From Dhaka to Chittagong

Ali recognized us immediately the moment we stepped out of Zia Airport in Dhaka. It wasn’t very hard really. There aren’t many Chinese around. In fact, the number of foreigners on the flight could be counted with 2 hands. Our first meet up with Ali was a good one. He came with his friend Rubab (I am not sure if I got the spelling right!). Our first stop was the money changer, and then Ali treated us to Movenpick ice cream! I can’t believe we forgot to take a group photo with Ali when we arrived. We must have just been really engrossed with just talking to him.

A photo of Ali and Farhat that was sent to us before we left for Bangladesh.

Taken when we went to Movenpick. Ali has not been sleeping very much. He’s been busy mixing his music album which will be out soon! He is a singer and has his own band!

At Movenpick, we had a chat with Ali, and he said this to us… “OK I want to see your expressions… on the first day, I’ll be expecting 2000 people to turn up for the wedding.” Kee Sitt’s eye balls went really big, like ping pong balls. 500 people for the 2nd and 3rd event, AND… 6000 people for the actual wedding day! Wow!! That’s amazing! He said that the culture over in Bangladesh is to really invite every single person to the wedding, even if it’s the guy who works at the grocery shop that you just met 2 days ago.

It’s really exciting but I am getting nervous now! Ali reassured us that we should just hang out near the stage where the action is, and take random shots of the guests that arrive. Well, our first event is tomorrow night, so we’ll find out how it’ll be soon enough!

So today, we didn’t really do much except wait for our flight from Dhaka to Chittagong. We wandered the streets of Dhaka for a short while and captured some street photos. One of the things we found out was that the Bengali New Year Festival falls on the 14th of April, the day after we leave Bangladesh! We didn’t know about this festival before we booked the flight. So we’re going to miss it. :(

Dhaka is pretty chaotic with people and vehicles. There are beggars everywhere, and it is really hard to turn away when they come knocking on your car window persistently. Oh, my heart!

We found this place where lots of flowers were being sold. Later, we were told by Rubab that this is the central location where all flowers get distributed from in Dhaka.

The buses in Dhaka are really banged up. I must say the drivers in Dhaka are really skillful. It’s super challenging to navigate past trishaws, people, crazy buses, three wheeled tut-tut lookalike vehicles… etc!

We were stared at everywhere we went. Hehe, I think it’s really funny that even as we take a photo, the people behind us were ‘posing’ for the shot too!

We did some videos on the street, and will try to upload them when we can! Internet connection is quite slow where we are.

We had a following after a while.

Finally, we left Dhaka on a 45 minute flight to Chittagong. The view of Dhaka from our little propeller plane. More updates to come!