We got up early Wednesday morning at IGO and got ready to leave. I got a last minute email from someone at SMBI saying that the CD image of Costa Rica pictures I had uploaded was corrupt. So I hurriedly reburned a new ISO, got an MD5 hash (a number that uniquely identifies a file to ensure it is not corrupted) of the file, and started it uploading from my laptop. I dashed off several quick emails telling one friend to wait 10 hours (time enough for it to upload) and then log in to my server and make sure (with the MD5 hash) that the upload leg had made it uncorrupted and then email SMBI to tell them they can download, verify, and burn. I rushed through this long process, but was still 10 minutes late to the front of the building where the Bangladesh team was waiting for me. The team and other students gathered in a circle and talked to about the success of our trip.
Then we hopped in the songtaew (a pickup truck with seats and roof in/on the bed) and Deaniel (the men’s dean) took us to the airport. We checked into our Air Asia flight without any checked luggage. We had a short layover in Bangkok–only 1 hour–and we had to re-check-in for our Thai Airways flight. Waiting for luggage could be fatal to making our connection. When we got to Bangkok we ran through the airport and waited 20 minutes in line. I tried to ask an airline employee if we could go to the front of the line because our flight was leaving soon, but he said that we’d have enough time. I don’t think his English was good enough that he understood what flight I was telling him we were on.
When we finally got to the front of the line and handed our tickets to the desk agent, her eyes widened when she saw what flight we were on. She exclaimed, “Dhaka?!?!!” She then started a rapid stream of frantic Thai to her fellow agents, probably remarking on the incredible stupidity of these Americans for being so late. I was feeling gracious enough to not tell her that I had tried to get checked-in earlier, but her co-worker had refused. She got our check-in done in record time and then purposefully marched ahead of us, clickety-clack, toward security at the fastest pace that a lady in heels could maintain with dignity. She scuttled up to the diplomatic passport control desk (bypassing the long lines at the regular booths) and unleashed a flood of Thai. I went through first and after a perfunctory passport check, I was running as fast as my dusty flip-flops would allow. We had only about 10 minutes to get to the gate. Predictably, it was the single gate in the airport that was the absolute furthest from security. I’m not even sure it was still inside the Bangkok city limits. Unfortunately, it was a tile floor I was running across. The tile floor was very nicely polished. There were many people thronging through the airport which made sudden use of brakes and sharp turns necessary. Also, I had a backpack on each shoulder–one which had a freshly broken strap that had failed in the check-in line. Now my tires–my rubber Wal-Mart flip-flops–were somewhat less than ideally suited for high speed maneuvers. Not only were they not very securely fastened to my feet, as flip-flops are wont to be, but their dusty rubber bottoms were reminiscent of a knife applying butter to an extremely hot pancake. I presently found myself needing to apply the brakes and turn at the same time, because a lady was coming right toward me, blocking the passing lane I had chosen to pass the poor bloke going 1/3 my speed. At that exact instant, the broken-strap backpack began to slide off my shoulder. I lunged to keep the backpack on my shoulder while endeavoring to slow down and turn at the same time. This maneuver caused traction difficulties (not to mention a frantic toe wiggle to keep my flip-flops on my feet) which predicated me ending up in an arm-flailing heap on my back, a backpack on either side, at the feet of a very horrified young lady. I hurriedly struggled to my feet–as hurriedly as one can rise on a slippery floor with abominable flip-flops and a 20 lb. backpack on one shoulder and a 30 lb. backpack on the other. I muttered an apology, gave a little Thai bow, and was off again.
Arlin–with fewer backpacks, more secure footwear, and greater physical fitness–passed me about 1/3 of the way there (about 5 minutes into the race). I finally arrived at the gate, sweating profusely–the Bangkok airport is only lightly air-conditioned to start with, but even US airports’ ACs are not configured to satisfy the temperature requirements of 10K runners–and 2 minutes past departure time. The three gate agents stood there in tense silence and Arlin stood beside them, his standard indeschipherable expression on his face. I looked to the end of the jetway and saw no plane. De told us that if we missed our flight, we’d have to overnight in Bangkok, wasting a day of our trip. I then looked to the end of the other jetway (many Asian airports have one door for two jetways–most deceitful!) and saw our Thai airways flight sitting there. I breathed a sigh of relief and found that there were a bunch of other people late too. Much to my chagrin, I saw them casually strolling along as if they were merely being fashionably late. The other team members came puffing up after about five minutes and we all boarded the flight. We borrowed a cell phone from a lady sitting beside us to let De know that he could cancel the reservations for a hotel and a flight the next day.
When we arrived in Dhaka, we walked through the distinctly third-world airport. Next I went through a probing passport control that was not impressed I didn’t know the address of the place I was staying in Dhaka. For customs I threw my bags on the scanner, walked to the other side of the scanner, picked them up, and went out the door into a blast of heat. A large iron fence surrounded the arrivals area. People were packed along the fence looking in, sticking their arms through, watching, and waving. We hopped in a van hired by our hosts and off we went. The driving was the most creative I have yet experienced in the world. That includes Cairo.
That afternoon, we hopped in rickshaws–bicycles with a bench seat for two on the back–and drove through the crowded, narrow streets of Dhaka. Unfortunately, our rickshaw’s brakes didn’t work. So as our driver–rickshaw walla–hurtled us around a corner, he met another rickshaw coming and crashed into him. There was an immediate increase (A constant series of horn blasts is simply a part of normal life in Dhaka.) in the length and number of horns all around us as traffic gummed up on every side. An angry stream of Bangla flowed back and forth between the rickshaw wallas as our driver woefully stroked one of his broken spokes. Soon, our walla hopped back on his rickshaw and we resumed our journey.
We stopped a memorial called the Martyred Intellectual Memorial. It is a memorial to the 200 doctors, teachers, poets, and professors who were taken out and shot by Pakistan just prior to Pakistan’s surrender to Bangladeshi and Indian forces in the 1971 Bangladesh War for Independence. This was designed to weaken Bangladesh in the years ahead.
As we entered the park/memorial, it was empty except for about three young couples spread out sitting beside each other having a quiet chat. We gathered some street kids and played soccer with them. We were introduced also to the national Bangladeshi sport: stare at foreigners. A fairly large group–probably 50 people–gathered and simply stared at us with unabashed directness. In the days ahead–in which I saw less than 5 white people outside of our group–I began to understand why. We had a great time playing with the kids and then we moved on. “We” included our little team and a large entorouge of people following us: kids, adults, street vendors, and even a dog or two.
We next rode around in rickshaws for a while, stopping once to observe the construction of a bridge. I took lots of pictures from the rickshaw, but many of them didn’t turn out because of the bouncy, jouncy ride. I was very, very grateful for the image stabilization on my Canon TX-1. I would have gotten no decent pictures without it.
Photos that accompany this day can be found here.
