Walking through some Dhaka suburbs

Yesterday I took Benny the Wonderdog for a stroll through three different suburbs, Gulshan2 (where our new apartment is), the back of Baridhara where Shane's first apartment was, and down the main shopping district of Bashundhara. On the weekend, Shane had driven me down a narrow back street at the back of Baridhara where small shops, street stalls, rickshaws, cars, CNGs and pedestrians all mingled together to the point of bursting. The scene really captured my imagination and I resolved to go back there.

So, on the first day of the working week (Sunday) I packed lunch for me and Benny, added two bottles of water and set off on a fabulous excursion that took us just under four hours. The locals were very curious about Benny and I was often surrounded by firstly; a bolder Bangladeshi (always the men that approach, not women), then another shyer one would approach because the first person had, and then more would come, until finally there would be half a dozen or more Bangladeshi men and children asking where I was from, where Benny was from, at one point, how much did it cost to get him over to Bandgladesh (!). Then we put on the 'Benny show' of 'sit' and 'shake' followed by pats if any of the locals were game enough. Benny handled all the attention with aplomb and having him with me meant that the focus of the men was not entirely on me, for once. It was a really enjoyable afternoon. Here is how I spent the day via photos...

The colourful washing caught me eye...

These kids were trying to get my
attention as I
walked by their apartment
block.




Richshaws are colourful and quant but also one of the

biggest traffic problems. There are just thousands of them and the drivers are not exactly conversant of road rules (there aren't any..what am I saying?)


 





This little goat wanted to make friends with Benny but Benny was not sure of what it was and what to do. I had a crowd of locals surrounding us, laughing at Benny's reaction. I had a hard time holding onto Benny whilst  trying to take photos and this was the only picture that turned out.




Selling chooks (spatchock size!) and ducks


 

CNGs

  

I want to buy our veges from here rather than
the 'supermarket'

   

See! Bata Shoe store...lots of them; really cheap
shoes and none of them fit! Dohh!



The Bangladeshis just LOVE their chicken so there are
  fast food chook shops like this one, everywhere.

  

There are hundreds of these tiny little 'sell everything
and anything' shops.


 
 
 

Cooking sweet deep fried dessert thing...I know not what yet, but it looked so nice...




Have to get a bedding maker like this one to make us a
'topping' mattress as our bed is like sleeping  on concrete. Apparently the Bangladeshi beds are all like this
and mattresses are the one thing that Expats
say to 'bring your own'


 

The man in the robe out the front didn't mind having
his photo taken a couple of times over

  

Where's the room to build furniture in this?



This is a Bangla dog (wild dogs and they all look the same and they are everywhere). There is no bite behind their bark and they put on a show of toughness...I don't think they really have the energy to fight another dog, really...

These men were expecting me to ask them to take their photo, so I kind of had to as they looked disappointed when I was about to just go past after having just taken shots of someone else across the street!

Another bedding place...

 
 

This is the mosque near Shane's old place where the first call to prayer occurs over the public address system every morning at 5am. I was going to go in and lodge a  formal noise complaint, but was too busy and had to
get going. Lucky for them... :) 

 

Here's a couple of apartments near our old place
that are atypical of the effort they go to in keeping the
frontages nice with gardens and a tad of grass occasionally

  



I then walked through the park near our old apartment which runs alongside the Gulshan Lake. Benny and I sat down and rested (we were absolutely knackered) and ate our lunch. The shade was beautiful, the scenery unreal; I really appreciated the nice shade of green of the water in particular as it matched the trees (hee hee). Here's the pathway lined with trees. Unfortunately, I was kicked out of the park by a guard who said dogs were not allowed but Shane and I are going to take him there again as we did not see any signs and remain unconvinced. 

United Hospital across the other side of the lake
( a private hospital which actually
looks very impressive all lit up at night)



Just apartments across the other side


   

This little bird looks like some sort of Kingfisher. It hung
around for a while. It had striking blue feathers on its back
but everytime I approached it would face me head on so I couldn't photograph the blue feathers  




Here's one of the many sewerage outlets helping to turn the
lake water such a pretty shade of green....



Another 'hole in the road' but
luckily, this one is marked with a funny looking pole (?)
 to warn drivers and pedestrians of how dangerous it is.

  

Couldn't resist photographing the hole's 'ínnards'...
Beeeuutiful! Bit of sewerage, bit of rubbish! Just love to accidently put my foot in that least of all if you are walking down the street at night...!



Just another example of prettying up an apartment

Shopping Bangladesh Style

Dear Family and Friends,

Once again I apologise for the lack of photos but will fix as soon as I can.

Shane drove me to the Bashindara Shopping Mall on my second day in Dhaka. I was dying to go after his description of it being around 8 or so stories high with stained glass ceiling and just hundreds and hundreds of stores. I was excited about buying some really cheap shoes and Bata Shoes are actually made here in Bangladesh. All good....or so I thought... 

Firstly, to my utter disappointment, I didn't fit any of the shoes due to my clodhopper sized feet (Bata go up to size 7 and I need size 9 or 10 depending on the make) and all the private shoe retailers that sold imported shoes (I went into about four shoe shops) had nothing close to my size either. I now know how Cindarella's ugly step sisters must have felt when desparately trying to get the magic shoe to fit but I repeated this excrutiating exercise in four shoe shops determined as I was that this situation could not be happening! I wanted those shoes dammit! What was really annoying was that the men who served me in each and every shoe shop insisted I buy the shoe that was the closest fit; not the correct fit mind you, just the closest fit. So that was my introduction to 'shopping Bangladesh style'. 

Mostly, all the Bangladeshi shop owners are men with male employees and a smattering of women. OK so I know I sound unwordly and untravelled (a serious greenhorn to be sure to be sure)... but the men are really pushy so in an open space between two lines of shops in the Bashindara Shopping Complex (or any shops anywhere), they are standing outside the entrance of their stores incessantly urging you to come in. OMG it is so not relaxing and you cannot wander where ever your nose fancies with all the noise and desire by total strangers to get your attention. GO AWAY. GRRRrrrrr.  Even when inside the shops, the men stand over you like real standover merchants; they follow you around, invade your personal space and your thoughts and manage to kill any desire to actually spend money. To be fair the Bangladeshi women also do the same thing, but more from an acceptable distance. You can garuantee that you'll come out more tense than you went in. Maybe they've got some deal going with  massuers in the city?

In the Bashindara Shopping Mall all the lingerie shops also had males working in the shops who were calling out to me. Eeeek! What woman wants a bra fitted by a male, or does it just not happen and you just hope you've bought the right size? I don't think I'll be finding out in a hurry and I was suddenly thankful that I had bought a whole tonne of new underwear before I came, especially bras.  I voiced my disdain about the whole men in womens' lingerie shops thing to Shane who explained that the ready made garment (RMG - I learnt that today) industry in Dhaka is huge and dominated by men (no shit). So I made up my mind that I would not return in a hurry to Bashindara Shopping Mall let alone spend my money on any lingerie shop where I would be served by a male as the feminist in me just wouldn't allow it. 

As soon as Shane went back to work (in the first week) I got out and about because I knew if I didn't make myself, it would never happen. So I went down to Gulshan 2 Circle shops nearby and had a similar experience to the Bashindara Shopping Mall. Not good. The next day I made up my mind to head off again but to find a way to enjoy it and to seek out the shops I really wanted to see (mainly the art galleries) and to not let anyone spoil my experience (that being the traders). I finally found the stairs to get up to the first floor of DTT 2 shopping area (trust me, it was only hard for me). I made a point of taking only one step inside any shop that took my fancy and saying firmly, "OK if I LOOK?" It seemed to work for the most part; it gave me some control by establishing my intentions up front and the men kept their distance each time. Awesome. I really enjoyed the art galleries that day. Gail if you read this, there's some awesome peices you could hang in your beautiful home, tell Chris, cheap, very cheap! :), However, just when my confidence was high, I made a dick of myself by tripping up over a one inch raised floor in this fab shop that had Bangladeshi handcraft items but still managed to get out my holy mantra of "OK if I look" whilst flying through the shop doorway and simultaneously trying to recover my decorum (heh heh, that was nearly the name of the shop too, Decorium). 

After that shop, there was this young Bangladeshi guy outside a jewellery cum antiques store that I tried to walk past because I was not interested in any of it; looked like junk to me. But in a moment of weakness I allowed him to lure me in because he'd indulged in some humourous banter with me. As soon as I got in he pulled out pearls for me to view, so, so much for being allowed to 'just look' as I had insisted and he had agreed to in our banter outside his store. In the end, he was appalled that I was going to leave without even a 'lend' of a medallion where I would be allowed to take the jewellery item away with me and owe him him the money without even a deposit (yep I'd just love to owe money to one of these guys, NOT). How that arrangement would work I don't know, I wasn't hanging round to ask either so the very last thing this guy did, was give me his business card because he couldn't bear the thought of having lost a sale and that maybe I'd come back but would forget what his store was called. Jeez mate, I don't like your store, clean it up!  All in all, I felt I had been about 90% successful in getting the store workers to BACK OFF that day. So in summary, browsing shops in Bangladesh is nothing short of interesting and eventful and you need to have your wits and your energy because 'just looking' is not Bangladeshi shopping culture.

Whilst talking about Bangladeshi store owners and employees, particularly male Bangladeshi shop staff, I had Shane's gmail account open (hard to explain) but we are sharing one PC at the moment and having to logout/login of each others' gmail accounts when we want to email. I had just read a story online (NT News) about the King of Saudi Arabia decreeing that all lingerie store owners have 6 months to lay off their male staff and to employ only women so that Saudi women feel comfortable when buying under garments. Apparently it is a real win for Saudi women on a number of fronts (employment and most importantly, feeling comfortable when they shop). I got really excited because all this reminded me of how I felt in the Bashindara Shopping Mall and I thought I'd send the link to Shane at work. Small problem, I used Shane's email account and doubly, I accidently typed his secretary's name into the 'To' field instead of Shane's name as they both start with 'Sh'. So in effect, Shane sent one of his Bangladeshi female employees an email from his personal email account on a rather inappropriate subject! :)  I tried to explain to him what had occured when he came home from work; that perhaps this required his immediate attention and that there could be issues...and finally, when he actually listened, he nearly had a heart attack!  Hah hah, I couldn't stop laughing :). Shane is fortunate that his secretary actually understood his explanation and took it all with good humour the next day at work. But she also told Shane that she wished they would do the same in Bangladesh. See, I knew I was onto something!  I'll start an anti-ligerie movement or something whilst I'm here, NOT! Hmmm, maybe we could all go bra-less, that would get a large section of the community offside heh heh...

Ciao everyone,
Lett

New Year New Life

Dear Family and Friends,

I have to give up (temporarily) on trying to attach photos for the moment to my two blog posts. It worked once and now just aint happening...

I don't even know where to start to even describe my first two weeks in Dhaka: Perhaps I should mention these things: The noise, the mozzies, the dirt, the hazy sky, the garbage, the constant staring (I think I'm a movie star), the incredibly poor people, malformed beggars, pushy traders, the lack of footpaths to walk on or damaged footpaths that makes walking a dangerous pastime, the cars, the honking, the hords of people everywhere (around 20 million in Dhaka alone), becoming 'one with the traffic',  the call to prayer five times a day, the cool and quite pleasant weather (for now), the constant noise from building new apartment blocks as greedy developers buy out family owned plots and add yet another unattractive concrete structure to the suburbs... 

Dhaka  is a cacophony of noise and movement and colour that both confuses and pervades your thoughts, but at the very least, commands your attention. Well, if you're not attentive, you'd get run over by a rickshaw or a CNG, (kind of a motorised rickshaw 'tuk tuk' in other parts of Asia, anyway).

I tried to find a park today (Tues 10 January) just to sit in, with Benny, our dog. I even put a book in my backpack and a snack for the both of us, hoping to spend time just to sit together and munch on some potatoe chips - I had it all planned but at the same time, have seen enough of Dhaka to be pretty suspect about finding a nice and peaceful public area to sit in. To be fair if I'd walked to another suburb I would have been successful as the park over where we used to live allows dogs. As it is, there is little greenery or quiet spots in Dhaka, not even grassed nature strips; everything is bricked, concreted, rendered or tarred!!  Well that's not quite true about the greenery, there are a lot of trees, they even grow them out of the middle of the footpaths (which really makes footpaths difficult to navigate especially when you're holding an umbrella) but the leaves on all the trees are covered in this 'stuck on' dust which does not dislodge with the odd bit of rain; so you don't actually get an impression of overall greenery; more of dirt and dust but shady, still I guess.



The park near our new apartment called Gulshan Park

 In this city that does not seem to rest, there are a few parks which are gated and manned by security guards (I suspect this is to stop people sleeping in them at night) which are a quiet haven for young lovers to sit and talk together (public displays of affection (PDA) are definitely a no-no); for example, you would not see young lovers holding hands whilst walking down a street, nor even an old married couple holding hands. Strangely enough, you see some grown men and younger men holding hands, so I don't entirely get it; isn't that affection? The parks have wide bricked pathways following their boundaries which are intended for exercise, and which quite a few of the Bangladeshis do, (this is more a statement about the sheer numbers of people here, rather than a statement about Bangladeshis being fit) so even the parks are not entirely places of rest and relaxation. And watching Bangladeshis exercise is a story on its own...

I arrived in Dhaka on Friday night, 30th December and spent the first week in my partner, Shane's apartment which was just a temporary living arrangement he had whilst he was here on his own. We moved into our own leased apartment in another suburb one week later. I'm glad I spent time in the first apartment as perhaps, I would not have known how good this apartment is (a lot of the time here, everything is relative). But now after one week in the new apartment, I can happily say that life is good...we are in a slightly run down apartment block (better qualify that by pointing out that before any apartment blocks have finished being built, they look shabby anyway, its just a Bangladeshi way of doing things), in a great area (it would be at least 10-15 years old). Our apartment is five floors up and we have fantastic views because of its unique position; not being built in by surrounding apartments and those that are around us, are not particularly tall. In comparison, Shane's apartment was dark by 10 in the morning as all the available natural light had disappeared from the few windows it had, by that time of the day. Our new apartment is full of natual light and spacious with 2 bedrooms with ensuites, one main bathroom with toilet, study, dining room, separate (really big) loungeroom, one sitting room, 2 verandahs, one kitchen, laundry, servant's toilet and servant's room. This place suits us as a family, that being, Shane (boss), me (Madam), Benny the dog and Skits the cat. We have Tonika, our Ayah who cleans the house from 10 to 4 each day, but have yet to employ a cook. Tonika used to cook but is not skilled in that area and kept cooking spaghetti bolognaise and lasagne for Shane every week! At this stage, we don't need a driver (as most other expats have), as Shane is driving (like a mad Bangladeshi). Actually he is quite good but I have already witnessed him stop the car in traffic (well the traffic is usually gridlocked or not going very fast anyway), get out of the car, tap the driver's window of a car that has just hit us, and tell the driver how little he has up top. I digress. Benny sleeps in the servants room at the back of the kitchen (we might let him out into the general area when we are confident he is not going to do a wee on the floor somewhere). Skits finds hidy holes for herself each day and snoozes each day away so has probably no idea she's in another country and whilst I'm not working, Benny sticks to me like superglue in case he misses out on a morsel of food or a pat.


We are situated a stone's throw from an awesomely big park with a big lake in the middle, however they don't allow dogs and I got thrown out (very politely) when I took Benny into the park for a run, probably straight past the sign that says, 'No Pets and No Dogs' (I'm not sure what the Bangladeshi's think dogs are). Just about all Bangladshis are scared of dogs and they all think Benny is huge (he's a small - medium sized black labrador). I am just commencing (very slowly) getting our Aya to take Benny for wee walks and to handle him with confidence. At the moment, I am literally trapped in the apartment until I can trust her to be left alone with him. She is actually quite terrified but was more than warned when Shane first employed her, that there would be a dog, and as she is on a very good wage for an Aya, the expectation on our part that she should manage the dog, is by no means unreasonable. I hope for her sake she can meet the challenge but it will take some work on both sides so watch this space.


At the moment we are slowly fitting out the apartment with our own goods and chattels but this will take some time and we'd prefer to buy second hand furniture off other expats where we can. We have one set of bed sheets which our Ayah wants to clean because we are scratching our mozzie bites at night without realising and bleeding all over them ! Funnily enough, I am not scratching during the day but about four days ago, after convincing myself that I was not being affected by the Bangladeshi mozzies at all, I woke up with spots (as in, mozzie bites) all over my face and quite a lot of them. Needless to say, we have yet to buy a mozzie net which is urgent. Last night was our best night in the new apartment because I followed our Aya's instructions to spray the bedroom and I also lit a mozzie coil a couple of hours before we hit the hay. The problem with the coils though, is that they stink the apartment out if you have them lit night after night. The mozzies are ferocious in the apartment as they were in our last one, and our Ayah told me today that they do not really lessen in the middle of the year as that is when the rains come. Oh goody.


For New Years night we were given tickets by ICDDR,B to a shin dig at the British High Commission (BHC) Staff Amenities Centre (basically a club for British expats and guests with bar, pool, pub menu etc). That was a great way to commence the year here even though we only lasted till about 10.30pm as we were done in from having arrived late the night before. Luckily, Shane still had a couple of days leave and so I had his undivided attention in getting me orientated around the city (that' must have been difficult as I am shocking at reading maps, even when walking, and less so, when a driver needs help with navigation and I'm the passenger). So far, I've done heaps of walking on my own but it did take a day after Shane went back to work for me to get up the courage. I spent the first week just trying to get used to the staring; it really is disconcerting to the point where Lonely Planet for Bangladesh uses the phrase, 'rage-o-meter' when discussing a visitor's reaction.  During the first week, when my rage-o-meter was going off the scales (or more to the point, when I just needed a decent loo), I'd call into the Bagha Club (British Aid Guest House Accommodation). Luckily I am a member and it is sort of like going to the BHC. You give your pass to the guard, who duly looks it over even though you were just there the day before and the day before that and the day before that, he hands it to the second guard to also look over (all very politely) and then, hey presto, you're walking into a quiet oasis where I book up a chilled capucino and a bit of lunch. Hah hah, the bill is really against Shane's membership :)


So here's to Bangladesh and to many exciting adventures in and out of the country. I am so glad I had one week here early in 2011 and so glad I had my partner's experiences to prepare me because it has been a culture shock, even so, and I've not even got a job yet.


Ciao everyone, will write again soon.