The island with no limes

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.

We sit in traffic for a while.  How long exactly, I don’t know, because my Z talent (the weird kind that you don’t brag about because it’s not a real talent) is: an ability to sleep just about anywhere.  So I slept through most of bus ride.  Occasionally I woke up, realized that the traffic was terrifying, and would promptly close my eyes.  Morbidly I couldn’t get that old joke, “I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather.  Not screaming in panic like every all the passengers his car” out of my head, so sleep was a good escape.  At some point we stop for food.  Shazzad convinced me I should get out and stretch my legs.  He ate a burger, but I was too much of a zombie for food.  We sat at the rest stop an extra hour because there was something wrong with our tire.  In Bangladesh, how many men does it take to change a tire?  Thirty—one to actually do the work and the other 29 to watch him.  Seriously, it’s 1AM in the morning, and there’s a huge group of dudes available to watch the tire changing.  Amazing.

I don’t remember much else until the sun comes up.  It’s up and we’re in Cox’s Bazar, about at the point where the entity in charge of road maintenance switches from the National Highways Authority, to the Local Governance Engineering Department.  Evidently there is a sign that informs you of this, but if you miss it, you’ll still know when you hit it.  We knew because our tire busted, and we had to hop on another bus that was behind us.  You could teach a physics class on projectile motion on the back of a bus headed to Teknaf.  I’ve never flown out of my seat as hard or as often as I did on that stretch of road. 

Just can't get 'naf of that view.

On the bright side, the extra adventures of the bus ride meant that we didn’t have to wait around for the ferry—it waited around for us.  We barely boarded before it took off.  I learned that we were on the Naf (pronounced like “nough”) river, which provided ‘Naf fodder for jokes to keep me occupied for awhile.  Also the scenery is beautiful.  On one side, some of Bangladesh’s rare hills.  On the other, only slightly further away, is Myanmar, barricaded with very high, very inhospitable wall.  I’m pretty sure I could swim from one river bank to the other (it’s not even far ‘naf to break a sweat).  I imagine a day when this could be a pretty awesome place for a triathlon, in which you start in Myanmar and end in Bangladesh—makes the “escape from Alcatraz” look pretty tame.

FINALLY, vacation “starts”!  We arrive to St. Martin around 1:30PM, a mere 17 hours after we were scheduled to depart from Dhaka.  Psychologically, I prepared myself for up to 22 hours of transit, so 17 was fantastically fast!  Finding shelter is the first order of business, but it’s hard to walk past tent after tent wafting of fried fish to get to the hotels.  We manage though, and eventually choose a place run by Kashem, a local guy who seems (harmlessly) crazy and is just opening a 4-room hotel—I think we might be his first customers. Ever.  I’m too hungry to really care—the reality of missing dinner and breakfast is sinking in and a serious attack of hunger (hunger-induced anger) is on its way.  We head back to the main drag where they are frying fresh fish.  Your options for lunch are: big fish fried, long fish friend, smaller fish fried, or fried crab/lobster if you are willing to put out the big bucks.  With a side of rice.  It’s delicious, but something’s missing.  I ask the waiter for lime.  He laughs.  “St Martine, konno lebu nai” (There is not a single lime on St. Martin’s).  I am totally thrown.  An island where you can’t get a lime, much less a beer?  Inconceivable!

The disconnect between the stunning tropical scenery—blue, still waters, sandy beaches, breathtaking sunsets—and the decidedly NOT low-key culture caught me by surprise.  I had backed rather liberal clothing (no miniskirts or anything, but short sleeves, at least), but as I passed woman after woman in burkas, I felt more and more like I had grossly overestimated the chill factor of the island, mon.  It may be five o’clock somewhere, but not here.  St. Martin is covered by madrassas and mosques—if you walked more than 15m down the road without passing a mosque, you’d pass a guy collecting money to build one there.  Locals see tourists as sinful trespassers, and many had no problem calling out rude comments (even a rickshaw driver asked, “Jaba na ki, dusto?” roughly translating as “Want a ride, you wicked person?”). 

Eventually we retreated to our hotel.  We sat on the beach, essentially alone (as alone as it gets in Bangladesh), and watched the sun set.  The evening brought a cool breeze from the ocean.  It was really nice.  The moon was a sliver, like a shy smile, so there was nothing to dim the brightness of the stars.  I’m still not used to the sky here though—I miss the big dipper.  There’s no central power supply in St. Martin, so from about 6PM-11PM everyone turns on their generator to do all things that require electricity.  For the college students staying at the place next to us, this meant playing party music REALLY LOUDLY.  Peace and quiet, ha!  For dinner—it’s tasty fried fish and oily parathas (kind of like thick tortillas).

The evening view from our hotel

I wake up a few times during the night.  Once it was the sledgehammer rhythm of the water pump that woke me up—the pump takes water from the well up to the tank above the house (so that you can run a shower, flush a toilet, etc.).  I find it ironic that it’s modern inventions that wake me up here—not the sounds of nature.  Sometime before dawn, a rooster starts crowing.  I think it says “cockle doodle doo”, but Shazzad corrects me, “It’s not an American rooster.  Bangladeshi roosters say, ‘kookoo rookoo.’ “  I’ve yet to find a rooster anywhere in the world that actually waits until sunrise to crow.

Refreshed, we wake up early and head to the port.  We negotiate with a fisherman to take us to Cheradwip in his boat.  It’s one of those crescent moon-shaped ones that I find so cute.  It’s much less comfortable than I would had guessed from the shore, largely because it’s covered with the stuff that’s required for fishing (lots of nets), sprinkled with a bit of fish guts here and there.  In any case, it’s a beautiful ride along an essentially undeveloped side of St. Martin, pristine beaches that look like they jumped out of a postcard.  Gazing out, I can see what all the hype is about—this is a truly beautiful natural place.

Breakfast spot at Cheradwip

But will it remain one?  We arrive at the island at the same time as several other boats, largely filled with university students on holiday.  Already this area glints of too many careless visitors; there are plastic bottles and potato chip wrappers on the beach.  We try to put some distance between ourselves and everyone else, on the backside, we find a nice shady spot where we can enjoy breakfast that’s tucked around the bend, and as private as it’s going to get.  The beach on this side is rocky; there are tidepools instead of sand and waves.  It reminds me of a place I went as a kid in California.  Shazzad curls up with his notepad to sketch.  I hop out onto the rocks in search of wildlife—sea urchins or anemones, etc.—I enjoy the solitude and silence.  Out by the water the wind is so loud, it’s just you and the water.  I can’t seem to find any animals other than a fish here and there and some crabs (luckily I don’t panic, despite my terror at these guys).  I’m in such a good mood I don’t even really notice that I’m in full pants and a t-shirt when I hop in the (wonderfully warm) water for a swim.  It feels that good. This is vacation—these moments of total serenity, in a beautiful place—this is worth the crazy journey that it took to get here. And the one that it will take to get back!   But that is a story for another day…..