Welcome to Dhaka...

Our welcome into Dhaka consisted of a delay getting off the plane as the electricity in the airport was all out and they needed to bring in a generator. Once we finally got off, a two hour wait to get through immigration, the immigration police meticulously ensuring that all of the i's were dotted and the t's crossed on everyone's immigration paperwork!! Ally and the other AYAD's have come to be unsurprised at such idiosyncracies and have a saying that is constantly used... "This is Bangladesh!!" It is a country rich with it's own idiosyncracies and uniqueness, always with some particularly Bengali explanation for anything a westerner might question.
We were pleased to discover how much of the small amount of Bengali we had learnt for a previous trip to Kolkata (also in West Bengal) came back just when we needed it. Jeff in particular has received numerous compliments on his Bengali and we are forever enjoying the reactions from unsuspecting rickshaw wallahs with our odd smatterings of Bengali.

On our second evening in Dhaka (having stayed our first night at Ally's place), we set out to find our hotel. We had a slow day as we were still tired from our plane flight, but in the evening had joined Ally for a farewell dinner for a fellow Australian who was heading home after finishing a PHD in public health at the same hospital where Ally works. Would you believe... dinner at an Italian Pizza Restaurant right in the heart of Dhaka!!?? Anyway... we had planned to find our hotel earlier before it got dark, but got distracted. It was 9:30 before we got back to Ally's and picked up our luggage. She had pointed out the hotel the day before, but we had not anticipated how different the streets would look in the dark. Ally found us an autorickshaw (known as a CNG in Bangladesh), who VERY unconvincingly assured us he knew how to find the road we needed. Sure enough, after a couple of stops to ask some local passers-by where to find the road he dropped us off. We knew we were not in the right spot, but got out as we were fairly sure by this stage the CNG driver had no idea about where we needed to go. In the dark, we managed to find a main road that was familiar to us. As we wandered down, a very friendly young rickshaw wallah (driver of a cycle rickshaw) sidled up beside us. A combination of Jeff's Bengali and the rickshaw wallah's impressive English enabled us to discover that in fact he was quite sure where our hotel was, and he showed us the way. We chatted on our way, and - much to our delight - he was most complimentary of Jeff's Bengali which got us out of a sticky bind!!

Several days later, as we again travelled back in a cycle rickshaw from Ally's place to our hotel (a route we came to know well!), we heard someone call from the other side of the road "Hello Jeff" in an accent. It was too dark to see who it was, and we couldn't believe that we had already become known after only a couple of days in Dhaka. Sure enough, as our rickshaw pulled up at the end of the street, it was the rickshaw wallah who had helped us find our hotel on the first night. He stopped and had a chat... his English was MUCH better than our Bengali!! We had obviously made a friend, and are hoping we might bump into him when we return to Dhaka for our final weekend.