Chittagong to dhaka on zee-m-zee airlines
Trip Start
May 01, 2002
1
35
64
Trip End
May 01, 2009
Dhaka,
Bangladesh
Monday, January 1, 2007
if you walk out the back door of the st. martin hotel in chittagong you will be right in the middle of the agrabad commercial area. it has wide streets, banks, 5-star hotels, money changers, restaurants, travel agencies, and airline offices. i found the gmg airline office (zee-m-zee in bengali) and it took me all of 5 minutes to purchase a one-way ticket to dhaka on my visa card. the flight leaves at 1730 and i was asked to check in at 1630.
found a money changer and got a stash of local currency. he tried to give me all 500-taka bills but i begged him for smaller denominations because (1) some people will look very very carefully at 500-taka notes and then seemingly arbitrarily reject some of them as being fake and (2) nobody ever has enough change anyway. he said, sorry, but he did not have smaller denominations until i began to leave his office whereupon it turned out that he did have some. i still held on to my dollars until i had looked through all the bills and exchanged the torn, the dilapidated, and the scotch-taped ones. these exchanges are not possible once he has your dollars in his hand. when i was completely satisfied with the transaction, i handed over the dollars and received a nice smile and a thank you. found a great restaurant and scored a lunch of murag palao (chicken cooked in rice) served with a cold bottle of fostar. "fostar" is bengali for foster beer.
the taxi ride to patenga airport was quite possibly the worst city street transportation experience of my life. the road is clogged with people and with every kind of vehicle ever invented. most of the road surface was occupied by ashok-leyland tractor trailers pulling containers. chittagong is the primary container port for bangladesh. there is some talk in the media about giving land-locked northeastern india access to this port. it's crazy talk as the inftrastructure here could not possibly support one more truck. i was very impressed by the ashok-leyland trucks because they look very tough being built on two huge i-beams and they seem to have plenty of power. these features are in sharp contrast with the groaning, lumbering, dilapidated, underpowered behemoths that one finds on thai highways.
anyway, about 2 hours or so later, my lungs filled with smoke and with carbon monoxide flowing in my veins, the taxi delivered me to the airport. we had bargained for 200 takas and he asked for 300 because of the traffic jam so i gave him 400 and received a great 100-taka smile.
i arrived at the gmg counter at 1630 punctual as usual. they looked at my ticket and said that my 1730 flight has been delayed and a new departure time has not yet been announced but that it would be later than 1830 but that the 1530 flight was still boarding and had not departed yet and there was a seat available but i would have to pay a fee to change flights. i paid the stupid fee and ran like oj simpson right out the back door of the terminal building and on the tarmac and down the runway to the ancient dash-8 twin propeller aircraft with one of the propellers already in motion and squeezed into one of the tiny non-reclining seats in the filthy and decrepit cabin and in no time we were airborne. i declined the "mango zooss" (mango zooss is bengali for mango juice) and pulled out my bottle of rum and drifted off trying not to notice where i was.
professor kabir, my former graduate student and now a lecturer himself, was waiting for me at the domestic airport in dhaka. he was smartly dressed in a suit and he drove his own car into which we were able to squeeze in my golf bag case. i bought that case for $40 at the k-mart in petaluma, california and it is the best $40 i ever spent.
professor kabir lives near the airport. his wife is pregnant and expecting to deliver a son on the 7th of january. she is under intense pre-natal care at apollo hospital which i understand is the only real alternative to the apalling hospitals one normally finds in bangladesh. he drove me to a guest house near his home where i checked in to a large air-conditioned room with hot water, bathtub, and cable television. after a nice relaxing hot tub and a fostar, i joined the kabirs for dinner at their favorite neighborhood restaurant called the loving spoon. odd names for restaurants, hotels, and schools are common in this part of the world. the power went out right in the middle of dinner. other than that, mrs lincoln, it was a fine evening.
