Bangladesh, Day 3: 15 minutes of fame
We took today off and had a tourist day.
First, we had a fantastic breakfast buffet at the Sayeman Beach Resort, which I hear is owned by the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina. It’s apparently the only place in town where you can order an adult beverage.
We then commissioned a tom-tom to drive us about 25 minutes out of town, to Himchari National Park, where there is a waterfall.
I’m not sure what has changed, or if we went to the wrong waterfall, but it wasn’t quite what we were expecting:
I am hearing that there hasn’t been much rain lately. Maybe that’s it?
Cox’s Bazar is a honeymoon destination for Bangladeshi newlyweds. It is tropical and beautiful. And it actually has the longest unbroken beach IN THE WORLD. Wow.
But I’m getting the sense that not many foreign tourists come to this corner of the world. The park charged us 6x the price that locals pay. Ok, whatever. It was still only about USD $1.60. But it turned out that we ended up being the main attraction. We climbed up a big hill (which had spectacular views of the ocean, btw)…
…and as we were gazing out we noticed a few people were unabashedly taking our photos. Not trying to hide it or anything. So rather than getting annoyed, we just embraced it, and smiled for our photos. Well, that was maybe a mistake, or not, because then the frenzy began. Everybody wanted to have their photo with us. It was a real paparazzi moment.
And so began a fun albeit chaotic exchange of photos and smiles and “thank you’s” and “where are you from’s” and “welcome’s”. It was kind of a sweet cultural moment. And definitely made it sink in that being white and foreign in this part of the world makes us a curiosity.
So that was a first. After all of that activity, we had some relaxing to do at Mermaid Beach Resort, which, according to some sources, is the nicest resort in Bangladesh.
Fresh squeezed juice (which didn’t make us sick), and some really good calamari finished off the excursion. It was a lovely day off. Tomorrow, back to work.
