Welcome to Bangladesh

I arrived at Dhaka's Zia International Airport at about 6am local time, equivalent to 1am London time on an 8 hour flight. In the air Dhaka looked like thousands of leaves floating on water and the dawn made the bay shine with a tender orange. As the plane closed in on the city I was surprised at how big the buildings looked compared to my preconceptions. I really thought I will be going to a big camp in the mud somewhere, but its a bustling city just like any other.

I had not slept the entire night and in hindsight should really have taken some of that evil motion-sickness tablets and makes me go to sleep like a piglet. But instead I stayed up and forced to watched this Bollywood crap starring that old guy with the grey beard <- which is essentially about a young widow that - dear oh dear - falls in love with some other guy and remarries, but they make the hero out to be the father in law (grey beard) who is oh-so-liberal and defies tradition and allows the happy couple to be together, rather than the young widow who could have been a feisty go getter but instead portrayed as some obedient little doe and doesn't want to leave her family and is afraid to break tradition, blah blah blah. Fucking piece of chauvinist crap. Why don't they just dub some more dance scenes over the crap dialogue and get it over and done with. Bring back Fire. Anyway... so I didn't get much sleep and stuck in a line in immigration because the immigration officer is in fact doing data entry WHILE he processes you at the same time. I realised why it took so long - he didn't actually know where all the keys are and my full name is REALLY WEIRD, so I conducted a typing lesson while I stood over the counter. Done.

Templeton is equally nervous, having to see me wonder from counter to counter behind the glass window. I figured it wasn't a good idea to greet with a hug or kiss in front of a large crowd of on-lookers who by now has followed me outside the terminal and to the taxi rank. The drive in reminded me so much of a similar drive from Hanoi Airport. Along the busy road hundreds of people go about their lives - carts pulled by bike full of various primary stock like hey, fruit & veg, sacks of rice, piles of sand, trucks full of chicken in cages... What is quintessentially Bangladeshi though is the hoards of rickshaws decorated in bright colours and pulled by a man in a lungi (bit like a Samoan lava lava).

Although its early in the morning and technically autum, the sheer heat is cooking me inside out in the taxi. I was feeling a bit wired as I couldn't possibly sleep in the bright day light, so T and I went into town for a snack and wonder around - mainly to look for some local attire for me. My first rickshaw ride was quite exhilarating - being perched up about half a meter higher than usual and just watching this mad world go by is quite overwhelming, and trying not to fall off at the same time.

I'm not surprised that this is the capital city of the most populous country in the world (and also one of the poorest and most corrupt). There are people everywhere you look, and there's always something going on somewhere. Street vendors line the side of the pavement selling stuff like bananas, roasted nuts, cookies and guavas cut into a shape of a flower served on a skewer, stalls pulled by bikes here and there do odd trades like panel beating (great business given how many rickshaws there are) and shoe repairing. The more disturbing is perhaps the children and the elderly in rags crouching in rubbish, some looking for things to eat and some picking out plastic or metal to sell to the recyclers in a rag sack they carry around all day.

As we hopped off the rickshaw and walked into the busy market cafe for a bite to eat, I realised I was in for some rewarding pleasures but perhaps many more hard challenges here in Bangladesh.