Bangladesh-a trainride

Discovering a country by train is always interesting: you can chat with people, eat, rest, walk around or just sit there and watch the landscapes passing... They can be beautiful, boring or unusual and sometimes they just reflect the (cruel) truth...

Bangladesh-Mermaid Resort

FINALLY on holiday...!!! :-)

Bangladesh-St. Martin

Saint Martin is a very small Island in the south of Bangladesh, next to the Myanmar coast. We decided to stay there overnight as we read that this is the only place in Bangladesh where you could dive. Prepared with dive equipment in our bags ( more or less 8kg) we arrived on the island full of hope. As it turned out, diving season only starts in November. The only one who could dive in the end was the Navy, training on the peer- we observed them with the most enviouse eyes ever! 

Disappointed, we walked around the island, on a sandy beach, next to a perfect blue sea,  under palmtrees in the sun! Our sadness couldn't have been bigger... lol

Bangladesh-feeling like superstars

What strikes us most concerning Bangla people is their friendliness and their curiosity! While this is true for most countries we have visited so far, it IS really exceptionnal here in Bangladesh! Everywhere we pass, people offer their help and give us their phone numbers in case we need it! 

The question we definitely hear the most is " uat is nam of iu cantrii". We explain them where Luxembourg is and notice that they really have no clue either of what we say or have understandably never heard of Luxembourg before!
Very often, while waiting for the bus, train, in a line to pay the entrance-fee, having a rest or just when walking in the street- people stop and stare at us (and ask the famous sentence) ! And by people we are not talking about 1 or 2 guys- add a zero to those numbers and you'll get close to reality! This can make you feel very claustrophobic(!!!!),  like an alien but mostly like a superstar!!!! 

On one picture below you'll see Cheun surrounded by a small group as well as a Japanese couple (wearing beige) experimenting the same thing. Don't forget to watch the video!

Well, you might call it  "stalking",  we'll call it "socializing"!

Bangladesh- Cox's Bazar

Our next destination was the beach. One of the reasons we left Luxembourg was because we want to dive and until now we only saw mountains- more precisely hills. So for us heading to Cox's Bazar was THE thing to do in this country. Every Bengali is very proud of the " longest beach of the world" ( it seems it has more than 100km)... We were not really amazed by its length but more by the fact that AT LEAST we saw the sea. :-)

Bangladesh-Sightseeing in Dhaka

Bangladesh is a country where the big majority of the people is muslim. You notice this already in the plane with their national airline Bimany Air when they greet you: "We welcome you in the name of Allah (....) the one that shows great mercy (...) when inshallah (if God wants) we arrive in Dhaka(...)"

Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, has much more of a modern city than we expected it. On the first day, we hired a rickshaw that drove us through the new part of town.

We first visited the University of Dhaka, the monument of independance (we later found out that smaller sized of this monument are spread across the whole country, even in schools), Khan Mohammad Midha mosque. 

We also went to the Sree Sree Dhakeswari National Temple (Hindu), before we headed to the incomplete Lalbagh fort (17th century). These huge walls do surrounded a lovely garden with tall trees under which locals, lovers (and tourists) hide for some shadow ( and maybe some intimacy). 

Afer that, we headed to the Bangabandhu Museum, aka Father of the Nation, and visited his house, place where he has been shot in 1975. ( taking pictures was prohibited). 

Our next step led us to the General Assembley building. We were both astounded of its greatly modern archicture- geometric shapes. 

To finish the day, we passed Sad Gumbad Masjid (mosque) as well as Hazrat Hazi Khawja Shhbaz. After this very long day, both of us were exhausted but also quite suprised of the beauty and effort Bengali put in their capital. 

The second day of our Dhaka visit started with the biggest buddhist temple of the country. Honestly, after our stay in Nepal and especially Lumbini, this one couldn't impress us any more, sorry!
Then we went to the lovely Sitara Mosque, all over decorated with stars. We just arrived at praying time, so we could not enter the scene- what a pitty.
The Armenian church was the next step of our schedule and a lovely change from all the mosques and temples we saw in the last weeks.
The pink palace (Ahsan Munjil) was our last stop of the day. It is kind of a strange museum, but more of an old house. It belonged to a rich familiy who contributed a lot in the develeopment of the city. 

Finally, on our way home, we did some shopping (we bought Lungis, pics will follow!!).

On our third day, we wanted to get out of the city and visit the one and a half hour far "jungle-book-like" deserted town of Sonargaon (Panam city). If we got lost in the beginning and ended up in a bengali-handycraft area, we eventually got back on track and found the place we were looking for. It is really impressive how nature slowly takes back what belongs to it...