the sun set (these books, along with our cameras, were the reason we took turns swimming: whomever wasn’t swimming was keeping those goods dry and unstolen).

Shortly before sunset, a group of about eight or so young men, probably in their late teens or early twenties, came up to the two of us and wanted to take pictures with us. Caught up in the moment, we consented, and they took turns swapping the cameras and the role of photographer, while the rest of the bunch surrounded us and posed with us like old friends. So we’re probably on some Bengali’s slideshow of their holiday in Cox’s Bazar (“…and here are these two white guys we found on the beach…”). As Jorge observed immediately thereafter, “now I know what it’s like to be a rock star.” Personally, I would have preferred a few more females amongst my groupies, but whatever. Kind of illustrative of the previously mentioned entertainment that we foreigners provided the locals.

More shortly before sunset, a group of children and their adult leader came over to us and started singing. Due to their accents, it took me a few verses to realize that they were singing in English, and singing about Jesus to boot. As it turned out, these children were orphans who had been taken under the care of the adult leader, a local pastor. Kind of interesting, being in the middle of a Muslim country, surrounded by countries that are primarily Hindu, Buddhist, and atheist, and here are a bunch of kids singing Sunday School songs. I talked with the pastor a bit, and he gave me his card. Then the sun set. And the sunset was decidedly beautiful (and grew even more so once the sun had fallen below the horizon… but alas, my camera batteries were dead). After regrouping with the girls for dinner, Jorge and I retired to our room, while the girls went to the hotel next door for an Eid dance party. Supposedly all of about ten people showed up, despite the advertisements stapled to the telephone poles lining the street. Jorge and I were bushed, and we decided to crash early. We had an early morning flight to catch.

Day six. The day of airports and smelly flights. Our flight from Dhaka to Sharjah was scheduled for nine or ten that evening. We were in Cox’s Bazar that morning. How to get to Dhaka in time? We decided shortly after arriving in Cox’s Bazar (while the memory of the fateful fifteen hour car ride was still painfully fresh in our minds), that we would take advantage of the domestic flights available on select days from Cox’s Bazar to Dhaka to expedite the trip and get us back to the Dhaka airport with minimal headache (and a much greater likelihood of us catching our flight, instead of being stuck in traffic behind a eight-cow pileup). Royal Bengal Airlines. On their weekly schedule, consisting of about eight or ten different routes between various airports in the country, the airline has about twenty-five different flights. In a whole week. Fleet of one or two planes total, I’d surmise. We traveled by van to the airport. I thought the airport looked like something out of a movie. Some long-abandoned airstrip out in the middle of nowhere, architecture and infrastructure evoking cinematic memories of World War II-era landing fields in isolated areas, a sorry excuse for an airport constructed in the African bush country in the mid-twentieth century. Something like that. On the tarmac sat several old prop planes that looked as though they hadn’t seen service (or indeed, even been serviceable) since sometime in the 1970s, and the tarmac itself was riddled with deep cracks and shoddy patchwork. The airport was tiny, with all of two rooms, the silliest excuse for airport security I’ve yet to encounter, and seemingly no sense of direction or purpose among the workers staffing the terminal. Luckily, the plane that arrived to pick us up did look newer, although it was also a prop plane (my first commercial prop plane!). It was relatively small, but surprisingly nice inside, and due to the morning hour (the flight departed around nine or ten in the morning), or perhaps just due to the fact that most Bengalis can’t afford to fly, the plane was quite empty. We ended up stopping in Chittagong for a few minutes while we dropped off a passenger or two and acquired a few more, before finally arriving in the Dhaka airport.

Jorge toured Dhaka a bit with a van and driver he hired, while Asha, Rebecca and I, adventured-out for the time being and not too keen on the relatively exorbitant price quoted by the van driver, hung out in the airport for the duration of the day, having another day of our meals consisting of snacks procured from vendors until we managed to get past security when our flight started check-in procedures (about seven hours after arriving), when we ate at an actual restaurant further into the terminal.

After boarding the flight, we had a repeat experience of something that happened prior to our arrival in Dhaka from Sharjah five days earlier (that I neglected to mention while relating that episode (at least in this incarnation), but it’s more pertinent here). The cabin crew sprayed insecticide throughout the passenger area while walking up and down the aisle. Considering the personal hygiene of most of the other passengers, and the condition of much of their makeshift baggage (often consisting of cardboard boxes reinforced with packing tape and plastic bags), this practice is understandable, and, I’ve discovered since, a fairly common practice in international flights, particularly in ones with third-world countries at one end or the other of the journey. Kill the bugs who might transmit diseases or be invasive species in the ecosystem of the destination country. They should have used more potent spray, as both Rebecca and myself had cockroaches crawl across our arms during the flight. Good times.

At long last, we arrived in Sharjah. It was nearly midnight local time, and we had to be at work in just over seven hours. However, I had had my heart (or stomach, as it were) set on something for the past several days, ever since my… episode after the rickshaw drive on Day 3. A cheeseburger from the airport McDonalds. Not so much for any symbolic reasons, making the trip come full-circle to the restaurant and airport where it had begun, but rather because I missed food that didn’t remind me of that ill-fated beef and rice meal by the pool in Cox’s Bazar. And the burger was delicious.

And so much for condensing the trip. Geez. Over 4700 words. I’ll try to be more concise with my Jordan entry. I have novels to write…

See you at the next entry!