Bandarban - part 1

I had a great weekend trip to Bandarban which is in the Hill Tracts region to the East of Chittagong. It was just a 2 1/2 hour van ride and was an awesome respite from the city. We stayed at a nice resort that had a bunch of bungalows in the jungle. All of this is a VERY hilly area, so the bungalows were all walks up steep muddy paths with some bamboo or bricks to walk on. There is so little tourism in Bangladesh and this place was trying pretty hard. It was very clean and had awesome lavender-colored mosquito nets on all the beds, but was very spare and basic.
Here is me and another teacher enjoying our morning Nescafe on the deck:
The next is the amazing view from the deck. Our van arrived in the dark and I knew we climbed some hills driving, but it was amazing to wake up and see how high up we were--Bangladesh is SO FLAT for the most part I didn't even realize there were hills this tall!
The next is a zoom from the deck of a buddhist temple in the trees--I think it's still under construction. This area is quite different from the muslim/Bengali culture of the rest of Bangladesh. It's very close to Myanmar and the people look much more like southeast asians (cambodian/laotian/vietnamese) and wear different clothes, speak different languages and are mostly buddhist and some christians due to missionary influence in these regions. As a group they're called "the Hill Tribes" but there are many different tribes with different languages--I don't know as much about them as I would like and it's hard to know what little information out there is credible.
The next series is of the "hike" we took to see the river and little village. We walked on the road which was ~mostly~ paved and VERY hilly. Very few vehicles so it was almost like a real hike--it was SO HOT, though--we all sweated out a lot of toxins! And the Janssen family had their son Kelyn (who is so cute and sweet)--I really admired her adventurous spirit to strap a 2-year old to her back in the heat and hike with the rest of us! Here are Kelyn, his mom Joanne and Krista admiring the view of the river from up high.
And the view from a smaller branch that feeds into the larger river from in town: The little bungalow in the upper part of the photo is where I'm sitting in the following photo.
The water was rushing pretty fast and the rocks were very slippery, so I wasn't able to really get in the water, but I did stick my feet in for a few minutes to cool off. Here's a sweaty picture of me resting in the shade near the river:

And a funny sign--not really sure what "to cook and tribal" means....
And of course, little boys are little boys all around the world-here's the local crew with their slingshot and showing off for the camera:
Near the river there were some women selling the local woven textiles--blankets and scarves which were hard to buy when we were so hot, but they were really beautiful. Here's Krista with the woman who wove her blanket.

And Joanne with the woman who wove her blanket. Kelyn is so cute--always wants to hug other kids he sees, so even though this photos doesn't express it, the two kids thought the other was pretty interesting.

Here are a few images of the walk back--the village with goats relaxing in the sun:
And some local women doing their weaving--the woman on the right's teeth are stained red from paan chewing.
And a photo of the hikers on the way back at the highest point: Arlyn, Joanne, Kelyn and me.
There are more updates of Bandarban to come--I was only there for about 40 hours total, but we did a lot and I got a lot of nice photos!