Bangladesh – Dhaka
Some call it “cursed”, but Bangladesh surprised with a propulsive energy and genuine inquisitiveness.
To close out the Asian part of this trip, I had originally planned to spend a week in Bangladesh, but from the beginning that was almost always in doubt. The crazed looks I got from people every time I said “I’m going to Bangladesh” were bad enough, but the ones from people who’d actually been there were even worse! Or as one friend told me, “I haven’t been to Bangladesh because I don’t want dysentery”.
It also was the most difficult and expensive visa to get. I spent $150 and because of my travel schedule, I had to apply for it in Hanoi. That certainly raised some eyebrows, and I was asked to explain to the ambassador why I hadn’t applied in the States.
I had thought about doing some Bangladeshi tea plantations, but I did those in Sri Lanka. I also wanted to go to their big beach resort, but I had such a great time in Sri Lanka, that I thought that was unnecessary. And after three days of extreme heat in Kolkata, I was thinking it might be best to try and escape it at least a bit. Thus, as I looked at my plan for the last week in Asia, i decided to cut back Bangladesh to only three days, and instead spent four days in Nepal.
I had originally wanted to go to Dhaka for a few reasons — to experience a city as frenetic and crazy as it is purported to be, to see the Louis Khan-designed Parliament, and because it offered the best frequent flier redemption to Europe – 30K in biz class with lie-flat seats one-way, vs 52.5K from Sri Lanka, or recliner seats from India.
Traffic is notoriously bad, and it lived up to its reputation — worse than Bangkok or Jakarta, as far as I could tell. Getting around town is a nightmare, with you inching along for a bit, then sometimes stopped for no seeming reason.
The old city is a veritable scrum of people, cars, rickshaws, bike rickshaws and human carts. Even more than Kolkata, it’s crazy! But everyone remains surprisingly calm. People gently push things aside, or bang on cars to get them to move. I was physically pressed to the side a few times while taking pictures – frankly, the only safe space is behind a pole or inside a foyer.
And, of course, the variety of human rickshaws, hand trucks and the like make for some great images, whether it be for bolts of fabric or tiffins.
The busses look like they were used as bumper cars in another life. And the rickshaws are strikingly colorful.
And Dhaka can also be surprisingly ordered. The boulevards are manicured and relatively clean. Yes, there are shanty towns and extreme poverty, but the city also has numerous high-rise buildings and several areas that are almost tranquil. Friday is a weekend day, and the traffic was very smooth. It felt like a different city. I made my way to several of the monuments with few problems.
There are plenty of things that do shock though. The begging can be intense at times, relentless. It’s close to the perception that people have of India, where it really wasn’t much of an issue. In Bangladesh it ranged from street children banging on windows, to taxi drivers asking for tips to random adults coming up with a hand out. The best was one cab driver who kept asking for baksheesh. I had no small bills except one lone U.S. dollar – he looked at it and asked for $5. LOL
Sadly, I also saw the single most disturbing thing of my trip. I was between the High Court and Dhaka University – both lovely colonial buildings – when I saw a young girl, maybe 8-10 years old, who was lying on a wooden cart. She was dehydrated, her limbs were stiff, her skin was taut and flies had collected on her open mouth, Frankly, she looked to be near death. I didn’t know what to do. People passed and didn’t even look. No one seemed to responsible for this little girl.
Finally someone approached and tried to move her to a more comfortable position, and stayed with her. I gave her some money and moved on – still very disturbed by the situation, and by my own inaction and inadequacy. I walked back to my cab, and silently cursed myself for not having given her my bottle of water.
I expected the highlight of my trip to be a visit to the National Assembly. It is stunning, truly sublime. Designed by Louis Kahn, it is one of the most amazing buildings I’ve seen. Perhaps the journey is part of that amazement, as in a place that is such an amalgam of noise and color, it is triumphantly, incongruously apart, speaking in a visual language that is separate but not dismissive of the surrounding landscape. I was able to go inside, but photos can only be taken of the exterior.
Sadly, the country seems to be ruled by a tag team of political widows with an enmity between them that abandons all pretense of responsible government. If anything, there seems to be official contempt for citizenry – attacks on journalists, manipulation of the courts, paltry infrastructure. When I was there, a young married girl who went with her parents to file a complaint against her husband was then molested by policemen, shunted to a police station and journalists who protested were beaten.
Despite it all, the people were the warmest and most open I met while in Asia. They don’t get many Westerners. I spoke to many people wherever I went. I wish I had taken more time in the country. Now that I know what it’s like, I definitely feel I can handle some of the other sites with ease.
WHERE IS JAVIER? 