Bandarban Part II

Here are some more photos from the weekend jungle getaway--first some wildlife:
Everything was bigger there--this spider had a 4-foot web and was about 5-6 inches wide. You'll notice it only looks like he has five legs...he is missing one and there are two small ones in the front. I saw another one just like it with all its legs (six big, two little). I got to watch him spinning his web one morning and it was so cool. **science side-note* There was a recently article in Science magazine describing spider silk and silkworm silk fibers--absolutely fascinating how awesome they are and how little we know about them**There was a pineapple just growing in the bushes outside my patio window--this place wasn't really landscaped, so this was a "wild" or volunteer pineapple...not quite ripe enough however....
There was a really big (~4 inches?) staghorn beetle I saw on the way back to the bungalow one night--I just got close enough for a photo--I think maybe he was sick/dying because it wasn't standing on the leaf as you can see. I poked it with a piece of grass and it moved a bit, but not much.
On the awesome insect theme, a beautiful orange dragonfly that was perched in an unusual wings-forward pose. It was a "normal" large dragonfly size ~3-4 inch body length.
And of course the gratuitous tropical flower photo:
A testament to the tenacity (nice alliteration, no?) of jungle plants--even delicate ferns will grow out of the cracks of concrete--this is the step to my bungalow and each crack had a few pretty ferns growing from them. These particular fronds were probably 4-5 inches long.

Another faculty, Yan Gao and I took a little trip to see the Golden Temple, the 2nd largest Buddhist temple in Bangladesh. Of course the "simple" roundtrip CNG ride was less than simple. It broke down on the way, but we were luckily nearly almost there. We did push the CNG for a bit--it just sounded like the gears weren't catching. Here's one of Yan pushing--I was pushing too and pulled the camera out quick while he was re-starting it.
And another one of Yan (although this one was staged later when it was still broken down after our visit to the temple)
We laughed a lot because if you don't laugh in these situations, they will suck even more and that's no fun! So we told the guy we would be back and walked the rest of the way, visited the Buddhist temple and came back to see if he had fixed it. It wasn't fixed, but he had called a friend with another rickety CNG that was going to take us back to town to a THIRD CNG who could actually make it up the hill to our lodging. In the end despite the original driver trying unsuccessfully to rip us off for more than a one-way, it cost 50 taka less than originally quoted.
On our CNG-switch off in town, we walked around Bandarban proper a bit--a very typical Bengali street. We tried to get a cold drink and there were NONE despite being many many little stores that sold water/juice and lots of electrical lines. We ended up having a warm mango soda that we had to open ourselves with my swiss army knife because the store that sold ONLY glass-bottled drinks didn't have a bottle opener.

Now to the Buddhist temple! There were many many many stairs leading up to it. This is just the last few leading up to the actual peak:


And the Golden Temple dome itself:

Here are some of the statues of Buddha that ringed the outside with real monks next to them for size scale:
Here is another side of the temple with a couple monks who were visiting from Chittagong;Here is Yan talking with them--they spoke a little english. They were 23 and 24 years old and said they had been monks their whole lives. They invited us to visit their temple in Chittagong sometime.
The temple is at the peak of a very tall hill and you can see 360 degrees for a very long way--really beautiful. If you look closely at all of these photos, none of us has shoes on (you leave them at the entrance) but the tiles were SO HOT from the sun we could only stand where this is shade.

There were small altars all around the dome where you can burn candles, offerings, incense, etc. Each buddha statue had an animal statue beneath it. Here is my favorite Bengali animal--the tiger.
I also think Dragons are really cool and it looks like the Buddhists do too:
Finally we come to the dome itself--we chatted a bit with the red-robe monk (higher rank than the orange). He was asking what religion we were and we were sort of avoiding the question. Yan asked if we could go inside and he said it was only for worshippers and she said "I want to worship!" so he let us in. No cameras, of course. It was really awesome inside--very similar to other religious buildings--fancy, decorated, nice light. If you'll look closely, there is an EXTREMELY SHINY gold statue of a Buddha inside. There's also huge amounts of offerings all around it--bottled water, soda, juice, cookies, crackers, sweets, fruit, incense, money. I really wanted a drink of juice and a cookie, but I refrained from eating Buddha's snacks.....
There were also lots of other gold statues around--these were at the top of the stairs to the temple-I didn't even post all my photos because they get a little monotonous.

The weekend wasn't all tropical paradise--grading papers never ends! Here's me enjoying our bungalow patio:
And Yan and I grading (she teaches Chinese History) on the lookout deck of the resort. I didn't even mind grading here--a great view, fresh air and someone to bring you tea and is better than my apartment!