Tania: Um, we’ll be right. It only took you 15 minutes last time right?
Me: Yes, but … I’m getting nervous
Tania: We still have half an hour
Me: (to myself) this doesn’t look very familiar…
Tania: Are we sure he knows where he’s going?
Me: I bloody hope so. We said train station. We said train to Chittagong. He said ‘ok’. How long have we got?
Tania: 20 minutes
Look of panic creeping onto our faces
Me: I don’t recognise where we are…….
CNG Driver [pulling over]: Number 6?
Me [adopt tone of desperation): T-R-A-I-N S-T-A-T-I-O-N????
Tania: T R A I N???
(repeat 10 times)
CNG Driver [blank look, motions to the side of the road]: er….bus?
Me [frantic]: No!!! Train!!!!! Train to Chittagong! At 11pm! In 15 minutes!!!!
Us to Passer By: Where is the train station?
Passer By: 10 kilometres away
CNG Driver: Huh?
Us: [insert loud and repetitive expletives]!!!!!
Fast forward 15 minutes spent transferring CNGs and risking life and limb ducking and weaving through the late night streets of Dhaka
Me: Quick, run, run, run, it might be late
Tania [following me as we climb over rows of men sitting on the floor in queues]: Get Out Of My Way!
Crowd of Amused (male) Onlookers: Chittagong that way! Quick!
Me: I can see the train! Tania it’s there!
Me: AAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH Noooooooo - It’s leaving! It’s leaving without us!!!!!!!
Me to Dhaka friends: Um, hi, sorry to call so late, but… can we crash on your couch? We just watched the train pull away. Without us.
---------------------
How very Hollywood. Except of course if this was Hollywood I would have missed the train only for the starts to align as I met ‘the one’ on the bus the next day. And while there was a young guy who kept making ‘meaningful’ eye contact with me – I didn’t take the leap and introduce myself as I’m almost certain his only interest would have been to ‘make friendship’. Not to mention how freaky it gets when these ‘meaningful looks’ last ALL DAY.
That’s the story of Tania and I not getting on the overnight train to Chittagong. And while I would like very, very much to blame the whole incident on Bangladesh and how ridiculous it is that we got taken to the wrong side of the city in the middle of the night by a taxi driver who doesn’t even know what a train is but… I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to being just a little bit worried that it was karma.
You see, after dressing up ‘specially’ for a farewell in a sari and going to the beauty parlour to get wrapped up in the 7 metres or so of material that is the silly outfit and getting my hair blow dried and putting on makeup for the first time in ages, I confess to getting a little over excited. And then someone put a red wine bottle in front of me…
Bri and I in our saris - pre festivities
It reminds me a bit of the time my (very underage) sister downed an untold amount of bourbon on an empty stomach, and then tried to call our dad on her watch to beg for extra time to sober up only to realise, belatedly, she was not Maxwell Smart.
Except, of course, that I am by no means underage and no one was coming to rescue me from my own personal hell. No. Instead I ‘came too’ on a cushion on a floor, still wrapped up in my sari, covered in no less then 200 bright red mosquito bites (have already googled early symptoms of dengue fever and I only have three of them so far), and with a hangover that rivalled even my very best pre-Bangladesh efforts.
I stopped counting the bites on this side of my foot (yes foot, not leg) at 45.
It seems, friends, this girl can no longer (?) hold her liqour. Which makes my timing of coming home for the festive season just perfect!
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