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Published: June 23rd 2006
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Today I took the most photos in one day of the trip. We went to many places, and at a pace conducive to photo taking, so it was a good day
In the morning we did as we have done for the last few days and ate a breakfast of parathas, eggs, dal and Cha (tea) at the Sea Crown. While their dinners are awful, their breakfasts are decent. The plan for the day was for a trip to Moheshkhali, though none of us knew exactly what was there or how far away it was. It fact, it seems no Bangadeshis have any conception of time, as their estimates of time and distance have usually been in error by 3 or 4 times over. Zafar said that there were large fish-drying places, and that sounded interesting enough to me.
The first order of business was a rickshaw ride to the docks. There was a 2 Taka toll for the docks, the crossing of which began with a stroll past the town dump. A cow was munching on refuse - the cows I ate were hopefully not fed the same way. The bridge was quite rickety, our eyes were
fixed downwards as we walked along so that our feet would land on secure spots. As we reached the end of the road, the rickety docks morphed into wooden boats securely sitting in the mud. Once we reached the end of the boat/dock/bridge, we clambered aboard a Bangladeshi speed boat. Basically it was a fiberglass shell with a 200 HP Yamaha engine. The kid poled us over to another dock where we picked up our driver for the short ride to the island. Though we heard estimates for the trip length ranging from 20 minutes to 2 hours from the rickshaw drivers, I think it was about 15 minutes. I don’t have a watch on this trip, and it is really great. I go to sleep when the sun goes down and wake up when the sun comes up. Time sorta just flows, without getting bunched up with commitments and life. Anyway, our driver gave us a quite smooth ride and then we arrived on Moheshkhali.
On arrival things we were accosted by hordes of rickshaw drivers. I think they work in teams and I had no idea what was going on except that ended up in a
rickshaw with Nabil and everything worked out with the bargaining. In the end we got a good deal with our rickshaw wallahs because they gave us a good tour of the island.
The first stop on the tour was a Buddhist temple. I had never been inside one before and I found it to be very peaceful and tranquil. There was a great image that I didn’t feel comfortable capturing of a monk sitting peacefully bathed in light. I thought it would not have been appropriate for me to take the photo so I didn’t.
After the Buddhist temple we visited a Hindu temple. I took a photo of an old woman who had lost her husband and was forced to beg to survive. The photo looked perfect on my camera but wasnt as good on the computer. At the temple there was a hanuman (monkey) and he got pretty angry and started baring his teeth. Luckily for us, he was in a cage.
As we were leaving the island, one of the rickshaw drivers asked for "bideshi taka", or foreign money - luckily I had brought some and was able to give them a
one dollar bill. Nabil made them promise to not kill each other over it.
After that we came home and at another Bangladeshi food place, took a swim, had some coffee at Angel Drop, dinner at a 5-star hotel, and then went to sleep again before 10pm
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Helena :)
non-member comment
erm...
Your pics are cool but is it socially acceptable to take a picture of the woman like that? Did you just look at her, ask her what was up, and walk away after you took the picture? That's seems kinda wrong...