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Oh, wonderful San Francisco!

This is my first trip to the United States. A couple of days prior to my trip, I was running around like a headless chicken trying to sort out so much work before leaving for 3 weeks. After 19 hours of sitting on planes and waiting at airports, I arrived in Los Angeles. Early the next morning, Alex and I took a flight out to San Francisco. I understand why people fall in love with San Fran. It’s a beautiful place with lots of exciting nooks and crannies.

Well, on the first day we arrived in San Fran, I told Alex, “Wouldn’t it be cool to cycle across the Golden Gate bridge?” And so we rented bicycles…

Which, ironically, costs more than the day rental of a car. The bike was USD32 per day, or USD8 per hour.

What we didn’t expect was that we’d be cycling for 4 hours almost non-stop. The ride from the city towards the Golden Gate bridge was lovely but there were some hills to navigate. And it was just soooooo far away!

Luckily there were lots of nice things to see along the way.

By the time we reached the Golden Gate bridge, our legs were aching and butt muscles cramping!

But the bridge is really beautiful. What an architectural wonder. Unfortunately, Alex lost his sunglasses here when we stopped on the bridge to take a photo.

We noticed these signs along the bridge. It’s kind of sad to think that people choose to end their lives by jumping off bridges. Hopefully by having these phones available, it would have saved a life or two.

By the time we reached Sausalito, we were just so exhausted! I forgot to take photos then! We took a ferry back to the city from Sausalito and met Jenny Sun & her husband Ju for dinner. After dinner, it took us another hour to get back to the bike rental place because we were trying to avoid going up those steep San Francisco roads! But there was no way out of it.

Needless to say, my legs felt like rubber the next day.

From a lovely sunny day, the next day, San Fran turned gloomy and it rained. The winds were so strong that most of the people on the streets found themselves with flipped umbrellas!

In the evening, the rain cleared a little. We spent most of the day around Fisherman’s Wharf and also visiting Lombard street (the crookedest street in the US). This time, we were smarter. We took the cable car.

We noticed some men on the streets, asking for donations for ‘canabis research’. Yeeaaaah, riiiight….

Had a pretty relaxing day and we even had time to take some silly shots of ourselves!

After 2 days in San Francisco, we left with Jenny and Ju for a coastal drive down to Los Angeles. But that’s another blog post.

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.

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

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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. :(

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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!

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

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We had a following after a while.

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