Hotel Abakash Dhaka City

... heavy loads on their heads and traffic accidents. It's expanded a great deal over the years and now includes a school and hostel for special needs children, most of whom have Cerebral Palsy. There are workshops to manufacture the beds, wheelchairs, special seating for the disabled, braces etc. They also make all the furniture and wooden items they need and sell things on for profit too. The centre incorporates many more income generating activities and ...

Kære dagbog.

Dagbog. Det lyder underligt og skørt og er distraherende for mig at skrive. Jeg er egentlig ikke så vild med ordet på trods af, at jeg rent faktisk i mange år skrev i sådant et værk. Måske er det egentlig bare ordet for kalder jeg det 'personal notes’ er jeg langt mere tilfreds og ligeglad. Dagbøger det er for de små og pjattede børn – hvor imod ’personal notes’ ER for sådan nogle som mig. De store pattede børn der ...

... project, for which we are just lending technical expertise.  Makes it a little tough!  The discussions are always in a mix of Bengali and English, or sometimes what Dan calls 'Benglish', a mixture of Bengali and thickly accented English (which thankfully they speak English, but it does often require translating in your head to actually understand), with frequent switches between the two happening almost imperceptibly.  For one of these meetings, we were ...

... the most worn-out I have ever seen. Just like cans on wheels that had been kicked around for too long... Also, there were some new vehicle concepts, such as the Rickshaw and the auto-Rickshaw, which is a closed tuc tuc. Even though the streets were extremely crowded, you could easily walk on the pavements. The main reason behind this is that Bangladeshis are not as big in street food eating as the Southeast Asians. Until 1971 ...

... my name was "Joe the plumber" because that is who is at the center of attention. After a nap and procrastination with the unpacking, David took me around Dhaka. We have a driver who will take us anywhere at anytime which is really convenient, his name is Iqbal and I cut him a lot of slack because it takes much patience to be a driver in this city. We went to the American club where I needed to get a workout in and it's quite a breath of fresh air from the bustling streets of ...

The border crossing from (relatively) relaxed North East India into a slightly more chaotic Bangladesh was one I will remember forever. The bus, which had to make stops at the Indian immigration post and also at the Bangladesh side, was carrying mostly Indians and two US visitors. It was supposed to be a VIP bus, express to Dhaka. There is no express to anyplace on the Indian subcontinent as far as I could tell this far on my travels. This ...

... before us. Now our surprise encounter with Lenka threw the rest of our afternoon and our spirits slightly off. Lenka, who had worked with us for two months in Peru, shouldn't have been in Dhaka. She should have been 20 hours south in the Bangladeshi flood plains building HODR half houses and eating rice with watery dhal. But here she was in Dhaka and her reasons for not being in Reyenda were somewhat disconcerting. For the second time I now had doubts about volunteering in ...

Ok Guys, I lied, I can't possible upload my photos of Bangladesh before leaving for India but I have good reasons for this and it is because the computers/internet connection is so damn slow here and I always feel bad using a computer at a realtive's instead of spending time with them. Hopefully, I'll be able to upload at least a FEW in India??? Anyways, we're off to to the North of Bangladesh again tomorrow at 8:30 bright and early by BUS this time which makes me cringe ...

... make it to the nearby corner where we are faced with a long line of policemen decked out in riot gear, causing us to beat a hasty retreat. As I drop off to sleep I hear some explosions and can't tell if they're fireworks or something more devious. Needless to say we move to a hotel in the business district the next day. We decide to do a cycle rickshaw tour of the town on our second day and for a small fee are taken under the wing of an English-speaking ...

... woke up at 3am and started the journey; I slept through most of it. Once we got there I was astonished by the amount of fish around me, wow, and these fish were fresh the river was literally a stone throw away as I discovered when I asked a fishmonger where he got the fish from. There were all kinds of fish, although some did look uglier than some. Dad and I bought 3 fishes, although we never ate any. Week Two Day 8 ...