Dhaka baby dhaka

so I'm in Dhaka. Been here now for 4 whole days. 4 days plus an extra evening. It has been quite an experience.

First evening: arrive at Dhaka Airport (zia intl). Stairway up to immigration is crumbling. Not even sanaa airport had that lovely feature. Quite impressive.

Alas, immigration hall was remodeled and quite clean and well-lit. Sanaa can't claim to have that. the score is even between the two at this point.

Zia scores another point: funny ass immigration dudes. Guy looks at my immigration card, looks up at me and says, "First time to Dhaka?"
"Yes."
"Yeah, Hotel Yeameni, not good. Don't stay there."
"reallly? Zero stars?"
immigration guy next to him: "No [motions below zero]"
Me: "Negative stars?"
Him (laughing): "yes, yes"

Negative stars for dhaka. sounds like i'm in for quite an evening. Someone set me up with hotel room though, so I think i should be ok. Nevertheless, I ask for dude's recommendations. He writes out 4 hotels. I figure if Yeameni (it is yemeni so hey, it has to be good!) really is as bad as these two say, I will go to one of those 4 the next day.

I have been told to walk outside the airport, walk out to the main road, flag down a taxi or bus. Now I'm thinking it will be like a highway and quite big. Uh no. It is about as wide as Lakeside Dr, I am not kidding. The airport is basically surrounded by suburbs. It would be like walking out of Oakland airport and seeing the montclair shopping area across the street. I should have figured that when we were flying into the airport we went right over roofs before landing.

Flagged down taxi. dude used meter, YES! Dude only knew about 5 words of English: boss, drive, USA, love, hope. He kept on calling me boss and saying he hoped to go to USA and drive someday. Over and over- for an hour. Yeah, time really flew let me tell you. Actually my heart did beat pretty quickly due to the insane traffic. I won't even try to describe it right now. you haven't experienced crazy driving until you have been to Bangladesh.

Got to the hotel. tipped the guy BIG time. Not sure why. Because he was nice and didn't take advantage of the fact that I speak no Bangla and had never been here before. And hey, he loved america, so why not right? Ha...

Walked into hotel lobby. Well those immigration dudes must have high standards cause that was the nicest lobby I've seen since Japan, no joke. I have a/c and my own bathroom. For me, that is luxury. And it is cheaper than some places I stayed in Malaysia that were a lot worse. so dhaka immigration, fyi, some of us aren't high rollers like you are.

2nd day: Went to get phone # for here in bangladesh. Long story short: shop keeper showed me around the 'hood, took me to his family's house for lunch. WONDERFUL lamb curry, was fantastic. 11 people crammed into a 6 room apartment. Welecome to bangladesh sean.

It was also the first time on this trip a chick has asked me for my number. Yes, in dhaka of all places, a gal asks for my #. I thought that was supposed to happen in Japan, not in the land of muslims. We have since exchanged text messages.

The last couple days I have gone here, there, and everywhere in the Dhaka area. right now I am writing this from the largest mall in south asia. One hell of a view from the top.

And I will leave it at that for now.