3. Living in a petri dish of putrification
The sheer stench of humanity has caught me unawares in Bangladesh. Of course I expected some stinkiness. I’ve traveled through countries with worrisome approaches to sewage before, let alone markets, food and all the other sources of smell. But true to style, Bangladesh takes the smelliness factor to a whole new level.
Considering the conditions in the ‘desh, some smell is to be expected. When you throw in the heat, the sweat, the size of the population, the density of the population, the geographical location (at the delta of rivers which run through India et al) and the inadequate infrastructure just to name a few, it’s no wonder things get a little ‘on the nose’.
Knowing all this doesn’t make it any easier when faced with a full-frontal olfactory assault, and I’ll be well pleased when a walk to work in the morning doesn’t have me retching in the gutter (which is so often the cause in the first place).
Between the smell of everyone’s morning er, business; the pong of animal intestines under the midday sun; the scent of a few/hundred/thousand people sweating it up; or any of the other multiple sources of stench we’ve become so accustomed to living without in Sydney, I’ll be happy when this side of life goes back to out of sight, out of mind.
Things I’m going to miss loving
3. You mean I’m not European?
Airport Staff: Are you Indian?
Me: Um, no. I’m not.
Airport Staff: You are Chinese then!
Me: Actually, no. I’m not Chinese either.
Airport Staff: Where are you from then?
Me: Australia. I’m from Sydney.
Airport Staff: *confused look* Are you sure you’re not Chinese?
Recently I took advantage of the Eid (end of Ramadan) public holidays and took a trip up to the hills of India. Having discovered that I could fly direct from Chittagong to Kolkata, cutting out the treacherous trip to Dhaka in between, it didn’t take me long to deliberate on whether I should stick around for the festivities, or decamp to another country.
True to form, Bangladesh didn’t cease to amuse me even as I left. The conversation between myself and a member of Chittagong’s international airport staff left us both a bit bewildered. It’s fair to say the airport doesn’t see a lot of traffic in terms of tourist travelers. The curly haired, white, blonde girl dressed in full local garb was clearly messing with the guy’s head. Just as it was messing with my head that in twenty-five minutes, yes, twenty-five (!!!!), I would be in another country.
That’s less time than it took me to drive to my parent’s house last year, and we both lived in Sydney.
Of Asian descent?
True to style for an Aussie, being in such close proximity to international borders is a rare experience, and one I’ve been taking full advantage of. Having taken multiple trips ‘overseas,’(a term which Australian’s use interchangeably with ‘international travel’ since they are one and the same for our lovely distant island), I’ve loved feeling a little bit European.
I’ve even been able to give the language box a bit of a tick and feel all culturally in-synch by rocking up on foreign soil and breaking out a bit of the local lingo with more fluency than the pleasantly surprised West Bengali’s in India anticipated from the white chick.
Sure, Bangladesh ain’t Switzerland and India is a far cry from France, but for this little Aussie, the novelty of being able to pop into other countries for a quick weekend away (or preferably longer) shows no signs of wearing off any time soon. It didn’t stop me from feeling an overwhelming sense of jealousy when I ran into an Italian/Spanish/English speaking German in India who trotted out bits of all four languages within fifteen minutes, but hey, I still felt pretty cool.
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