I love Bangladesh!

There are three types of day that I seem to experience over here.

The first is an "I love Bangladesh!" day, which is the category that today fits into. More on that later...

The second is a "f#$king Bangladesh" day, where everyone is annoying, everything goes wrong and I generally wonder what the hell I'm doing here. Acknowledgements to Amy for coining this highly imaginative phrase (I wanted to get it piped onto the top of a cake once, but thought the cake shop boys might actually know what it meant and didn't want to offend).

The third is an "I love... f#$ki-... I lo-... f#-... I love Banglade-... f#$king Bang-..." day, i.e. the type of day where something great happens, followed by something really shit - in cycles of about 2 seconds. This is the most unsettling kind of day, because I don't know what kind of mood to get myself into.

Anyway, today was an "I love Bangladesh!" day.

I had an interesting morning going on a village visit, with a frustrating start to the day getting there but I was feeling so chilled and excited about going to Dhaka that it didn't worry me as it normally would have. I lugged my suitcase around this village (normally I have a backpack but am planning a grog run to a duty-free warehouse, so a suitcase was necessary to discreetly bring a slab of beer back to the Shit) which was pretty amusing in itself.

I then got on a bus to Chittagong and because of the global economic crisis, falling Aussie dollar and my inherent tight-arsed-ness, I decided to try getting the public bus to the airport (at a cost of approximately $0.70, instead of a CNG at a cost of $4). After the first change of bus, I had a lovely chat with some men on the next bus, who were very helpful and gave me instructions on getting to the airport. I had to change bus at the same point where they were getting off, so they offered to help me find the next bus. Unfortunately, they were a bit wrong and I was going to have to take another bus to a different point, then change again for the airport bus. Making a total of 4 buses to get to the airport. At this point, I told myself not to be such a tight-arse and after beating a CNG driver down to a reasonable price and checking that he had change for a 500tk note, off I set.

When I got to the airport, the bastard driver told me he didn't in fact have change for 500tk. In a display of perfectly controlled emotions, I slammed my hand on the grille between him and me (perhaps why it is there, to stop angry passengers from being able to punch the poor guys) and demanded he find some change.
While he's off asking at the ticket counters and then asking members of the public for change (he came back to the CNG several times to tell me it was a useless mission but I wasn't budging), a police officer-cum-traffic controller started banging on the CNG with his bamboo stick. Someone told me that the quality of a police officer's stick is a good indication of his or her rank. So this guy must have been middle of the road, but regardless, he was not happy about this CNG loitering in the airport arrivals area.

After much arguing with my driver, and much stick-banging from the police officer, I finally got out of the CNG with my correct change (honestly - he picked the wrong bideshi to try to screw over) and walked into the airport terminal at 3:32pm. Not being sure beforehand what time I would make it to the airport, and since there are flights every hour between Chittagong and Dhaka, I hadn't booked a flight in advance. I asked someone which was the next flight to Dhaka... "GMG [the airline's name] - 3:35pm!" But it's already 3:32pm?! "No problem, just some small delay - just 1o minutes." And so I bought a ticket and boarded a plane (leaving behind another far more organised volunteer who'd arrived at the airport for his flight in an hour) to Dhaka.

One of those days where everything kind of "worked" in its own crazy Bangladeshi way. This country really agrees with me!