Eid holiday

This week is the Eid holiday, which is the Muslim equivalent of our Christmas, and is at the end of the month long Ramadan, when Muslims celebrate by getting together with family and buying one another gifts. On Thursday night, I went to my first Iftar banquet (Iftar is a nightly feast that Muslims have each night during Ramadan to celebrate the end of the day's fast). The place I went to is just around the corner and was very nice, as was the food, but unfortunately my belly didn't think so, and I came down with a caase of Bangla belly the next day which lasted all weekend.  In fact I was so sick this morning, that I couldn't go to work. I did however, drag myself out of bed on Sunday afternoon as I wanted to go for a walk down to Road 11 in Banani, which I had been told is the most interesting shopping and eating strip in Dhaka, Although it is still a typical crowded, ram shackle Dhaka street, it does haave a huge variety of shops, restuarants and take away food places and I ill definately be going back to sample some of the food and goods on offer.

The staff here at the guest house have been really kind in looking after me while I have been sick, they keep bringing me big jugs of coconut water, and hot rice soup, which are traditional cures for an upset stomach, but unfortunatelt I can't stand either, but the staff are so insistant tat I need to eat something, so I have just been taking the tray when they come to my door, then pour it down the sink so that they think that I have eaten it.

The following photos are some that I took on my walk to Banani. Most of them are of Banani lake and the shanties town that lines the banks of the lake. Dhaka has numerous man made lakes which were built to help alleviate flooding in the wet season and to also beautify the city, but unfortunately, they are all now very polluted and not very pretty at all ) I would hate to fall into the water). However, many of the cities poor inhabitants have made some of the older lakes such as Banani, home, as being next to the water allows for easier travel using traditional wooden boats, or rafts made from old cement bags stuffed with straw. While walking Iwas joined by a couple of little companions, who I think were brother and sister. Unlike a lot of the children around the city, who spend all day begging (usually for an adult, not themselves), these 2 little ones just wanted to walk beside me and hold my hand. The only thing that they wanted was for me to take their photo.
Tonight I am feeling really drained, but I am much better than I was this morning so hopefully I can go to work tomorrow, which is the last working day of the week. I will just be so glad tto get out of my room.

 Local Transport

Going to town for the afternoon

My poor attempt at a panoramic shot

 Hard living

I counted 16 people living in this shack, but avazing they waved nd smiled at me (hard to imagine being happiy when you have to live like this)

 Hundreds if not thousands of people living together in very misable conditions

 Mother and child on a raft made from cement bags and straw

 Typical Dhaka apartment building (this one was called the Tropical Oasis). It's quite amusing to what their idea of western style and luxury.

 My young friends

New luxury apartments going up beside the lake and although froma western perspective, there is not much taste or style, the photo provides a contrast between the rich and the poor)

 Another effort at a panoramic

Rickshaws are used to transport literally everything in Bangladesh. This one has a 44 gal on drum on it, which is used to go around to garages to collect waste oil, which is then used as fuel in the furnances of the numerous brick factories (hard work peddling this around all day, especially as the brick factories are all on the outskirts of the city; 10 or more km's away)

The start of Eid

Well it's the end of my 3rd working week in Dhaka, it's Thursday nightthe start of the weekend and the beginning of the Eid holidays (Eid is the celebration held at the end of Ramadan, where Muslims traditionally get together with their family to celebrate). Which means that Sunday is a holiday, making this weekend a 3 day long weekend, and then Wednesday and Thursday next week are also holidays (although this can change depending on the cycle of the moon), making next weekend a 4 day long weekend. A lot of my staff have taken the whole week off, so it will be very quiet at work, as will Dhaka, as a lot of the population leave the city to go to their villages to be with their family. This means there are literally millions of people crowding every bus, train, truck and boat, all trying to get home for the week, so I am looking forward to Dhaka being relatively quiet. The last couple of afternoons it has taken almost an hour to drive the short (5km) distance from work to home. In fact, when I asked my senior manager Mizan if he was going home to his village he said yes, and when I asked him how long it would take he said about 7 hours, so I asked how far his village was, and I cringed when he said about 120km.

Howver, I have a number of things planned for the weekend, including joining the BAGHA Club (British Aid Guest House Association), which in addition to allowing me to use the BAGHA facilities (Bar, Restuarant, Pool and Tennis Courts), I can also visit the many other expat clubs around the city. I had originally intended joining the Australian Club, but I when I went there to join, I was told the person who looks after membership had gone for the day, so I bought a beer and took a seat near the bar, and even though there were about 8 other people at the bar, not one introduced themself or attempted to try to make someone who was obviously a newcomer, feel welcome, so this put me off a little bit. Then a couple of days later when I telephoned the club to find out when I should come in to arrange membership, I was told rather curtly that they were not tking any new members in the forseeable future. Apparently, according top some of the other internationaals at work, the Australian club, which is attached to the Australian High commission has become reaally snooty and if you are not aa part of the diplomatic corp, they don't want you. I was quite dismayed about this because developing a socail network with other expats is vital when living in a city like Dhaka , but luckily when I told this to a couple of the people that I work with, both of who are Poms, they both said that they were members of the BAGHA club and that they would see if they would talk to the committee to see if a poor lonely Aussie could aalso join, and yes, they have invited me to be an honourary guest. Stuff the High Commission, bloody bunch up tossers. You can always tell who the diplomatic staff are, as they all drive around in ridiculously big and expensive cars, eat in all the expensive restuarants, and walk around as if they really are something special. Anyway, it will be good to be able to go to the club and have a beer and chat of an afternoon, rather than just siit at home, so I am looking forward to going there tomorrow.

Tomorrow night I am also going to eat at a Thai restuarant that is just up the road, and comes highly recommended by the Guest House Manager, Wadud. Then on Monday night I am going out to dinner at  the British High Commission Club with some people from work (Jill who is our student coordinator, Jens who is our General Counsel, and Mark who is the Hospitaal Director and his wife Teresa who is also a doctor at the centre), so I am looking forward to that. I am also going to take a trip up to a shop called True Value, which is owned by an Aussie and mostly just sells Aussie foods, so I will do a bit of stocking up.

Other than that, I am just going to do more exploring and relaxing, and hopefully shake the flu that I have had since arriving here. 
  

Communications in Dhaka

These are some photos taken in the streets around where I live, which show the unbelievable state of communications in Dhaka. These are all fibre optic cables. There is no centrally managed fibre optic system, everytime someone wants a new broadband cable connection, the company that they sign up with, just runs a new cable if they haven't already got one running past or into the building. The photos showing what looks like a stocking wrapped around the cables, is in front of the Westin Hotel - all of the more up market buildings such as banks, posh hotels and new office towers, try to pretty up the mess of cables by wrapping them, but unfortunately it doesn't help much. In some streets I have actually seen the poles on which the cables are hung, starting to buckle under the weight and are often propped up using bamboo.

Dhaka streets

These are some photos of the streets around where I am living, which as you can see are busy - very busy. I have also included some shots of some new construction works (Dhaka is in the midst of a huge propert boom, which is driving house and rent prices through the roof - everyone is saying that the bubble will burst soon, but it being going on for 3 years now unabated). The construction methods useed here are primitive to say the least. Just yesterday a Rickshaw pusher was killed by a brick that fell from the 6th floor of a new highrise apartment building and according to the paper, there have been almost 1,000 deaths this year alone on construction sites. There are high rise buildings goin up everywhere, but you won't see a tower crane or concrete pump anywhere, as everything is done manually. Many of the high rise buildings don't even have lifts in them.

I have spent many hours travelling around my local neighbourhood, both on foot and by rickshaw (pedal and auto), and now know the area pretty well. Today I went looking for an apartment (most building owners that have a place to rent or sell, just put signs up on trees, power poles, walls etc. so it's just a case of walking or riding around and writing donwn phone numbers.

There is also a photos of a rickshaw cart with a new fridge and washing machine on it. This was taaken in front of an electrical goods retailer, and this is their form of delivery truck, I'd like to see Harvey Norman do that!

Mega shopping centre

These are some photos inside the Bashundhara mega shopping centre where I went last week. It is huge - 9 loors, 1,500 stores, plus a movie theatre on the top floor. It was the largest shopping centre in south Asia, but it is now the 2nd largest as a even bigger one is nearing completion just to the north of the Diplomatic areas of Gulshan 2 and Baridhara in Dhaaka. This new one takes up  33 Acres of land is 4 floors high, and contains 2,500 shops. Even though Bangladesh is a very poor country, about 5% of the population have an annual income of more than $150,000 USD, which accounts for over 8 million people, so you can understand why shopping malls and high end retailers are springing up everywhere in Dhaka.

Th photo of the stained glass is actually the roof of the mall, which is a huge glass dome with central stained glass feature.

ICDDR,B Guest House

Some photos of the ICDDR,B Guest House where I am staying until I find an apartment. It very clean, comfortable, and the staff are very friendly and courteous, although it probably helps that their Manager has told them all that I am their Boss.

The simple things in life

Well today I decided to be brave and for the first time walk to the local supermarket (Agon), which is about 1/20th the size of a Woolies or Coles, but as close at it comes to a supermarket here in Bangladesh. The closest Agon is about 2km from the guest house where I am staying, and is located on Gulshan Ave which connects the city centre Mothajeel to the commercial area of Mohokhali and the residentail areas of Gushan 1 and 2. Traffic is bad (the best example I can think of is if you take Parramatta Rd in Sydney, multiply the number of cars, buses and traucks 50 fold, add in a couple of thousand rickshaws, take away all of the footpaths due to them being occupied by market stalls or piles of rubbish, which then means the thousands of pedestrians have to also walk on the road; then remove all semblence of road rules, especially the one about staying in your own lane; and you will have just aa fraction of an idea of what the traffic is like). Anyway, as I said I did manage to survuve the 4km round trip without being run over or mugged, so things are going well.
The supermarket experience is somewhat exasperating, as the choice is really limited, especially when you really don't know what half of the items are due to the labels being written in Bangla not english, and the few items that you do recognise, which wre mostly imported are expensive. The trick is to find local items that still taste good and arre a fraction of the price of the imported item. So far I have tried 3 types of fresh pasteurised milk, and finally I have found one that doesn't tastte like goat semen, so thaat's good. Can't say the same about my latest choice of Peanut Butter though, it truly is inedible - how can you stuff up something so basic.
The good news though is that an Aussie has set up a shop selling imported Australian and other selected western items (at a rreasonale price), and he will import anything that you want. I just need to find out where exactly his shop is. There is also an Australian butcher shop, not far from here, which sells fair dinkum beef, lamb and pork. The guy who owns it actually has his own feedlot not far from Dhaaka and so imports sheep, cattle and pigs from Australia, fattens them up, kills them in his own abortoir and the nsells them. The yanks and Ausssies that I have spoken to all say that he has ttransformed their lives, because good meat was the one thing that you really could not buy in Dhaka before he set up shop. My god I am missing having reall meat, and I am sooo sick of rice. Can't wait to get my own place so that I can cook whatever I want (or at least I can tell my cook what I want to eat), whenever I want. Don't get me wrong, the guest hose is great and the staff very friendly, but its just like living in a hotel - I need my own joint.
Well guy, the next time you pop down to Woolies to buy some bread and milk, give a thought to me.
Cheers shane
   

1st weekend in Dhaka

Well after finishing my first week in my new job, I was looking forward to the weekend so that I could get out and see more of Dhaka than just the streets between the Guest House and the ICDDR.B Centre in Mohokhali. However, I have coped a real crap dose of the flu instead and so here I am with the weekend half gone and not feeling like doing anything except sleep. Oh well there is always next weekend. I did however, make the journey down to the Aussie Clib this afternoon with the intention of becoming a member, having a couple of beers and perhaps meeting some other expats. But this too didn't go as planned, the person who looks after membership wasn't there, the few people that were at the bar weren't exactly bubbling over with excitment to see a potential new member and fellow Aussie, and so after 1 beer, I called it called and returned to the Guest House for another exciting night of reading and watching TV.

Mind you, the rickshaw ride to and from the club was interesting as neither rider knew where they were supposed to be taking me. On the way to the club I eventually sterred the rider to the right address courtesy of my phone GPS, and then he wanted more money than we had agreed on becase of all the extra distance that he had ridden, I gave him an extra 10 Takka and told him to bugger off. It was the same on the way back, because allthough he said that he knew where the ICDDRB guest hause was, I was pretty sure that he was mistaking it for the hospital and sure enough as soon as we turned off the main drag and headed for Mohakhali I knew he had no idea where the guest house was. This time I couldn't use my GPS due to no signal and so after getting him back onto Gulshan Avenue, I got him to drop me off at a spot that I knew wasn't too far from home. I then walked, hoping that I could navigate through the back streets to home, and luckily by gut instinct I managed to turn up the right street and ariive home.

Tomorrow I will go for a walk to the DCC market around the corner to have a look around. Hopefully it is open on Saturday as it is the same as Sunday back in Australia where many business es are closed.