You Did What For How Many Taka?

Today our driver took us on a tour of some of the suburbs of Dhaka. The first area we went to was Shabar, about a 45-minute drive from where we are. MRA is an honorary consular for one of the embassies here, so his cars have a holder for a small flag in the front-left (like what you would see on all the cars of the diplomats in D.C.). That also means his cars come equipped with a special diplomatic horn too. What that means is a) this car would never get stopped by police and b) that horn is marginally more useful in weaving through the overwhelming traffic to get from any point A to point B. In Shabar we went to a pharmaceutical plant to see where generic drugs are made. Oddly enough, the grounds outside of the plant were impeccably manicured and covered with all different types of fruit trees. There was even a small lake in the back with fish! My dad was very impressed with all of the fruits; I on the other hand could only think "Drug plant + 3rd world = lackadaisical safety regulations + runoff chemicals; runoff chemicals + fruit = a really bad time". As we toured through the plant and asked a lot of questions, it turns out I was right about the safety regulations and I can only imagine I'm also right about the fruit.

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On our way back, we passed by the National Martyrs' Memorial, a HUGE monument to all of the Bangladeshis that died in the war for independence from Pakistan. It's the first tourist-y thing I've seen here because there aren't really that many tourist spots. The park surrounding the monument was huge and included an area where a tree is planted for every foreign head of state who has visited the monument.

After the monument we ate lunch at a state-owned restaurant that serves Bangla food and Chinese food. All of our stuff was in the car, so our driver asked a guard outside of the restaurant to watch it while we ate, with the idea being that you'll tip the guard when you leave. When we left, we gave him a 20tk tip, about $0.25, which is about right. A pretty good bargain to keep our stuff safe, if you ask me.

While we're on the subject of money, the currency here is the taka. The exchange rate right now is roughly 80 taka to 1 U.S. dollar. I'm surprised sometimes at how difficult it's been to mentally change taka numbers into dollars... doesn't seem like it should be that hard.

The next stop on our journey was the Bangladesh Military Museum. Bangladesh keeps a relatively small military but they've been involved in a surprising number of UN Peacekeeping missions, mostly a symbolic gesture I would imagine as the number of soldiers they've sent for many of those missions was <5.
The Bangladesh military also has these huge areas of the city blocked off for military/former military living quarters called cantonments. This is prime real estate that the military has taken and from the sounds of it, it's very Club Med-y. The look pretty posh from what little you can see from the outside and they have most if not all of the few golf courses in the country.

MRA wanted me to see a Bangladeshi wedding so he invited his to go to one this evening. He couldn't make it but his father MHA took us. MHA is a well-respected, well-connected businessman himself and the owner of the nicest hotel in Bangladesh, among other businesses. My dad actually knows the family first through MHA, who then asked my dad to help teach MRA some tricks of the trade when it comes to business a long, long time ago. Though MRA wanted me to see a wedding, this was certainly not your typical wedding, this was a high society affair. The wedding was huge, probably around 400 guests, most of whom I'm sure were also of well-to-do families. MHA was very welcoming throughout the entire evening and made sure we were enjoying ourselves. I didn't talk to him much but when I did, he was very receptive. Not an ounce of arrogance in his body, despite being a man of his stature. When he learned I was planning on going to India, he also offered some travel tips as well. Great guy.

Even at 10pm when we left, the traffic was crazy. People are still coming back from their Eid holiday so I think this isn't typical, but who knows when you've got a country of 150 million people that's the size of Iowa.