But I promise--even though I have to upload them one by one now (keep in mind the sloooowwwww 2-30 KB/s upload rate), I have lots of pictures and updates coming.
So, my 3-day holiday: was GREAT. I went down to Cox's Bazaar and was hosted by my colleague and his extended family (thank you to the Khans and Auntie Bawkul!) Cox's Bazaar is a city in the very southern tip of Bangladesh near the Myanmar (formerly Burmese) border and is the one "tourist destination" of Bangladesh. Ibrahim and his wife's family are both from there. The beach is reportedly the longest continuous strip of sand beach in the WORLD. It was pretty big (the beach) and for the most part rather undeveloped. It was great to get out of the noise and dirt of Chittagong and into the quiet countryside.
Here are a few images of the beach--
First, there were these unexpected but very nice pine trees growing all along the beach--I had expected more palm trees, but these are apparently native. They have very interesting cone structure, too.
Now two images of the Longest Beach in the World. Looking right and left:
The beach was very undeveloped and even though there is an area that apparently gets quite crowded, I think that just stems from the unwillingness of Bengalis to walk anywhere--as you can see, there's plenty of room and the sand is remarkably clean and free of garbage:
On the way down there, I got to ride in a car with Ibrahim and his friends from Chittagong which was great. His friend had just bought a new car in Dhaka and was driving it down to Cox's Bazaar, so it was easy, convenient, free AND air-conditioned for me!I got hooked up with a hotel room there that had a nice balcony--you could see the ocean but only once you looked past the construction:
The city has a TON of new hotels going up and a lot of hotels already in business. So I think it will be a very different place in 5-10 years--I wonder if the lack of alcohol will keep it from getting trashed quite so quickly as in the case of places like Cancun or Cabo San Lucas....?For now it's still a very quiet more laid back town--more cows in the street and rice paddies between neighborhoods. They also have a bunch of awesome battery-powered glorified golf carts for transportation. The CNGs we have in Dhaka and Chittagong (and they exist in Cox's Bazaar, just fewer) are like 3-wheeled golf carts, too but they're pretty loud and have more annoying horns. The 3-wheeled tom-tom's(these vehicles) seat more people, are quiet and just generally more awesome. I was going to get a photo of me in one and I guess I forgot, so here's one I took as it was passing by:
Every city would be a better place if people did their local getting-around in rickshaws and vehicles like this!One day we went to meet Ibrahim's grandfather who is quite the accomplished businessman. He has started numerous very lucrative businesses during his impressive 45+ career and I got to see first-hand a couple of them. He has shrimp and tilapia farms and hatcheries. I think I will save those photos for a separate post, because they were fascinating and I got quite a few good ones. We had a very nice snack on the veranda overlooking the river channel that feeds into the Bay of Bengal in the shade of some beautiful trees. On the menu: fresh coconut water (both green and brown/ripe versions), fresh coconut flesh which I thought was actually fish fillets when they brought it out because it's so tender and moist), bananas and the ubiquitous 3rd-world dry cracker/cookie/biscuits (which I have unfortunately been ingesting many of lately and somewhat enjoying them in all their various "flavors").
Mr. Khan is over 80 (I was told they didn't keep very good records back then) and still works around 50-60 hours per week. Imagine--he's lived through his homeland being ruled by the British, then as West Pakistan and then form its own country! He's got over 20 different projects (fish, shrimp, restaurants, salt refining, rubber trees, etc.) and he says he's always relied on the earth and natural materials to provide him and his many employees with their wealth. He was great and it was an honor to meet him--he also has one of the awesome henna-colored orange beards:
On the subject of orange hair, people don't really keep dogs as pets here, but the hotel I was staying at had one and it looks like someone dyed it with henna, too:
I also had Iftar dinner a couple nights at Nasima (Ibrahim's wife's) family home. I had met her mother a few times before when she was staying with them here in Chittagong. They are amazing cooks and once again, they did not disappoint. The first night I was there it was the 27th night of Ramadan, which is a day when everyone cooks meat for dinner, so there were also 3 or 4 additional meat dishes on top of the normal spread of Iftar treats.This night we also had this really interesting and great sweet. It had noodle-like things (similar to german spaetzlee) and they were soaked in a sugarcane (or was it palm sugar?)-based syrupy/drink. It had a great toasty/smoked flavor without being overly sweet and interesting texture to the noodles. I wanted photos of it, so I added Jemimah's cute face to make it more interesting:
Apparently, it's local to only that region and other Bengalis wouldn't even know what it is. Whatever it was, it was TASTY!Nasima's mother has been so generous in her feeding of me, but the one slightly strange aspect is that she never eats at the table with us. It's apparently common to invite people over and not dine with them...I find it strange and somewhat awkward, but she did sit and have hot milk with me one evening after dinner (fresh from the cow!) I sort of understood the not dining with me when I would eat at her son-in-law's home, but this was in her own dining room! Oh well....I am still very grateful for the yummy food!
Okay--that's all for part 1 of my holiday posting--it took a LONG time to get all the photos in here, so I will continue with more tomorrow......
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