Chittagong, Bangladesh

Hello all,

It's Thursday night in Chittagong. I'm sitting on the 9th floor of a building where I'm currently staying and the wind is howling outside. It's dark out, with an occasional flash of lightning, and as per usual, it's raining. In about a half an hour I think the final call to prayer will sound for the night.

I realized today that it was exactly one week ago that I flew into Chittagong and took the hour long van ride from the airport to the AUW buildings in the city. I left New York from JFK and boarded my flight to Abu Dhabi. While boarding I was forced to wait in line until I could get back to my seat- no big deal, and not surprising. I think it's pretty common that we get stuck in first class on our way back to coach, and stand there just long enough to absorb the little details of comfort that we're about to be deprived of for the next 24 hours. Anyway, while taking in all of these painful little details, a man seated in first class smiled at me. He pointed to my Alaskan Grown shirt and told me he was from Palmer, Alaska. What a small world.

So, I have to just summarize and say that my journey here was long but pain-free. There were no hitches or problems- not even turbulence, really. The highlight was probably stopping over in Abu Dhabi and getting to see their amazing airport. The design was appealing to me, although a little confusing when it came to reading signs- simply because everything was so stimulating.



Here's a photo of the inside of the Abu Dhabi airport, which was mosaiced with shades of green and blue.

When I arrived in Dhaka I was so afraid of making my flight to Chittagong. I went through customs and then waited and waited for my one bag to come. I was constantly counting down until my flight to Chittagong- 3 hours, 2 hours 45 minutes, 2 hours! I was staring to get nervous. Eventually my bag came and I hurried over to the domestic "terminal". When I got there I found myself in a room with several small counters with various airline names over them. Just to put this into a familiar context, these counters were about the size of a booth you would expect to find at a college job fair, and there were about five of them. I quickly located my counter- easily spotted by the balloon and rainbow decor- and headed that way. My airline was UNITED AIRWAYS. The motto is "FLY YOUR OWN AIRLINE" which seems to be somewhat problematic to me in that I would actually prefer it if someone else would fly my airlines for me.

When I got to the deserted counter a man stood up from the waiting area and asked, Chittagong? I showed him my itinerary and he told me to sit down. I sat and watched the domestic terminal come to life in front of me for the next hour. Women in saris came in and started opening up the counters. Men started filing papers away, organizing luggage tags, and cleaning counters. When I had about 50 minutes until my flight they asked me to come up. I showed them my itinerary and they hand-wrote me out a boarding pass, stapled my luggage claim to it, and sent me off towards security. There was no ID checking or bag weighing (which could have been an issue, I'm told)- they just simply sent me through. So security consisted of an x-ray machine and a metal detector-the working order of which I'm suspect, on both accounts. I then found a seat in the one room domestic terminal- referred to as the "departure lounge".

This is my view from the departure lounge- TOILET GENTS

While sitting there waiting a man in front of me turned around and started chatting. He gave me his card and told me that he owned the only rated hotel in Chittagong which happens to be directly behind AUW. He told me that we'd definitely run into each other again, and I actually just saw him yesterday! Despite being in a country so packed full of people I manage to already have chance run-ins with those that I know!

So I continued to wait in the departure lounge until five minutes before my flight was scheduled to take off. Then a man entered the room and simply yelled: UNITED 523! and a few of us started lining up. We then all loaded onto a bus which drove us to a little airplane. Since it's monsoon season I wasn't really able to catch many glimpses of Bangladesh from the flight, but could occasionally see brown strips of river splattered and sliced through really green land. At times I was definitely seeing more of the murky brown than of the rich green- just a hint at how wet it really is here!

An interesting juxtaposition of things in the newspaper that I was given on the Dhaka-Chittagong flight. And here are some shots of what I saw while landing in Chittagong:

Probably an oil ship, which I've seen quite a few of. Chittagong is the major port for Bangladesh because it's slightly hilly so there's actually enough depth in the water for ships to come into port.


Some smaller boats- maybe fishing boats? I'm not really sure.

So the drive from the airport to AUW was exciting and refreshing. It's good to be back in South Asia! Of course I found myself inadvertently stepping on my imaginary break in front of the passenger's seat- a habit which I eventually lost in India after being there for some time. I immediately saw that Chittagong, like Madurai, has a lot of poverty and economic issues. But how different this city feels from Madurai, overall! The traffic may be a little crazier here- there are fewer cows and goats wandering into traffic, and fewer bullock carts and bicycles. On the other hand there are so many more bicycle rickshaws. It also seems that Chittagong has a much better system (read: a system) for getting water out of the streets after it rains. In Madurai during the monsoon we would walk through the streets and be actually wading through dirty waste water run-off up to our knees. Here the streets get muddy, but the water drains into deep (mostly) covered trenches on the sides of the roads.

I'm still piecing together this city and the neighborhood that I live in. Things seem to be a bit more expensive than Madurai, but maybe it's the places I'm going. For example, a "butter masala dosa" here costs 150 Tk, which is about $2.20. In Madurai I remember masala dosa being about a dollar. (then again, in NYC a masala dosa would cost somewhere near $15!)

Well, that's mostly the update from here. I'm living in temporary housing until tomorrow, when I move to slightly less temporary housing. I'm anticipating moving at least twice more before being put in the apartment where I'll live for the year. Basically they're still working on the building where I'm going to be living with other ESL writing specialists and staff.

Well, the call to prayer is just sounding for the evening, which is my cue for bed time. Tomorrow I'm going to go on a trip out to the Chittagong Golf Club, just to check out what it's all about. Then on Saturday a few of us are going out in a van to Cox's Bazaar- the longest beach in the world. It will be about 4 hours driving each way, so hopefully I won't get too sick!

Review: I'm really liking it here, and enjoying being back in S. Asia. I'm finding Bangladesh to be a lot like India in some regards (I've been proposed to once by a stranger already! haha), but I'm also finding the style of life to be a lot more posh here- my fingernails aren't getting as dirty as quickly, I'm eating at nicer restaurants, etc. We'll see how that progresses as I begin to settle in to the community more. I'll keep you all updated!

Much love

--- Catie