Tweet
Independent Bangladesh, Bangladesh
March 1 2005
A tourist's experience about Bangladesh
David Abbot
After just a short time here, I am about to leave. So, as usual I am
doing a newsletter before going to the next country.
Before coming here I met a couple of people who had just recently
visited Bangladesh. When I asked them what they could recommend they
burst out laughing, not a good sign. They did mention a couple of
interesting things, but the gist was that they thought Bangladesh
more of an experience type of place and less of a sightseeing one.
With this in mind I made way to East Bengal. Getting here was quite
easy, involving just a short, but uncomfortable train journey from
Calcutta to the Bangladeshi border. After passing through Indian and
Bangladeshi immigration formalities I caught a couple of buses to get
to Khulna in the south west of the country. Khulna is at the top of
the Sundarbans, the largest littoral mangrove forest in the world.
Apparently quite interesting to visit, unfortunately though too
expensive as there was no other with which to split the cost of boat
hire, so that got skipped. I did visit Bagerhat though, an area with
the greatest concentration of historical buildings in Bangladesh, all
mosques or tombs. A couple of them were quite nice, most were not
very impressive and I didn't think it boded well for the historical
sites of the country. The crocodiles that live in the area were
nowhere to be seen either.
>>From Khulna I got a couple of buses, much more comfortable than any
in India, to Dhaka and then straight away from Dhaka to Chittagong in
the South East of the country. One advantage of Bangladesh being that
it is not very big at all, so getting from one place to another
doesn't take very long.
>>From Chittagong, which is not a very attractive place itself, I went
to Rangamati a town set on a lake man made with a number of islands,
inhabited by some of the hill tribes. It was in this area that a
Briton and two Danes were abducted and held for a month in
February/March 2001. As a result there is heightened military and
political sensitivity, with checkpoints on the way in and out of the
area, where tourists must register as they enter and leave the
Chittagong hill tracts. It was on this bus that I had the most
unexpected experience in Bangladesh, namely meeting another tourist,
not only this but coincidentally having the seat next to him on the
bus. There are very few people who visit Bangladesh for tourism, as
an example the previous occidentals registered with the checkpoints
on the way in to the Hill Tracts had come through two weeks prior to
us. So, Craig the Australian bushman I had met and I wandered around
Rangamati and found a boatman who would take us around the lake for a
reasonable price. He took us to a number of islands where the hill
tribes live in his incredibly noisy little diesel craft. It was
interesting to see not only the villages where these people lived
etc. and seeing them pick fruit, fishing etc. but most interesting to
see the ethnic difference here. This was the end of the Indian
sub-continent and the beginning of South East Asia. The tribal people
being of Tibeto-Burmese ethnicity, as opposed to the Dravido-Aryan
ethnicity of the sub-continent. It is unusual to be able to see such
stark contrast I such a small distance. The lake was pleasantly
scenic and the people nice enough as well, but after a few hours it
was enough. We went back to Rangamati, had a look around town a bit
more and then got the bus back to Chittagong.
The next day we went for what was quite possibly one of the more
bizarre outings I have done, but also probably the high point of my
experiences of Bangladesh. We visited the ship-breaking yards. This
is a long stretch of beach with super-tankers and container ships run
aground, being stripped by the minions of Bangladeshi breakers. The
only other places I am aware of where this is also done is Karachi
(Pakistan) and Gujurat (India) as it is only practicable in places
where the labour cost is extremely low and the health and safety
considerations are almost non-existent. It is a difficult scene to
try and describe. Huge hulks of ships in various states of
dismemberment, some that only just arrived merely have numerous
ant-like people scurrying over the carcasses scavenging anything left
on board as well as all the fixtures and fittings, which are then put
into huge piles of urinals / doors / windows / etc. The beach is
littered with ships funnels, sheets of steel, etc. and filthy workers
with Oxy-acetylene torches cutting up the last bits. The boats are in
various stages of being stripped, some with only a few sheets of
steel so far removed by the men with the torches others where the
only parts that remain are the massive aft sections that are slowly
being pulled towards the beach by massive winches, for the final
sejunction. There are skeletons of ships, that for some reason seem
to have been stripped of everything, but the central structure and a
bit of the hull, so they look like massive steel racks.
After wandering over the beach for while, we managed to find someone
who was willing to take us out in his row-boat so we could get up
close to the boats and see them from the sea. The boatman was not
very pleasant and did not really show us what we wanted to see, so
when another guy with a motor-boat came alongside we jumped into his
boat to get a proper tour. He took us around the ships and a out to
sea far enough that we could see how far the boats stretched away
for. From this vantage it was also possible to see where the boats
were from Lemasol (Cyprus), Monrovia (Liberia), Detroit and New
Orleans (USA), Nassau (Bahamas) amongst others. One of the
unfortunate side effects of this industry is the amount of pollution
that goes into the sea, with oil slicks lapping the beaches. One of
the more disturbing images of the excursion was to see young children
wading and swimming through the oil slick, trying to catch some fish,
with oil on their faces and clothes. Even if they did catch any fish
there, it would no doubt be extremely unhealthy to eat, but they
don't have the luxury of being fussy.
We then wandered through the various emporia that lined the highway,
selling various things from the ships including but not limited to:
Life jackets, Fire-proof asbestos suits, winches, helmets, lifeboats,
sonar, radar, metal-working lathes, standing drills, compasses,
foghorns, telephones, lifeboat radio bags, instruction manuals, life
rings, paddles, oars, rope, chains, toilets, urinals, video
recorders, tape recorders, televisions, radios, basins, washing
machines, posters, safety signs, bottles, lifeboat food rations,
water rations, toilet paper, corn flakes, paintings, cutlery,
windows, crockery, safety manuals, video cassettes (including
"recording marine incidents" and various Greek films), overalls,
braces, harnesses, belts, assorted fastenings, refrigerators, crates,
chess sets, backgammon boards, hydrostatic release valves, clocks,
gauges, dustbins, gas masks, buckets, nets, tarpaulins, scuba
equipment, oxygen bottles, lanterns, lights, torches, search lights,
mooring posts, pulleys, gears, batteries, magazines, engines,
exercise equipment, metal stairways, glass, hoses, doors, gloves and
a lot of scrap metal. It was as interesting walking around this
paraphernalia as the boats themselves. It did however beg the
question ?who did they expect to sell this stuff to, as we were the
only people looking around it and we had almost no interest in buying
anything. So after spending some time perusing the wares we
hitch-hiked back to Chittagong, where we had a bite to eat before
getting a bus to Dhaka.
Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh has managed to attain the unenviable
position of the worlds most polluted city. This is made all the more
impressive by the fact that the rest of the country has almost zero
pollution being lush and verdant. I have only been here a couple of
days, but already have a sore throat from the noxious air.
Craig and I went around the city looking at various bits, we tried to
find the Liberation museum, but were unsuccessful, but we did however
find huge piles of rubbish and a number of abandoned cars, as well as
flooded streets. Although there had been only moderate rain over the
previous day, some roads were more submerged, it makes one empathise
with how the country suffers during the monsoon season which will be
coming soon. Many of those roads that weren't submerged had a thick
putrid slime of mud and waste on, making it particularly unpleasant
to walk through.
We decided to visit Lalbagh fort, apparently Dhaka's premier tourist
attraction. This is not a very big or impressive fort, but is an
island of calm amongst the tumult and noise of Dhaka. Some of the
Bangladeshi tourists were more interested in us than the fort, and we
were photographed and filmed as we wandered around. The main
clientele of the place seemed to be courting couples walking around
the grounds. From there we walked down through the side streets to
the bazaar area. As we were walking through the bazaar, a man walked
past with a massive bulbous elephant shaped foot, something I had
previously not seen. The bazaar was as hectic as any other in the
third world, but the people more curious about Craig and I than most
other places I had been, walking up and staring at us or shouting
Bondur (we thought it meant foreigner, actually I later found out it
means friend), to retaliate, we would go up to them and stare at them
and shout Bangladeshi at them, some took this in good humour, others
freaked out and ran away. We visited the Armenian church, the oldest
church in Bangladesh, built in 1624 for the small but influential
Armenian community. The custodian of the place told us all about its
history and about the community. We then went to see the artisans
making conch shell jewellery in Hindu street, where they cut and
carve the shells into rings and bracelets and file patterns on them.
We then went to the Pink Palace which was closed for some undisclosed
holiday, but where we met some Bangladeshi women who spoke English
and invited us to join them for a boat trip. We all boarded the small
boat and the boatman propelled us through the water at some
surprising speed, considering he only had one paddle and used it in
similar vein to a Venetian gondolier. The trip was only for about ten
minutes, so we decided to hire him for a proper tour, the
Bangladeshis disembarked and we went up river.
Further up river one could see ridiculously overloaded boats. Many of
the boats were so overloaded that the water was actually lapping over
the deck and the boatmen had actually moved the controls on top of
the wheel houses. These boats were so precariously low in the water
that I'm sure all it would take is one reasonable sized wave to go
over the deck to sink them, but we didn't see that happen, although
I'm sure if we waited around long enough we would have. We also saw
something neither of us had ever previously seen, people breaking up
the bottom of the new, soon to be opened, concrete bridge that spans
the river and stealing the rock. Bangladesh has almost no rock
anywhere, so rocks are valuable here for use in aggregate. There was
a cow bobbing along upside down with an exploded stomach next to the
ship repair yards, where it seemed the steel from the ship-breaking
yards was being used to keep aged vessels afloat. After seeing them
working on these boats we paid closer attention to all the others and
realised they were all patchworks of steel, there didn't appear to be
one boat on the river that hadn't been extensively rebuilt. After
each having an unsuccessful attempt at trying to row the boat we went
back to Sadarghat, where we had started from and tried to head back
towards our hotel. The traffic on the way back was so horrendous (the
main reason for the horrific pollution) that after a short while we
decided it would be quicker to walk. This also gave us the
opportunity to stop and chat with the hundred or so riot police
waiting to get violent with the people gathered for some political
rally. We considered taking the stage ourselves, but decided against
it as we would probably insight a riot.
Craig has now left back to India and I am off to Myanmar in a couple
of days. I plan to try and see a couple more things here, including
the national museum and Pink Palace, but they were closed again
today.
Bangladesh has been a peculiar but enjoyable experience. It is
somewhere that has so few tourists, that there is almost no tourist
infrastructure as a result. The locals, even in the big cities find
seeing white people so novel that they will stop and stare and shout
Bondur at the top of their voices, to make sure everyone else notices
there are aliens afoot. This can be a bit annoying, but at the same
time it has a certain charm. The people don't realise they are
sometimes being rude, but are so overcome with this new experience
that they just gather in packs around one, just to see and here the
Bondur. It does however get one better service in places, when I went
to the barber I didn't have to queue, on the bus the locals will give
up their seat for the white man, and when the bus stopped for a snack
stop en route to Chittagong, Jerry the Bangladeshi who had been sat
next to me would not allow me to pay for what I had had, as I was a
guest. When the light in my hotel room started flickering madly, I
called the room boy to sort it out, he said it was too late in the
evening to do anything, so I called down to reception to see if they
could sort it out. They didn't understand what I was talking about so
they brought a businessman who spoke English up with them to help
with the translation, they saw the problem but also said it was too
late to do anything, whereupon the businessman unleashed a tirade of
abuse at them, telling them ¡°He is a guest in our country, fix it
now!¡± which they then managed to do. So, this aspect of being
something unusual here has had its benefits and drawbacks, but
ultimately it has been that, that has made the experience more
special. This is one of the more unusual countries I have been to,
but I have enjoyed it. Although I would have only been here for ten
days, I don't actually feel I have too much more to see here and to
be honest I could quite easily see the place becoming wearisome after
much more time, but I am pleased I came here, if only to satisfy my
curiosity about the place.
--Boundary_(ID_TrR0z2fKoSevxfJPGOeuEw)--
March 1 2005
A tourist's experience about Bangladesh
David Abbot
After just a short time here, I am about to leave. So, as usual I am
doing a newsletter before going to the next country.
Before coming here I met a couple of people who had just recently
visited Bangladesh. When I asked them what they could recommend they
burst out laughing, not a good sign. They did mention a couple of
interesting things, but the gist was that they thought Bangladesh
more of an experience type of place and less of a sightseeing one.
With this in mind I made way to East Bengal. Getting here was quite
easy, involving just a short, but uncomfortable train journey from
Calcutta to the Bangladeshi border. After passing through Indian and
Bangladeshi immigration formalities I caught a couple of buses to get
to Khulna in the south west of the country. Khulna is at the top of
the Sundarbans, the largest littoral mangrove forest in the world.
Apparently quite interesting to visit, unfortunately though too
expensive as there was no other with which to split the cost of boat
hire, so that got skipped. I did visit Bagerhat though, an area with
the greatest concentration of historical buildings in Bangladesh, all
mosques or tombs. A couple of them were quite nice, most were not
very impressive and I didn't think it boded well for the historical
sites of the country. The crocodiles that live in the area were
nowhere to be seen either.
>>From Khulna I got a couple of buses, much more comfortable than any
in India, to Dhaka and then straight away from Dhaka to Chittagong in
the South East of the country. One advantage of Bangladesh being that
it is not very big at all, so getting from one place to another
doesn't take very long.
>>From Chittagong, which is not a very attractive place itself, I went
to Rangamati a town set on a lake man made with a number of islands,
inhabited by some of the hill tribes. It was in this area that a
Briton and two Danes were abducted and held for a month in
February/March 2001. As a result there is heightened military and
political sensitivity, with checkpoints on the way in and out of the
area, where tourists must register as they enter and leave the
Chittagong hill tracts. It was on this bus that I had the most
unexpected experience in Bangladesh, namely meeting another tourist,
not only this but coincidentally having the seat next to him on the
bus. There are very few people who visit Bangladesh for tourism, as
an example the previous occidentals registered with the checkpoints
on the way in to the Hill Tracts had come through two weeks prior to
us. So, Craig the Australian bushman I had met and I wandered around
Rangamati and found a boatman who would take us around the lake for a
reasonable price. He took us to a number of islands where the hill
tribes live in his incredibly noisy little diesel craft. It was
interesting to see not only the villages where these people lived
etc. and seeing them pick fruit, fishing etc. but most interesting to
see the ethnic difference here. This was the end of the Indian
sub-continent and the beginning of South East Asia. The tribal people
being of Tibeto-Burmese ethnicity, as opposed to the Dravido-Aryan
ethnicity of the sub-continent. It is unusual to be able to see such
stark contrast I such a small distance. The lake was pleasantly
scenic and the people nice enough as well, but after a few hours it
was enough. We went back to Rangamati, had a look around town a bit
more and then got the bus back to Chittagong.
The next day we went for what was quite possibly one of the more
bizarre outings I have done, but also probably the high point of my
experiences of Bangladesh. We visited the ship-breaking yards. This
is a long stretch of beach with super-tankers and container ships run
aground, being stripped by the minions of Bangladeshi breakers. The
only other places I am aware of where this is also done is Karachi
(Pakistan) and Gujurat (India) as it is only practicable in places
where the labour cost is extremely low and the health and safety
considerations are almost non-existent. It is a difficult scene to
try and describe. Huge hulks of ships in various states of
dismemberment, some that only just arrived merely have numerous
ant-like people scurrying over the carcasses scavenging anything left
on board as well as all the fixtures and fittings, which are then put
into huge piles of urinals / doors / windows / etc. The beach is
littered with ships funnels, sheets of steel, etc. and filthy workers
with Oxy-acetylene torches cutting up the last bits. The boats are in
various stages of being stripped, some with only a few sheets of
steel so far removed by the men with the torches others where the
only parts that remain are the massive aft sections that are slowly
being pulled towards the beach by massive winches, for the final
sejunction. There are skeletons of ships, that for some reason seem
to have been stripped of everything, but the central structure and a
bit of the hull, so they look like massive steel racks.
After wandering over the beach for while, we managed to find someone
who was willing to take us out in his row-boat so we could get up
close to the boats and see them from the sea. The boatman was not
very pleasant and did not really show us what we wanted to see, so
when another guy with a motor-boat came alongside we jumped into his
boat to get a proper tour. He took us around the ships and a out to
sea far enough that we could see how far the boats stretched away
for. From this vantage it was also possible to see where the boats
were from Lemasol (Cyprus), Monrovia (Liberia), Detroit and New
Orleans (USA), Nassau (Bahamas) amongst others. One of the
unfortunate side effects of this industry is the amount of pollution
that goes into the sea, with oil slicks lapping the beaches. One of
the more disturbing images of the excursion was to see young children
wading and swimming through the oil slick, trying to catch some fish,
with oil on their faces and clothes. Even if they did catch any fish
there, it would no doubt be extremely unhealthy to eat, but they
don't have the luxury of being fussy.
We then wandered through the various emporia that lined the highway,
selling various things from the ships including but not limited to:
Life jackets, Fire-proof asbestos suits, winches, helmets, lifeboats,
sonar, radar, metal-working lathes, standing drills, compasses,
foghorns, telephones, lifeboat radio bags, instruction manuals, life
rings, paddles, oars, rope, chains, toilets, urinals, video
recorders, tape recorders, televisions, radios, basins, washing
machines, posters, safety signs, bottles, lifeboat food rations,
water rations, toilet paper, corn flakes, paintings, cutlery,
windows, crockery, safety manuals, video cassettes (including
"recording marine incidents" and various Greek films), overalls,
braces, harnesses, belts, assorted fastenings, refrigerators, crates,
chess sets, backgammon boards, hydrostatic release valves, clocks,
gauges, dustbins, gas masks, buckets, nets, tarpaulins, scuba
equipment, oxygen bottles, lanterns, lights, torches, search lights,
mooring posts, pulleys, gears, batteries, magazines, engines,
exercise equipment, metal stairways, glass, hoses, doors, gloves and
a lot of scrap metal. It was as interesting walking around this
paraphernalia as the boats themselves. It did however beg the
question ?who did they expect to sell this stuff to, as we were the
only people looking around it and we had almost no interest in buying
anything. So after spending some time perusing the wares we
hitch-hiked back to Chittagong, where we had a bite to eat before
getting a bus to Dhaka.
Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh has managed to attain the unenviable
position of the worlds most polluted city. This is made all the more
impressive by the fact that the rest of the country has almost zero
pollution being lush and verdant. I have only been here a couple of
days, but already have a sore throat from the noxious air.
Craig and I went around the city looking at various bits, we tried to
find the Liberation museum, but were unsuccessful, but we did however
find huge piles of rubbish and a number of abandoned cars, as well as
flooded streets. Although there had been only moderate rain over the
previous day, some roads were more submerged, it makes one empathise
with how the country suffers during the monsoon season which will be
coming soon. Many of those roads that weren't submerged had a thick
putrid slime of mud and waste on, making it particularly unpleasant
to walk through.
We decided to visit Lalbagh fort, apparently Dhaka's premier tourist
attraction. This is not a very big or impressive fort, but is an
island of calm amongst the tumult and noise of Dhaka. Some of the
Bangladeshi tourists were more interested in us than the fort, and we
were photographed and filmed as we wandered around. The main
clientele of the place seemed to be courting couples walking around
the grounds. From there we walked down through the side streets to
the bazaar area. As we were walking through the bazaar, a man walked
past with a massive bulbous elephant shaped foot, something I had
previously not seen. The bazaar was as hectic as any other in the
third world, but the people more curious about Craig and I than most
other places I had been, walking up and staring at us or shouting
Bondur (we thought it meant foreigner, actually I later found out it
means friend), to retaliate, we would go up to them and stare at them
and shout Bangladeshi at them, some took this in good humour, others
freaked out and ran away. We visited the Armenian church, the oldest
church in Bangladesh, built in 1624 for the small but influential
Armenian community. The custodian of the place told us all about its
history and about the community. We then went to see the artisans
making conch shell jewellery in Hindu street, where they cut and
carve the shells into rings and bracelets and file patterns on them.
We then went to the Pink Palace which was closed for some undisclosed
holiday, but where we met some Bangladeshi women who spoke English
and invited us to join them for a boat trip. We all boarded the small
boat and the boatman propelled us through the water at some
surprising speed, considering he only had one paddle and used it in
similar vein to a Venetian gondolier. The trip was only for about ten
minutes, so we decided to hire him for a proper tour, the
Bangladeshis disembarked and we went up river.
Further up river one could see ridiculously overloaded boats. Many of
the boats were so overloaded that the water was actually lapping over
the deck and the boatmen had actually moved the controls on top of
the wheel houses. These boats were so precariously low in the water
that I'm sure all it would take is one reasonable sized wave to go
over the deck to sink them, but we didn't see that happen, although
I'm sure if we waited around long enough we would have. We also saw
something neither of us had ever previously seen, people breaking up
the bottom of the new, soon to be opened, concrete bridge that spans
the river and stealing the rock. Bangladesh has almost no rock
anywhere, so rocks are valuable here for use in aggregate. There was
a cow bobbing along upside down with an exploded stomach next to the
ship repair yards, where it seemed the steel from the ship-breaking
yards was being used to keep aged vessels afloat. After seeing them
working on these boats we paid closer attention to all the others and
realised they were all patchworks of steel, there didn't appear to be
one boat on the river that hadn't been extensively rebuilt. After
each having an unsuccessful attempt at trying to row the boat we went
back to Sadarghat, where we had started from and tried to head back
towards our hotel. The traffic on the way back was so horrendous (the
main reason for the horrific pollution) that after a short while we
decided it would be quicker to walk. This also gave us the
opportunity to stop and chat with the hundred or so riot police
waiting to get violent with the people gathered for some political
rally. We considered taking the stage ourselves, but decided against
it as we would probably insight a riot.
Craig has now left back to India and I am off to Myanmar in a couple
of days. I plan to try and see a couple more things here, including
the national museum and Pink Palace, but they were closed again
today.
Bangladesh has been a peculiar but enjoyable experience. It is
somewhere that has so few tourists, that there is almost no tourist
infrastructure as a result. The locals, even in the big cities find
seeing white people so novel that they will stop and stare and shout
Bondur at the top of their voices, to make sure everyone else notices
there are aliens afoot. This can be a bit annoying, but at the same
time it has a certain charm. The people don't realise they are
sometimes being rude, but are so overcome with this new experience
that they just gather in packs around one, just to see and here the
Bondur. It does however get one better service in places, when I went
to the barber I didn't have to queue, on the bus the locals will give
up their seat for the white man, and when the bus stopped for a snack
stop en route to Chittagong, Jerry the Bangladeshi who had been sat
next to me would not allow me to pay for what I had had, as I was a
guest. When the light in my hotel room started flickering madly, I
called the room boy to sort it out, he said it was too late in the
evening to do anything, so I called down to reception to see if they
could sort it out. They didn't understand what I was talking about so
they brought a businessman who spoke English up with them to help
with the translation, they saw the problem but also said it was too
late to do anything, whereupon the businessman unleashed a tirade of
abuse at them, telling them ¡°He is a guest in our country, fix it
now!¡± which they then managed to do. So, this aspect of being
something unusual here has had its benefits and drawbacks, but
ultimately it has been that, that has made the experience more
special. This is one of the more unusual countries I have been to,
but I have enjoyed it. Although I would have only been here for ten
days, I don't actually feel I have too much more to see here and to
be honest I could quite easily see the place becoming wearisome after
much more time, but I am pleased I came here, if only to satisfy my
curiosity about the place.
--Boundary_(ID_TrR0z2fKoSevxfJPGOeuEw)--