A week in Bangladesh

Our work / travel itinerary took us to Bangladesh for the SANOG conference at the beginning of August. We arrived in Dhaka at a slightly tumultuous time, during the student protests after two students were killed at a bus stop on 29 July when a bus racing with another bus from the same company, competing for passengers, crashed into the waiting group of students. The protests consisted in blocking streets and intersections and checking drivers' licences and vehicle road-worthiness. An astounding number of people drive on Bangladeshi roads without any papers, although you can't really tell who has learned any rules, and who hasn't, looking at how people drive there. All the buses we saw looked as beaten up as this one: 

And a lot of cars have extra protective gear added on them for better ramming into other cars in traffic:

The newspaper delivered to our hotel talked about food prices rising because of goods shipment issues, as well as some hajj flights from Dhaka being cancelled because the pilgrims were unable to make it to the airport. The auto-rickshaws started charging exorbitant prices, and Uber demand was soaring. The students' demands were completely reasonable; among them were harsher punishment for driving without a licence or reckless driving, and the resignation of Shipping Minister and members of the parliamentary Shipping Committee. 

After a few days, bus companies, including inter-city buses, went on a counter-strike, saying it was impossible to drive among the protests. With 20 million people in Dhaka, chaos was unavoidable.

Fortunately our hotel was about 2km from the airport, so we knew we could walk it if we had to. In fact, some of the other conference attendees did walk from the airport to the hotel because their pick up cars could not get there. 

So, we had planned to spend the first couple of days sightseeing before the conference started, but ended up just staying in our (very nice) hotel and walking around its neighbourhood. Our first impressions of Dhaka were a bit drab:

We could see a very busy train line from our windows, and despite the trains running quite frequently, they were overcrowded and we often saw people riding on the roof, especially at peak times:

We did see some nicer buildings on a quick shopping trip our hosts took us on:

The shop we were taken to was Aarong, and had a bunch of hand-made local clothes, homewares, and accessories. The colours of those fabrics were amazing! 

The first thing you notice about Bangladesh is how deeply muslim the society is. You hardly see any women with their heads uncovered, and very often they don't just wear a hijab, but a niqab or a full burka, including black gloves, all in 32 degree heat! Most restaurants don't sell alcohol, but have a great selection of juices instead. Our hotel room had this little pointer on the ceiling:

If you can't read it, it says Qibla, which is the direction you must face to pray. The hotel also offered a separate prayer room for women:

And a bank advertisement in the newspaper helpfully featured prayer times for the day:

We went to a couple of apartment buildings in Dhaka (once at a friend's invitation to his house, and once accidentally, looking for a mosque), and both had this image of the Kaaba at the entrance:

So yes, the protest did die down, and the day before we left Bangladesh, we ventured out into Old Dhaka and did some sightseeing on our own, using Uber to get there and back. If you think we took the easy way to travel, try recognising the licence plate of your car if the numbers look like this:

I think we managed to see at least half of the places listed in itineraries for day tours of Dhaka, but some of them were closed, or we couldn't find a way to enter. The ones we did see did not make us think we missed out on much on the ones we didn't ;-) 

Lalbagh Fort:

Walking around these paths, we got stopped several times by groups of students asking to take selfies with us! I think it's not often, if ever, that they see Westerners not in a group and not guarded by tour guides. The pink building in the middle was a little museum:

We also saw an old Armenian church, and got a little private tour around the grounds and the cemetery:

Walking around the streets of Old Dhaka was an experience, and while I didn't feel unsafe most of the time, I didn't want to take too many obvious photos of people, so a lot of them are taken from a rickshaw, or from cars. 

Note the bus pushing in on this narrow street among the rickshaws:

I saw some makeshift businesses by the side of the road, such as this shoe repair place:

Or this barber stand (apologies for the fuzziness of the photo):

There were some nice buildings we saw along the way:

But mostly it was just chaos and noise:

We also made it to the river, which didn't seem as dirty, and was much busier, than the one in Manila:

Getting back to the hotel wasn't easy. It took us over an hour to get an Uber, after a couple of them cancelled our booking, finally the one we got took around 45 mins to get to us from where he was when he accepted, which was maybe 1-2 kms away. We were exhausted, covered in dirt and sweat at that point, so we just sat on a curb and waited, while chatting to passers by who were very curious about us (but friendly).

So this was our adventure of this trip, and now for the food. It was delicious at every meal, and I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. The breakfasts at the hotel had a huge number of options, from fresh pancakes and waffles, to omelettes and fried eggs, to fresh breads and pastries, fresh juices, yogurts, and smoothies, jams and cheeses, ham and several kinds of smoked fish, fruits and vegetables, and that's just the Western options. There were also Bangladeshi, Indian, and Chinese breakfast stands, and sushi, because why not. 

We had the conference lunch most days, which also had a great selection every day, of mostly Bangladeshi food, or at least that's what I was going for each time (it's hard to take an attractive photo of curry!):

They also had a huge spread of desserts each time, and man was it hard to choose:

We were taken out for dinner by our hosts each night, and again, each meal was fantastic:

This was grilled fish on a piece of toast. Strange and different, but tasty:

They also had the best naan bread that I've ever tasted. I was happy just eating it on its own.

And this was a snack at afternoon tea, which the chef mixed together and served in a paper bag. The big bowl had chickpeas and lentils of some sort mixed with tomatoes, onions, and spices, and the other ones had puffed rice and I can't remember what else. 

All in all, Bangladesh was an interesting place to visit, but I'm not sure if I'd go back there in a hurry. Maybe to see the National Assembly Building, which is supposed to be an architectural masterpiece, but we only saw it at night from a moving car. Not later this year, though, because as one of our hosts warned us, they have elections and expect a bit of "excitement" around that time.