My introduction to Bangladesh was challenging, but rewarding. I'd booked the first few nights in a cheap part of town near a big bus interchange, to help me find my way around the city, and I knew that it was possible to take a bus directly there from the airport. So I stepped out of the aiport into the hot, sticky, polluted air of Dhaka, to the bus stop, and fended off the rickshaw drivers by telling them I was going "far ... to Jatrabari". The bus stop was chaotic, with so many different buses pulling in, none of them with anything written in Western lettering, so I couldn't read the bus company names nor the destinations. But it didn't matter, as one of the rickshaw drivers caught my attention and pointed to a bus pulling in - "Jatrabari bus!" he said, and indeed it was. People made space for me at the front of the bus, two people who spoke some English tried to make conversation, and I was told when we were arriving at my stop. Another place full of buses, rickshaws, and people, but someone appeared by my side to guide me through the traffic across the road to the lane where my hotel supposedly was, and someone else said my hotel name in a questioning tone, then showed me where it was (as with the buses, the name was only written in the Bengali script). & this set the tone for the way people responded to me wherever I went.
I had a couple of days on my own before joining the tour group, in which to see places that were not on the tour agenda, and I started by heading down to the famous Sadarghat boat terminal on the Buriganga River. As well as all the ferries and other large boats, there were some small wooden ones, in which an oarsman would take passengers directly across the river, or - well, I wasn't sure where, but one was trying to sell me some kind of trip for 300 taka (£1.83). We found someone who could translate, who explained that this was for a one-hour tour (and who signalled to me that I should try for 200 taka). So we agreed I'd take the tour, for 200 taka. I'm really glad I did it, as he rowed me over to the ship repair yards, where these very large ships had somehow been pulled up onto the shore for repairs; then he found a couple with the workmen visible from the river (one photo of this at the top of this page) - standing on very high stools, or perched on boards hanging from the top of the ship, and banging away at the ship with hammers. It was very noisy, with these hammer bangs echoing over the river, though I could not work out what they could hope to achieve (and my oarsman spoke no English). Then he rowed me back, after 30 minutes, and my tour was over.
So I didn't want to pay him the agreed price, as I'd only had half the allotted time, but had seen the physical effort required to row the boat in that water so I offered him 150 taka. He didn't want to accept this, and soon we were surrounded by other oarsmen, all telling me to pay the agreed amount, being my suggested 150 plus a tip of 50; it seemed very important to them that I tip him. Eventually I pointed out to them that for half the agreed time I should pay half the agreed amount (ie 100), and if we added a tip of 50 to that, we would get the 150 I was offering. They grinned happily at the logic of this, shook my hand to congratulate me, and I paid the 150!
On my other free day I went a bit further afield, taking a bus to the town of Sonargaon, where I visited the museum pictured left, and walked some distance from there to Panam Nagar (a street of the remains of 52 grand old houses, built in the early nineteenth century by Hindu cotton merchants and then abandoned when the Hindu residents migrated to India, some following partition, the remainder during the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965) and to the 16th century brick Goaldi Mosque.
On both days, the people I encountered were as nice as they had been on my arrival. Helping me to find my way around, offering me free cups of delicious chai - happy to see a foreigner visiting their country.
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