Where did you sleep last night?

Another month in the 'desh has come and gone and I've been a busy little bee, albeit one who feels like it's been blown about in one of the almost daily monsoonal lightening storms here.

This part of the world being as full on as it is means I've had barely any time to really contemplate 'the big questions', like where my next paycheck is going to come from (given I'm at the 8 month mark); I've been far too busy gallivanting around the place. In the past month I've been from the bottom left of Bangladesh (Cox's Bazaar), to Chittagong, Dhaka, up to Kishoregonj and Netrakona (which has the best food in the 'desh I've had so far), back to Dhaka, across to Kolkata in India for a long weekend, back to Dhaka and back to Chittagong. Don't ask me what day it is. Actually, don't ask me anything important for the next five days, which I am planning to spend catching up on sleep and generally enjoying my own bed, coconut husks and all.

The advantage of running around the place as if I was conducting my own personal Amazing Race, er, without a partner and the tv crews and glamorous locales (jeez, quite a stretch I'm making there...) is that I've done some pretty cool things like:




Given a poetry reading




Watched storm clouds roll in from a boat in Kewajore

Kewajore, a remote part of the Kishoregonj region, is flooded for six months of the year. It took 3 hours to travel less than 30 kilometres to get from Kewajore out to one village in the area. Crazy. When we finally got there, I spent the day trying not to appeal to every villager in sight to jump on our boat and head on out of there (ok, not really, it was a small boat and I had one of only two life jackets) because it is simply insane living that close to flood waters, which as far as I can tell is only going to end badly in a country wracked with natural disasters. It was a big lesson in understanding just how little land there is available in this country, forcing people to live on the equivalent of a sandbar at the beach.




Visited the Opera House of Kishoregonj

While I was wandering the streets of Kishoregonj, a local lad latched on to me, and offered to give me a walking tour of the city including the "city highlight": the oldest water tree in Kishoregonj. Tourism Australia, eat your heart out.

My trip to Kishoregonj was followed directly by hightailing it out of the country to:




Drink champagne




and cocktails




with the girls - Natalie and Casey




in Kolkata

Which while it wasn't quite the oasis I was hoping for (perhaps I should have twigged that a half hour flight to another part of Bengal, even if it is in a different country, may not result in a drastic change in culture), Kolkata still offered enough of the good stuff to keep us entertained.

To prove that it wasn't all about the booze, we took in a few cultural sites, the highlight for me being:




Mother Teresa's Home for the Destitute and Dying

I've never seen such high quality care being given to older (dying) people before, en masse. Clearly they have no staffing issues since there were plenty of volunteers, and I imagine the funding streams are fairly consistent for a charity (though this place is a strictly 'bare-bones' affair), but still. I was impressed, and even left a bit speechless at the good work being done.

As for how the weekend ended? Only with the worst flight I've ever been on, and I've flown Aeroflot.

It involved:
- a dead body: the man who died as we were boarding our plane in Kolkata,
- a five hour delay,
- a mini-revolt: staged by (male) passengers desperate to get off the plane to perform their prayers even though we had boarded the plane and were about to take off, complete with trying to get into the cockpit and banging fists against the plane doors,
- flying through a lightening storm: because turbulence was what the already agitated passengers on this flight needed, and
- men behaving badly (again): by refusing to stay seated with the plane was taxiing, and instead pulling luggage from overhead lockers and crowding the aisles before the plane had even stopped.

All this was topped off by a midnight traffic jam in Dhaka, which was about the point where my frazzled nerves gave up on me, and I spent the taxi ride holding my head in my hands, eyes shut, sweat dripping down my back, pledging that I would give my left kidney to spend 24 hours in a country that worked.

But now I'm back in Chittagong and I've done the grocery shopping and spoken to the family, and had a long cool shower and (this part) of the world seems like a better place again. Life on the merry-go-round is set to continue too as I prepare the cultural program for my first visitors!

Penny and Sally, don't forget your insect repellent, sunscreen, and duty free quota of 2 litres - you'll need all of them where we're going...