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| This is what vacation looks like! |
I’ve had a serious case of cabin fever this past month. I’m all for the right to demonstration
(peacefully), but the endless hartals (general strikes) we’re experiencing is
cramping my field visits. 2+ days a week
we’re advised not to travel more than we have to, so leaving Dhaka is
completely out of the question. After
weeks on end of this reality, I’m starting to get a little stir crazy.
So I decided to take advantage of the three day weekend of
get out of town, and picked about the remote place in Bangladesh as the
destination: St. Martin, a little island
in the ocean, right off the border with Myanmar. Bangladesh is a small country, but what in
lacks in size it makes up for in weak infrastructure—the roughly 600 km drive
takes on average 12 hours, plus a 2.5 hour ride on a steamboat (like think Mark
Twain on the Mississippi) to ferry you from the mainland (a dodgy city called Teknaf)
to the island. If Adventure is your cup
of tea, or you are looking for a trip that will make you come crawling back to
Dhaka, begging not to have to leave again anytime soon, this is for you. Otherwise, might as well stay home watching
cricket and stuffing yourself with biriyani.
The adventure actually begins before the trip. The bus station is pretty sketchy—not to
mention dark, crowded, smelly, and gross.
We get to spend an extra hour there because our bus is already stuck in
traffic. On the bright side, we didn’t
sit in traffic on the bus for an hour.
Oh wait, that’s exactly what we did for the next few hours. Bus companies without fail tell you that the
ride is some number of hours, predictably, but I’m convinced that on Thursday
nights, regardless of which way you are going, it will take 2-3 hours to truly
get outside of the city. There are just
too many people leaving and a few choices of highways. So it’s always clogged, as far as I can
tell. But that doesn’t mean that the bus
drivers and staff act any less surprised each time.
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