Dhaka, Bangladesh.

An average Joe on the streets most likely will not be able to tell you where the heck is Dhaka. He might come back with an inquiry look and asked "is that some type of fruit?". Have to admit I was one of those average Joes few months ago. For the many average Joe out there who are still too ashame to come out, Dhaka is the capitol city of Bangladesh. It is wrapped tightly around India, Nepal.



Nate, my colleague, and I arrived in Dhaka in the middle of a local holiday. I did not feel much adventure that day so I decided to stay in my guest-house (an economic version of hotel) and watched the The National League Divisions Series on TV (sometime I wonder if anyone here knows anything this strange game we called 'baseball'. It is 100% cricket here). Although the game was showed in tape delayed, it was as LIVE to me as it could get since sometime I have difficult figure out what day of the week I am in due to my busy travel schedule (I once found myself traveling through 3 countries with 4 different foreign currencies in my pocket in a spam of less than 24-hour). So time is defintetly relative to me sometime.



One can not help it but the first thing it hit me immediately was the massive amount of various colorful ricksaws on the streets of Dhaka. They are everywhere. They are as much or even more as the number of taxi in New York or the moped in Taipei or the Tuktuk in Bangkok or the bicyles in Beijing streets. But unlike other transportations, the ricksaws in Bangledesh require pure man power or strength/muscle to move another person around. As I found out later, almost everything in this poor country is moved by human strength (as seen from the photos). Beside carrying people around the town, people stack as much as they can no matter how heavy they are on one of the ricksaws and let the poor puller 'run' with it. And then you see some people manage to be able to stack so many different things on top of each other in this multi layers on this 2-wheel cart and somehow they expect this "probably weight less than 120 lbs" slim guy to be able to move it around the town. I bet he can't wait to see that U-Haul "$19.99 a day" special deal rolls into Dhaka.



No question, Bangledesh is the poorest country I have visited so far. Looking down from our hotel rooms, we saw kids running onto a hugh pile of garbage that was left from the night before on the street looking for any salvagable things. The same pile that was just few minutes earlier was visited by several ravens and hawks all looking for the same thing. At some stops on the streets, we see little kids tabbing our taxi windows begging for some money or anything from us. The hardest thing was It is heart to see a little kid who is barely 5 years old through the rear view mirror dodging the traffic to get from one car to another begging for anything that anyone is willing to give. If I ever hear any kids whinning to their parents about not getting that new Michael Jordan pumped shoes, I would love to make them somehow tranport to that busy street of Dhaka and be one of those kids walking purposelessly on the crowded streets looking for something to do.