World Bangladesh Dhaka

Where the hell is Dan??

Bangladesh Sep 23, 2004

From Kolkata (Calcutta), I crossed the boarder and headed to Dhaka. Bangladesh is like India, intensified again; it is the most densely populated countries in the world and one of the poorest, it is amazing how many people live in one home and the number that live in the streets. Again Bangladesh, coming in the middle of my illness odyssey, involved more illness to health. I took an overnight bus from Calcutta to Dhaka in Bangladesh, sharing the ride with a truly lovely older man who helped me find a nice hotel when we arrived in Dhaka. He moved between telling me about social conditions in his country, and the search to find a suitable husband for his daughters arranged marriage.

The next day, after a good sleep, I called a local Dhaka resident named Shiplu, whom I had made contact with using the travellers Internet group I am a member off. We met up with him in the afternoon and almost immediately he invited me to a wedding celebration for one of his friends that evening. It was a very different experience for me compared to the weddings I've attended in Australia and I was very privileged to get to experience it. It was a simple Muslim ceremony, there was no alcohol, the men and women at the wedding sat in different rooms and the meal was a very spicy goat curry that we all ate with our hands. The wedding was fun, but I was a little worried after heading out the back to the toilet and seeing the caterers set up next to the toilet, shovelling the goat curry on to plates out of buckets sitting on the floor.

Sure enough, about an hour after I left the wedding, I was very sick once again with a dose of food poisoning. The pain in gut was shocking because the gas build up was pushing on my already sore liver from the Hep A, which time would show I was far from recovered from (or possibly from Thai buckets- from which my liver still hadn't recovered).

Seriously, it was the most pain I have ever been in; I considered doing some personal surgery on myself in a hotel room in Dhaka using my blunt pocketknife. So I spent a couple of days in Bangladesh stuck in bed. I even ended up in a Dhaka hospital, not fun (think a big tin shed, no walls, a concrete floor and about 1000 people lined up on dirty stretcher beds about a foot apart). The doctor did not speak much English, but kept shaking his head and saying, 'goat curry'. They wanted to hook me up to a drip to re-hydrate me (the only other treatment available involving cups of rice gruel allegedly infused with multivitamin supplement), but I was really not keen on this because the day before I had been asking several Bangladeshi people about the HIV and AIDS situation in the country and getting some very strange answers. Those I talked to, all educated, upper middle class young people believed, and were told by their government, that there had only ever been two cases of HIV in Bangladesh (both cases were also apparently Indian men who had moved to Bangladesh). Apparently the people I met believed that HIV was not a problem in Bangladesh because it is a Muslim county; I didn't believe them. After hearing these stories, I was reluctant to let the doctor stick any needles into me, just in case he believed that he didn't need to concern himself with HIV either. The treatment at the hospital was very successful; it made me feel better in no time because I wanted to get the hell out of there. If you can avoid it, don't go to hospital in the developing world.

When I became ill, my friend Shiplu moved me to his home, in a small village/ town just outside of Dhaka, where he and his friends and family looked after me with amazing hospitality until I was feeling well again. After I was feeling a little better, Shiplu asked me what I liked most about travelling. I told him that I love to meet people and he took me very seriously. I spent the next two days going from appointment to appointment every 30 minutes meeting people. I met Bangladeshi politicians, journalists, lawyers and members and presidents of both the Young Bangladeshi Tourist Club (of which I am now a member) and the Dhaka cycling club. All this attention left feeling like a bit of a celebrity, which I like. I really don't think they get many foreign visitors, I did not see another white person during my whole week in the town, so in my own special way I was a bit of a celebrity just for being there (kind of like Big Brother). These meetings gave me an amazing insight into the country in a short time, but it was somewhat one-sided; I met a couple of professional women amongst the many people Shiplu organized meetings with, and a couple of the sisters of Shiplu's friends, but all-in-all I met very few women. As a male travelling solo in Bangladesh, the local traditions of the country mean that you do not really get an insight into the lives and experiences of Bangladeshi women.

The travel between may various meetings was an experience in itself; it was possibly the worst traffic I have seen on my trip. Very few of the vehicles have rear view mirrors, although there was occasionally some evidence that they once did, and most vehicles have had the paint scraped off both side panels, they look like bumper cars. There are lots of small bingles; I was involved in a minor cycle rickshaw accident myself. My rickshaw was hit by another coming the other way and was thrown out of my seat onto the road. There was no damage done, apart form a couple of scraped palms.

Bangladesh is not a 'nice relaxing holiday destination'. I think it is the most difficult place I have visited, both practically and psychologically, there is almost no tourist infrastructure and really not a nice place to be sick. But I am glad I went, it was an intense experience and the friendliness and hospitality of the Bangladeshi people, particularly Shiplu and his friends and family, with what they have, gives me great hope. After a week in the country, I was back on a bus to India.