This is my 100th blog entry!
Before I went on vacation - way back in the end of July - I went to Bangladesh. I have been meaning to put up a post for a long time now but never got around to it. Since my post is so late, it will be less than what I had intended. Here are some pictures with some text for reach one. You can jump straight to the pictures by clicking here!
When I changed money, I had only two 500 Euro notes that the company gave me to use on my trip. The bank would not make change so I had to change one 500 Euro note. What I got was a pile of money! It was somewhere in the ballpark of 45,000 Taka, which you can see, is about as thick as my cellphone. They gave me mostly 500 Taka notes, which turned out to be too big to use in most small shops and food places. Consequently, I spent no money except for my hotel bill. On the way back, the bank in the airport refused to buy back the Taka so i came home with a ton of Bangladeshi money.
That’s me one hour into the fair. The fair was not a closed in space and so there was no air conditioning. Banglades is extremely humid (I don’t think it was less than 90% while I was there) and very hot. It was the rainy season while I was there so it was raining all the time, and everything was wet.
This is a picture from the fair ground. That is the part that was enclosed. I think it was being used for something else.
This is one of the two Turks I was with, Hilal, and her agent in Bangladesh, Rhiya. Hilal and Kenan are from another company that we do business with here in Turkey. Since the Kenan didn’t speak English, I ended up talking with Hilal a lot. Hilal and Kenan really did not like Bangladesh. They complained a lot about everything. It was actually kind of funny.
Here is a picture from the streets of Dhakka, the capital of Bangladesh. You can see the bicycle taxis that are commonly used in Bangladesh. They are called rickshaws and they were everywhere. I thought they were great fun to take. Hilal and Kenan thought I was crazy for taking one, and even crazier for having enjoyed the experience. I was also clipped by one in a narrow street, but no real harm done.
Bamboo seemed to be a very popular building material. Even for the construction of big buildings, bamboo poles were used as support until the building had the strength to stand on it’s own support.
Just some picture that I liked.
A close up of a rickshaw.
A picture from one of the poorer districts of Bangladesh. I went with Hilal and Kenan to visit one of their customer’s factories. We took a long drive through the city and I got to see a lot of Dhakka. From what I saw, Dhakka appears to be very poor and living conditions are quite bad. With all the flooding from the rain, it is very difficult for people there to keep good living conditions.
If you look closely at the building being built, you can see how the bamboo poles are used for support for each floor until everything else is ready.
The factory I visited with Hilal, Kenan and Rhiya was in a very poor part of the city. Walking up the stairs to the offices of the factory felt like walking in some WWII movie. It was raining, many buildings around me were destroyed or falling apart. There was not railing, not carpet, not windows or no lights. It looked as though the stairs had not been swept in ages. However once you went through the door into the factory it looked like this!
Unbelievable huh?! The factory was immaculate! Everyone was barefoot in order to keep the floor clean!
A cool picture I took of a truck at the side of the road.
An old river boat on the side of the river. It was turned into a restaurant 40 years ago. It still floats, but by the look of it, it’s never going to move on it’s own power ever again. If you look closely on the right on the water are two small boats. One is completely out of the water on top of the other.
A picture of the river. All the smoke stacks you can see are for making bricks. There seemed to be a ton of smoke stacks and a ton of bricks around. There also seemed to be a tone of people breaking the bricks up into small pieces. My guess was to use them to mix with concrete.
Goats on a boat! The boat behind the goat boat is so heavily loaded that water is coming up into it. It seemed like most boats were this heavily loaded.
Hilal was pretty short.
Some cool looking government building. The intense humidity reminded me of my time in the Marshal Islands.
There is your proof that I did in fact get on a rickshaw. Since I am so much bigger than everyone else in the country, I was afraid I was going to break it.
Traditional Bangladeshi food. My hosts were actually nervous that I would get sick from eating this but I insisted. I fortunately did not get sick from this (I was sick the two days prior, during which I spent a night praying to the porcelain gods). You know that you are playing with fire when even the locals are nervous about eating it.
The food is eaten with your hands (just one!). It was really cool mixing all the sauces together with your fingers. The food was mostly vegetarian and very good. I ordered some chicken, which Faziul (the guy to my right in this picture) would not eat because of concerns about bird flu.
It seemed like there were cables everywhere above your head when traveling around Dhakka. I can’t imagine anybody knows where any of these wires go.
Some of the guys I was meeting with play soccer every Sunday. So I decided to join them! The field was extremely muddy and slippery so I couldn’t do much other than fall in front of the other players (I am standing on the only dry spot in the filed). Even though it was very humid and raining most of the time, things would get dusty as soon as it stopped raining for an hour or so.
This is Rofique. He is the agent for my father’s company in Bangladesh. I figured I would email him before I left. I ended up spending most of the time with his son Fazlul, but dropped in to chat with him. Fazlul and Rofique gave me the excellent shirt that I am wearing in this picture.
That’s Fazlul on the left. This is me with a group of three friends (there are more in the group) who have been friends since childhood, and business partners for a long time. The story goes that they all went abroad, living in England, Switzerland, and other places. After some time, they all returned to Dhakka, and reformed their group of friends. Now their children and wives all spend time together. They have a weekly tradition that they have kept for a long time of having dinner together once a week. They also started a sports center with tennis, basket ball, soccer, pool and many other things for their community. These guys were amazing hosts and were so much fun. Fazlul is one of the most interesting people I have met. I hope that I can start something for the company in Bangladesh so that I can travel there again.
After returning from Bangladesh, Hilal confirmed what I had suspected all along - she did not, nor did any of the other turks, enjoy Bangladesh. Oh well, their loss.
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