Alright, Stop: Bangla Time!

Wow – it turns out weve been here one month as of today (having arrived Feb. 19th) – crazy how the time flies by. As it turns out, today we also figured out our departure plans: March 26th (next Wednesday) we’ll start our way back to Dhaka (hopefully by Rocket steamer), and then onto Singapore for a few days, and then to Malaysia for a month or two.

Its been a great month – every day is full of adventure and weirdness. If your curious, our days go something like this, starting with…

Bed Time

In true Bangla style, I’ll do this backwards, starting with bed. To be honest, the depths of night are one of the most fascinating times of day in Bangladesh. Anyway – bed time is a great social affair, which depending on the exhaustion factor and the availability of electricity, starts around 9:30. Electricity is a big factor: without, most everything becomes a pain in the ass. Working on a laptop, for example, becomes a battle of tenacity between you, trying to do anything, and the bugs – clinging to your screen, flying in your hair, nose, ears, clothes, etc. Similar story for reading a book: a headlamp or flashlight functions as a colosal beacon, attracting all manner of awful: giant flying cockroaches, the previously mentioned winged nasal invasion squad, moths (some of which are quite large), whatever. Oh hell, Tim and Mark are just talking about the number of scorpions they’ve kicked out of the living room – great. Very passive, they claim.

The darkness and bugs do provide some entertainment, in the form of the gecko brigade which aggressively chases and eats moths. These little dudes skitter along the walls and ceilings and pounce on bugs repeatedly, until their belly area is visibly swollen. The other neat thing they do is chirp at each other – its a stattaco, high pitched, cheeping noise – something like a frog call, but of course coming from your bedroom ceiling.

The best thing you can do is retreat to the sanctity of your mosquito net enclosed bunk – but, that generally leads to sleep as the combination of horizontality and exhaustion knocks you out pretty quickly. Also, if you retreat early, you’ll have to emerge later to deal with tooth brushing and other bathroom tasks. Dental hygiene is of course a major concern. Bangla cuisine includes a stunningly high amount of sugar: the tea (“Cha”), for example, is served in a syrupy consistency (a blend of tea, sweetened condensed milk, and then some surgar for flavor). Similarly, the common desert here is “mishti” – a dough ball made of flour and sugar, coated in sugar, then soaked in liquid sugar before being sugared and served in a puddle of sugar syrup. Even without getting into the traditional deserts, we consistently find ways to sugar ourselves, and justify it on the basis of the hard work we’ve put in during the day. One common method is smearing roti (the bangla burrito shells we have with dinner) with Nocilla (the spanish Nutella knock off that’s available here for some bizarre reason). Optionally, if you’re out of Nocilla, I find the roti quite good just covered in sugar and rolled up like crepe. Mmm… sugary goodness.

Anyway – dental hygiene is important. Personally, I find brushing my teeth on the deck to be the best option. In the evening the deck is the nicest place to be, if you can ignore the bugs – its cool, and between 7:00 and 9:00, there’s usually a nice breeze (which consistently trails off by 10:00). For tooth brushing its perfect – all you need to do is lean over the deck and put some force into your expectoration to clear the walk way and get your toothpaste foam onto the trash pile in the yard. Tooth brushing aside, the deck is great for hanging out, and best of all, movie night.

Movie nights are a tradition I’m proud to have introduced. A laptop and someone’s speakers provide the A/V hardware, and a coffee table surrounded by rows of plastic chairs provides the theater. Bangladesh is blessed with two types of DVD’s: crazy Bangla DVD’s which consistently feature angry men with mustaches and shotguns on the cover, and pirated western movies. The western ones are great: you usually get 4 or 6 movies on a single DVD – for example, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, along with Spiderman 1 and 2. The quality isn’t exactly Blu-ray, but for 90 taka ($1.50), that’s a pretty kick ass DVD. Actually, there is a third category of movie: Bangla-packaged western movies. Our best movie night experience so far has been “Terminator 4.” For those in the know, there is no Terminator 4 (three was the last one made). The disc inside turned out to be “American Cyborg” or “Cyborg Cop” (the title was ambiguous) – it featured cyborgs (named Quincy and Phillip, I kid you not), but had nothing to do with Terminators, the end of the world, or finding Sarah Connor.

Before evening kick-back relax begins… Oh oh, this post is going to be continued later, as Zoolander will be starting on the deck in about 20 minutes. Another note: I’m not posting any more photos while I’m here as the bandwidth makes it really painful.