Dondebaat, Dhaka

Welcome to Bangladesh, Cowboy Country for Backpackers

Bangladesh is the real deal. If you want to know what you are made of, you come here. I have found myself describing India to the other interns here at the Grameen Bank as 'too touristy'. Once you get into it, I think that most would agree, but from your desk chair in the Western World, I can see how that might raise an eyebrow or two.

One great thing is that there is always 'that guy who speaks English' in every village. So eventually, you will figure out where you are and how to get to where you decided on a whim that you would like to be. As they search for him, you will however be bombarded with several similar and repetitive questions that appear to be the only key-take-aways that Bangladeshis garnered from their English classes in school:

"YOUR COUNTRY?"
"YOUR NAME?"

And then the questioner will scurry off to his friends and proudly report back his findings to the curious crowd.

I get a lot of attention here. For those of you who know me, you probably can guess that usually I am ok with attention. But even I, the limelight sponge, have discovered my own limits.

But first, I will attempt to run through my ridiculous itinerary.

Saturday August 1
Arrive in Benapole, Bangladesh. This is the border town coming in from Kolkata. The armpit of Bangladesh, if you will. After a ridiculous passport process of having five stations check my passport and request my father's name and my profession (Wilhelm and zookeeper, if you were wondering) I tell the bus people that I need to jump ship and head south to Khulna. They toss me in a van, which then sits for a while, then hurtles off and dumps me at a train station. I am greeted by a crowd of frantic Bangladeshis who, at my utterance of 'Khulna', hurriedly rush me onto a train and sit me next to a nice family of ladies and babies. Then the train sits for an hour. Welcome to Bangladesh.
When I do arrive in Khulna, everyone gets off, but they all insist that I need to stay on because we aren't in Khulna yet. Or rather, I think I framed the question incorrectly. Do not ask, 'I need to stay on the train right? This isn't Khulna?" Because you will confuse them so they will nod frantically and repeat what you said: "This isn't Khulna!" So I sat on the train like the confused Westerner that I was until a fair sized congergation of onlookers had flooded the car just to stare at me. I assume this is normal. People stared at me the whole ride, even when I stared back or smiled or started talking to them or waved or offered them some of the food that the other people had decided to buy me (presumably for the entertainment value of watching me try and figure out how to eat it - they bought me some weird stuff, but I was game).
So the crowd eventually fetches 'that guy who speaks English' who brokenly explains the situation and I hop off the train, in search of my travel buddy.

Basically we came to this town because it is the launch point for cruises down one of the biggest mangroves in the world, and apparently the wildlife is phenomenal and sometimes you even see Bengal tigers! But unfortunately it is monsoon season, so there are few other tourists, and therefore it would have been like $250. No thanks. We abort mission after this research, having stayed in Khulna for a full 8 hours. and decide to head to the beach on the other side of Bangladesh.

August 2nd
Arrive at a place called Cox's Bazaar. Ridiculously awesome beaches, and because it is the off season, few tourists. The usual hotel search debaucle, but we are at peace for a couple of relaxing days.

August 4th
Teknaf. We had planned to get to St Martin's from here, but in usual Bangladesh style, only upon interrogating the boatamen themselves can we discover that there is one boat a day, and that we seem to have missed it. We have to stay overnight in this place. Disappointed at first, but we ended up having a nice time. Broke a personal record for the-most-people-staring-at-you-as-you-drink-tea at a total of 48. Also we found another awesome beach and took pictures and played with some kids and wrote and stuff. Timo went swimming but I dared not - even if I went in fully clothed (which I would have had to - women here swim in full salwar kameez outfits when they do swim) I would undoubtedly made the local newspaper if I started doing a backcrawl. Good fun nonetheless.

August 5th
St Martin's is the creme de la creme of Bangladesh beaches. It is a remote island off the southeastern pennisula of the country. Unfortunately, there are no commercial ferries going now (offseason, offseason) so the only boats going are... local boats. I think sometimes they are used for fishing. So Timo and I, plus our 70 new closest friends and about 30 chickens, clambered aboard. I was also right near the exhaust pipe. I definitely have the black lung, pop. The best moment was about 3/4 into the ride, when one of the boatsmen randomly decided to distribute the life jackets. Because we don't know what's going on, we can only assume the worst. I start doing mental calculations: Could I swim to shore from here? Yes. The key would be making sure that I am not under the boat if it capsizes. As we reflected afterwards, Timo confessed that his first concern was "How will I save the children?" The is the same guy who biked for 14 months around the world to raise money for Amnesty International.

We arrive finally, a little blue in the face. Timo narrowly avoided some projectile vomit from a seasick toddler. I have never been so happy to see land. We are immediately accosted by some 15 year old boys who claim to own a hotel nearby, and I am exhausted enough to acquiese. We got a pretty good price for the room, and I collapsed.

My limit for staring was reached on that boat. I was in a position such that 3/4 of the boat could get a good look at me, and because it was a boring 2 hour ride, I frankly don't blame them for staring at the strange foreigner in order to observe her reaction to every wave and bump. It just got to the point where I wanted to take off my rain coat because it had stopped pouring and it was getting hot, and when I moved to take it off all eyes were glued to me. I suppose they have never seen a foreigner undress before. But I felt uncomfortable continuing, so I stopped and marinated in my own sweat for the duration of the ride. Mmmmm.

We stayed in St Martin's for a couple of days before I had to head to Dhaka. Timo stayed behind. The kids acted as our tour guides, and we bought them meals with us. In fact, some enterprising locals invited us to dinner twice, and twice we got the bill for the eight person party. I didn't mind at all paying for the kids, but I got a bit of a chuckle paying for the fat Gilderoy Lockharts off this fair place. One told us that his father was the 'ex-chairman' of the island. He spoke English pretty well, so I didn't mind his bragging. His sidekick looked like he belonged poolside at a cheap Nevada hotel with his unbottoned purple flowery shirt and big gold chain. He would always hang around as if he simply wanted to supervise the staff to ensure we were treated well, and then when he thought we weren't looking, he would pull up a chair. I got a kick out of it nonetheless, we are talking about a dollar's worth of food here.

The last great character we met... wow. He was VERY excited to see us! He gave us his resume - in Bengali! Color versions! Color in the font, that is. Then he got very excited and started showing us pictures off his camera phone. Seems he has a wife and a healthy baby boy in St Martin's... and a wife in Cox's Bazaar! And no! They don't know about eachother teeheee heee! He giggled. Then he scampered off to his house and came back with his most prized photo: one of him and her majesty the Queen of England and her husband the Prince. He has been showing this picture to the other villagers for years since his one trip to England. I might have been impressed if I didn't recognize the wax figure from Madame Tussad's!

At first he was planning on going to Teknaf on the fishing boat. I thought, oh wow, get ready to have your ear yapped off. Then, upon hearing that Timo was staying, he gamely announced a change of plans and declared that he would show Timo around and they would have dinner at his house that evening. Timo grimaced and swore at me in German under his breath. My face lit up upon hearing this news, and I gave Timo a warm goodbye hug and hopped on the boat of vomit, smoke, and the open sea.

On Saturday the 8th I arrived in Dhaka. Dhaka is a bloated, polluted, extremely gritty city with a lot of character. I like cities with character, so we got along great. I went to the New Market upon reuniting with some other Grameen interns I had met in Kolkata at the Bangladesh embassy and then I wandered off to explore a bit. I walked through the university and old Dhaka and took a boat on the Buryganga river. Beautiful place, lots to watch on the banks. Upon consulting with some of the other interns, I accomplished more in that 8 hours than a lot of them have done after a month's worth of free weekends here. They just don't know how to walk up to a boatman and negotiate and go out. It's a shame. I went to Gulshan for dinner, then came back to Mirpur to get a good night's sleep before my first day with the Grameen Bank.

I will leave the details of that experience, and my further impressions of Dhaka, for another entry.

I am home in a week! I am both excited and in complete denial. I still have a stopover in Varanasi and then two days and one night in Delhi with the lovely Sujata. Really, what an experience all of this has been. A blog doesn't do it justice, and my exchange travels really don't compare.

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Part of trip: The India Chronicles

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