Jesse's Travels » Thailand

Nearly home

admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 19:35:48 +0000

I'm in Singapore and flying to Darwin tomorrow and catching the train back to Melbourne. So for all in Melbourne I'll be home in about two weeks. Since my last email I've travelled down through the tourist-popolis of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Through Malaysia which was a pleasant suprise. I knew the food would be good but I didn't expect to be so impressed with the Indian, Chinese and Malay fusion. Its refreshing to go to a country which is developed, everything works and the people are not white. This email is more of a reflection on my trip. I've been gone a little over a year, have traversed the Silk Road from start to finish, Venice to Xian, followed one of the routes Marco Polo took to get to China, made the pilgrimage to Amsterdam, went to a country that no one recognises and have now visited around 60 countries. I am not too sure how many kilometres I've travelled by train, bus, truck and car, but I know I never want to do this again. So many rides of discomfort where I thought I might snap that I can't name the worst or make a top ten. Next time I travel its by bicycle or foot. Still I feel a tinge of dissapointment, it has been less exciting than previous trips. I can't identify any new ideas, or wild experiences, its felt a little like I've been goign throug the motions. Maybe this is just memory slip, what I remember from before never happened. Maybe its just what has been before, the older I get the more difficult it is to be shocked. If I had done this trip without any travelling before it would have been a lot more momentus. It is by contrast that I have failed. Next time I have to do something a little more extreme. Maybe bicycle the South Africa to Egypt. Maybe its just time to find something else to do with myself other than travelling. The great disaster is to have a pre-conception validated. I had no picture of Central Asia, this is the ingredient that made it great. Tajikistan has been the highlight of this trip. For two weeks I travelled my dream. The contrast between this and the rest of my trip makes me feel like I've wasted twelve and a half months plus the entire South America trip before this. My abaility to travel seems to decrease with time. Travelling up the Nicaraguan coast, walking into the corner of Bangladesh and walking along the Tajik-Afghan border have been my favorite experiences. I have an idea of how to find this, yet I seem to waste my time doing tick box tourism, seeing things I have little interest in before, at the time or after. They are the done things and must be done, leaving my feeling like a robot. I travel without a guide book to avoid this, then for some reason ask others peoples advice who travel by trail on where to go! I stuffed up Iran, of the places I've been on this trip, this is where I want to go back to the most, followed by Spain in a close second. In Iran I should have gone walking between villages, or at least caught random buses and dragged myself away from mosques and ancient ruins. No maybe it has not been a waste, it has just failed to shock. I have a collection of stories which I'm not too sure are real. The stamps in my passport give my comfort that maybe some of it is not made up. There is a slip in travel, my life disjointed and unreal, my memories implanted, a dream. After six months with only a few moments of altered consciousness I feel more insane than at any point in the previous 12 years of drug abuse. My memories are not mine, my life is not real, a thousand improbable stories, I know myself, not what I've done. I tell a story a dozen times then it is no longer me. There is a break in recollection, a retuning everytime, I want to write, for my life to read like a book, I look back and can't tell what happened or not. Probably time to get home. It was slightly interesting travelling through south east asia again after a few years absence. It tears me between two thoughts, a feeling that I must go to a place before it is ruined and on the other, the utter stupidity of this mentality. Laos is now overrun with tourists, when I went there before there were only a handful. Maybe I should pick places to travel before they join the circuit. Yet still I met people who had life exchanging experiences in Laos. It makes me think it is not the time that you go, to think what it would have been to visit south east asia, or anywhere before tourism, before colonialism, before trade, before people. These thoughts are a waste. The experience of travel has nothing to do with time or place, new or old, visited or un-touched, it has only been about understanding myself. Placing myself in new situations, without a marker I can view myself by comparison of action, not by others by my own over time by context. Maybe this is crap as well, my three favorite travel experiences have been in Bangladesh which has no tourists, Tajikistan which had four and the caribbean coast of Niacargua which had one. Maybe a summary of the highlights of this trip. Waking up in a graveyard at a gypsy festival in Serbia, visiting Nagorno-Karbakh and seeing a town that had been completely obliterated, the freak show of Turkmenistan, capadocia and the taliban I met in eastern Turkey, an idea about Europe, drinking all night in Spain at bottellon, my first foray into farm work in France, smoking and the mirage of liberalism in Holland, walking through the gates of Babylon in Berlin, flying to Bangladesh to make my fortune, crossing the 4600m high border between Kygryz and China, the Iranian's, bullet holes in Georgians, the lost empire of the Armenians, drinking in Hong Kong, police in Central Asia, meeting my sister in Budapest and definetly the highlight, walking along the Tajik-Afghan border, bribing border guards to cross into Afghanistan, the mountains of the Pamirs, the blue and green eyes, their culture and religion, riding on top of wood trucks, freezing at -29, my beard, eyebrows and eyelashes covered in ice. Maybe it's been an alright trip after all.

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Bangladesh, Thailand, London – Mash up

admin — Thu, 05 Oct 2000 05:39:42 +0000

I'll start off my final thoughts on my most recent, though definitely not last trip to Bangladesh, by saying that in the end Bangladesh was normal. I had and have friends there, we talked shit, got wasted, the only real difference was that we caught rickshaws around instead of cars and public transport. As soon as i got to London i realized how completely far out I'd gone. Not to say that Bangladesh is not normal, everything is normal or nothing is normal, nevertheless for me and where I'm coming from it was pretty out there. Thats also not to say that London is like Melbourne, its different but......its all pretty difficult to describe. To the special moments in Bangladesh, my panidesh.

The last month was a pretty wasted month, not really to sure why it turned out that way, but such is life. Some of my best memories are at Lincoln's house sitting on the roof of the his storey apartment building he lives in, smoking all day and night then the 4am call to prayer kicking in. Dhaka during the day is awash with the noise of more than 10 million people doing more than 100 million incomprehensible things. By 4am it is completely quite and still, then the thousands of mosques over the city start the call to pray, wailing over the city all starting within about a minute so they merge into one unintelligible mess of the most extreme yet beautiful dedication to an idea. This is what I really like about it, an unwavering dedication to an idea, nothing tangible that comes and goes but a supremely high and abstract thought. To me this is to be human, many would disagree with me on this but to me to be human is to think, to think is to be abstract and there is nothing greater in all of humanity than abstract thought, there is no concept more abstract than god, this is the height of humanity. One of my last major changes of thought that was induced by my lovely panidesh was concerning God, of course. This did not come to me properly until i left. For many years now I've been thinking that god was a construct, a way of thinking to understand our place in the bigger picture, that we create God. Now i understand things, not a little clearer or better, just differently. The God that is a construct i no longer believe in, moreover i don't really believe in God. There were a number of things that led to this, many discussions with Towhid and Lincoln plus one purely bizarre incident. Just in the last few weeks I discovered a side of Bangladesh that I'd some how or other managed to miss, no surprises why, my life goes up in smoke. Lincoln and i had some earlier discussions about this Sufi that he follows. A Sufi is a Muslim mystic who seeks direct connection with God. Little did i know that this is common amongst pious Bangladeshi's, the mystics are mainstream religion. Lincoln took me to meet with his Sufi, he's quite big in Bangladesh he's got a following of about 2 million people. I was of the understanding that in Islam there is an impetrenable boundary between God and us. In south-Asian religions this is not the case, in Hinduism the Gods are reincarnated as people and teach us. The Sufi is the intermediary between God and the disciple, charting the path that they must follow. Lincoln's particular Sufi says he is the 36th reincarnation of Mohammed, this gets around the Koranic injunction that says Mohammed is the last prophet until just before the day of judgment. Apparently he has now also claimed that he is also this person, so be careful the end of the world could be upon us, remember who told you this and pray for me. Anyway I went to meet him which was a pretty amazing experience, he touched me an inch diagonally under my left nipple which he says is where God resides within us all. I think the idea is that he gives you some insight into God. I was then meant to go away and meditate on this spot, imagining his face and listening for God to say his name. I did try it once, admittedly it was about 4am just after the first call to pray, I'd been up all night and was particularly wasted, still i think I'm a little to cynical to here God say his name. Both Towhids mother and wife through meditation had heard God speak his name. At first I thought all this emphasis on meditation was very Indian and not very Islamic. He says you should meditate before anything else then you will follow the Koran automatically, there is no need for compulsion and rigorously following Koranic laws. So all of this brought me to this conclusion, all very hard to describe that my idea of God really has nothing to do with anything at all, except some post-modernist rantings. The brief glimpse into their conception of God, although I cannot believe, I wish I could and hope some day I will, is the most beautiful thing imaginable. From Allah to some of the special moments, talking philosophy till all hours with Tanvir and smoking yet again. I remember one particularly excessive night, Tanvir looked over at me and said 'Jesse, you are totally taal', in Bangla taal means wasted, totally taal, i like the way it sounds. All of Masud's and Lincoln's friends coming round, them singing on the roof, they all love to sing. In the end due to the paucity of my knowledge of lyrical songs Masud taught me this song by one of Bangladesh's leading musicians who I apparently met on my last trip there but I can't remember, bring on the digital memory. The lyrics are: nimontron roylow amar bari ( welcome to my house) nimontron roylow shobhar (all are welcome) fiti pote esho shobe (when you return come here) tikana amar pote tuke (my address is the dust on the road) sinai sinai lageton (there are strong feelings between you and I) The guy who wrote this calls himself James, its a smokers song. I spent a lot of my last month at the university, after my first trip down to the tribal area my mother asked me to speak to the Australian embassy to see whether it was safe to go there or not. All they told me that was the universities are the most unsafe place in the country and the national disgrace, needless to say, although not deliberately, i spent a fair chunk of my last month there at the universities. Tanvir introduced me to a number of his professors at the university, we were both disgusted the way they cowered towards me. Nevertheless i had some pretty interesting conversations with them, met one of the leading left intellectuals in the country and discussed various aspects of modern Bangladeshi history and politics. I met one of Tanvir's tutors who is from the only Jain family in the country. The Jains are an ancient Indian religion that dates to around the same time as Hinduism, its completely pacifistic, they can't kill anything, they're all vegetarian. This came to the fore at the time because there was an outbreak of dengue fever that the government insisted wasn't an epidemic which is spread by mosquitoes. People were dying all around Lincoln's house, we thought Masud's mother had it for a while. Still this Jain guy wouldn't kill mosquitoes, thats conviction in your beliefs. I killed every mosquito i could find, bought loads of toxic life shortening sprays that I'm sure are banned in the rest of the world to kill 'em and liberally sprayed everywhere i went. I also had mosquito coils, roll-on anti-mosquito stuff, after what i heard about this dengue there was no way i was going to risk getting it. Although that's not completely true, i could have left the country, this seemed a bit drastic though. Ahhhh the panidesh (water country), the rain partially saved us from the mosquitoes, had a massive downpour that flooded Dhaka, flooded all the shops, Masud came back after having to wade through waste deep water. This is no ordinary waste deep water when there are open sewers, hahahaha. To probably the most amusing incident of my time in Bangladesh, for a while i was staying on the top floor at Lincoln's house. Everyone in the building thinks there's a ghost on the top of the house, Lincoln and Masud had woken up early and headed off while I was still asleep. A maid servant from the third floor came up to get something out of the room, she looked in saw me, thought i was the ghost, dropped a glass she was carrying which smashed and ran down stairs. She'd finally seen proof of the ghost, after a while she thought about this some more, got another maid servant and went cautiously up to check out the ghost, by this time I'd woken up and headed off. Bangladesh also gave me first experience at bribing a public official. I had a three month visa, i thought there'll be no problems extending it, went to the visa office, they wanted a bribe i refused. But this is Bangladesh and if you have friends or you have money, and especially if you have both you can have anything. Gopu had an aunty who was high up in some government office who we went to meet and she wrote a note which we then took to the visa office, no problems. Then two weeks later the police called up they wanted me to come in and see them i had to pay them US$10 'administrative fee', i was expecting it to be a little underhand but since every other cop in the building was in the foyer collecting bribes off everyone it was all pretty open. So two days before i left i went to get the visa extension stamp, the police said it should be ready by then, they refused me. Went back in with Masud, he stared them down and they gave me the stamp. The whole incident pissed Masud off so he spoke to some friends who said they could get me Bangladeshi citizenship, we all had a good laugh about this. I went with Masud, Zaved and Monir off to Monir's families Sari making factory in the countryside, by this time the rainy season was seriously starting to kick in. Had one excellent night when we jumped on the motorbikes sometime after midnight and went riding round the countryside, we had to stop cause the road had collapsed because of flooding and about 100 metres in front of us there was a hospital with the bottom floor underwater. It brought home to me how different Bangladesh is from Australia, not so much in a cultural sense, more that everything is in excess in Bangladesh. In Australia there are so few people, in Bangladesh so many, in Australia so little water, in Bangladesh far too much water, Bangladesh is such a geographically small country Australia is so big, in Australia there is relatively no political conflict, in Bangladesh its everyday, in Australia the soil is next to useless when compared to the silt laden flood plains of Bangladesh. Moreover in Bangladesh there is too much of everything, political conflict, corruption, poverty, religion, passion, smell, dirtiness yet cleanliness of the people, rice, friendliness, pollution, bad food, beggars, those who work too much and so many who have no work, the righteousness that everyone holds their own world view in, unity over the liberation war and nationalism yet disunity over everything else, idealism and the pragmatic realities of power and corruption, love for cricket, love between men and women and the repression of it. I know that when I look back on my life I will count my time in Bangladesh alongside the best in my life. Its so difficult to describe my experiences and thoughts, how its has changed me, time will tell. Already I can see a mellowing in my beliefs, I still believe firmly in socialism and the innate equality of all people, it is just I feel less dogmatic about it all now, a little more relaxed in my beliefs. I left Bangladesh on a high note of idealism, this could not last and unfortunately has not, a mixture of things have brought this about which I'll elaborate later on. There are two things that stand out when i think of Bangladesh, two things that made my time their really special and probably a once in a lifetime opportunity for me. Firstly going to the tribal areas which was an incredibly out there experience, i think i gave a little picture in the last big email i wrote, multiply it be a hundred and then you can start to gather what a mind blowing experience it was. Secondly but really firstly and most importantly was the friends i made there. Sitting around talking all night, Masud said to me you are one of us, 'we don't think of you as a foreigner anymore when we think of us, our circle, you are there'. Tanvir's father told me that i was one of the family. Emotions, types of people are the same across the world, to me most of Australia is full of fools who don't know it, i on the other hand know I'm a fool, my friends in Australia know they are fools my friends in Bangladesh know they are fools. What I'm trying to get at here is that most people in the world regardless of culture i don't get on with, on the other hand there are only a few people around the world, i haven't met them all, I'm waiting for more surprises, who are my people. I was lucky enough in Bangladesh to meet some of my people, my Dhaka bondhu (Dhaka friends). So I flew out of Bangladesh, in a very messy and sad state, i didn't want to leave but my financial situation was crumbling, a few hours sleep, the only way to leave a country and went to Thailand to meet my dad. This was all fun and amusement we went off down to patayya which is a sea side resort, to my mind full of prostitution, first night we stayed in a brothel, i often seem to end up in brothels, ridiculous given that i never take up their main service. This was a particularly drunk and stoned affair, had one very big night where i threw up all over an Arab bar came back to the hotel my dad was with a woman in the room so i continued throwing up in the reception then finally went to sleep on a couch, got woken up by the staff to be told the room was now free, what a joke life is. The reason for going to patayya is that my dad had an American friend there. Meeting him and his Thai girl friend raised some interesting questions. He was a sixty year old hippy she was 24 and stunningly beautiful, they lived together, he paid for her to go through school and helped out her family. On the other hand he got sex on demand from someone nearly a third his age, not that it was a one way relationship, Thai women are pretty bossy but i think he liked it. In the end he pulled the purse strings although i think he was pretty attached to her. He was no demon this sixty year old, he was a really nice guy. We went out to a few strip clubs where he emphatically said to me 'jesse you can help everyone of these women, get some money and put them through school'. Still I think its all pretty back to front, they didn't look very happy, they shouldn't be put in that situation in the first place. Although I couldn't help but find it all very funny, these women dancing around poles pulling cotton from their fannies and tying it around the poles, more of a freak show than a turn on. On the other hand everyone's forced into working, everyone has to sell either their mind or body to live, maybe the distinction is some works demeaning, some isn't, i have to sell my mind, although my works my hobby. Maybe their hobby is playing around with cotton and polls. From decadence we headed off to an island and chilled out there for a few days. Ahhhh the islands they're hard to beat, i don't think i could live on one, i could go more insane. Still to chill, the sound of waves beating on the beach and rocks, getting stoned, its a pretty good life. After this we met up with the American guy and his girlfriend again and went off to their farm, this was a really special experience. Of all the time I've spent in Thailand I've always been at really touristy places this place was special and really beautiful. This guy said one thing to me that really struck me when i got to London 'jesse get prepared because soon you will no longer be a film star', and ohhh its so devastatingly true. Dad and I spent out last night together their so we were up smoking late and only a few hours sleep we started making our way back to bangkok. As we got off the bus I'm looking at the police and my brain which is going slowly started to tick over, this mightn't be that good. Unfortunately they pulled us over searched our bags and of course found the smoke in dad's bag. When i think about this in hindsight, I've been damn lucky to get away too now, its hard to draw a distinction which country outside Australia I've been most wasted in but it suffices to say Thailand would not come last. This was all a bit of a freak out, dad had to get a plane, Nicole kidmans Bangkok Hilton screamed through my mind, although i guess my dad wouldn't be rescuing me, as he'd be in there with me. After a few minutes i figured that they wanted a bribe, they wanted US$250, which i thought was pretty excessive for one joint. After some negotiation we got away with paying about US$150, still a fuck of a lot of money for one joint. Think I'll avoid Thailand from now, I'll try and fly through Malaysia or Indonesia, both of which have stricter drug laws but they pissed me off so I'll be a good well informed consumer and take my dollar elsewhere. Still it was good to catch up with my dad again after a year and a half. Spent a drunk week in Bangkok waiting for a plane out, i have some hazy memories of a few disgraceful incidents but i won't go into them here cause I'm not really too sure if it was me, a dream or a story someone else was telling me. Finished off Thailand in good style got to the airport at 6am in the morning spastically drunk having gone straight from the bar to the airport and onto the plane. Needless to say it was a messy headed flight. Got into London after a 14 hours on the plane, we went via Singapore, with no sleep and more to drink. I really should have thought this out a little more, i went into the toilet before i got off the plane to clean myself up. You know when you have too much of a big night and the veins or whatever the blood carrying things in your eyes pop so your eyes look more red than after smoking non-stop without sleep for days. Well i got into London in this state, looking very shabby, reeking of alcohol, no ticket out of the country, no money and not a fucking clue. I had to stand in a queue for about two hours before i finally got to the woman at the counter. She gave me some bad looks, went through every page of my passport twice, asked what i was doing, i said i was going to Ireland to work, she asked if i had a work visa, i didn't, she quizzed me for a while then gave me a sixth month stamp, wohoooo. If i was behind that counter and not who i am, i would have refused myself. Luckily tom was at the airport to pick me up in his £40,000 Alfa Romeo to speed me to his place and get me spastically stoned. So to London, what to say about London, the first week absolutely did my head in after Bangladesh. If tom wasn't there i would have stowed away, i had no money, to any other country. Thanks to Tom London was allright it became the all good London mash up. The most excessive night combining smoke, grog, e and coke, about half the night is pretty blurry, we spent about five hours in a club that we thought was fabric, listening to terry Francis dj, only to find out after it had closed that in fact the club wasn't fabric and terry francis wasn't playing, got knocked back from a gay club cause we weren't gay and decided that the scottish are insane. Needless to say most of the month was spent extremely stoned and drunk, played my first game of snooker, played a number, went out to see tom's cousins band play, which was excellent. Outside of the London mash up i managed to do about two days of tourist stuff in my month their. They've got all these cute little terrace housing in London. I was thinking it would be an an honor and a privilege to go and piss on the gates of Buckingham palace but never made it. Went to see westminster and wanted to blow it up, i tell you they have some really beautiful buildings their but how does a little island manage to build all this stuff, obvious answer, on the backs of the rest of the world. By chopping off the hands of Bengali weavers because they made better fabrics than Manchester, by enslaving two thirds of the world. The most disgusting thing is the museum, absolutely repulsive, i tell you its better to watch a pig eat your shit than see the British museum. I was looking for a comments book to write 'you are a nation of thieves', alas i couldn't find one. Its a testament to how they've pillaged and raped the world. This of course is not the general British public but the elites, the ruling class of that country. I'm not claiming any moral high ground here if Australians or i was in the same position I'd probably do the same. I mean most of the shit they have has been created by former incredibly unjust systems on the backs of their respective populations. Anyway enough of my political rant, i know one more thing, the citadel of Protestant Christianity, St. Paul's, you know that feeling you get that religion is often about money, i had to pay £5 to get in, they've got tills and gates inside st. pauls. Not that i ever knew Jesus or really know a whole lot about him, i can't imagine he would have been to impressed. Still its a nice building but if its going to be a profitable venture they should scrap any claims to having anything to do with God, any high ideal and put a big M on the front. Don't take this as a rant against Christianity as a religion, just a rant against a hypocritical church, my time with the bawm in Bangladesh gave me a much better impression of the Christianity. I guess its like all ideals, if you live it, its beautiful, if you corrupt it and claim to be the guardians of it, it breeds nothing but contempt. Its a funny place London, i was expecting it to be just like Melbourne, except bigger and faster. Its similar but there are loads of differences, i was expecting the culture to be identical, thankfully it isn't. Its a cold place, not just the weather but the people, if you know someone they're excellently friendly, they're friends are open but it would an awful place not to know anyone. THE COST, i maxed both my visa cards even though i was crashing at tom's place, he was feeding me and getting me wasted. I'm still unsure where all that money went, thanks to tom and my mum for bailing me out once again. At some point in my life my irresponsibility is going to come right back at me, hopefully this happens when I'm really old, about to die, only effects me and has no consequences for the afterlife, next life or whatever happens or doesn't. So i have arrived in Ireland, as Ronan tom's cousin said to me, 'what is Irelands greatest invention? The submarine, they were trying to build a ship and it sunk'. I've been looking forward to Ireland, i get the feeling that they're sort of similar to Australians, they don't take themselves to seriously. I've now started work my job title is 'linux developer', it sound much better than it is, I've just got to build a really good linux web server. I'll see how the work goes in deciding how long I'll be here for, at the moment it looks like it'll be a fair bit of fun. Once i get a grip of this place I'll type up an email about it all. I should finish off by saying i have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, this is not a change more of a recognition. I've got no idea why I've left Australia, I've got no idea why I'd ever want to be in Australia and i certainly have not a clue as to why I'm in Ireland. Anyway its mainly fun, patches of loneliness and extreme lostness, on the whole its something, although I've got no idea what that something is. Click here for Bangladesh Photos

Thailand & Bangladesh – From the heart of Bangladesh

admin — Wed, 15 Mar 2000 04:25:38 +0000

I have flown into insanity ,although its starting to make a little more sense now. I have had a barrage of experiences and all I can say is that it is definitely NOT boring. So where to start.... Since my last email was from Bangkok before the Song Karn, the Thai New Year maybe I'll start with describing this. The Thai's definitely know how to have fun, or maybe I just misunderstood it all but from what I can tell the whole country has a three to five day water fight, its classic. I met up with some pretty cool people for it, on the first night we went to the infamous pat pong area. This place I have avoided on my previous visits to Bangkok because of my dislike for prostitution, or maybe not my dislike but that of the different forms of exploitation in the world I find this one of the more abhorrent, if the women are in no situation except to go into this, but but....too many issues I won't go into here, nevertheless I went along there with a few people and we had a pretty ballistic time, maybe cause it was Thai new year the women weren't as they were portrayed in Koyanistqatsi (ahhhh my spelling is shocking). They all seemed in a pretty good mood running around with water guns drenching everyone. This was an all round pretty good night.

It's a pretty funny area, they've got a Japanese street, apparently none of the brothels will let non-Japanese men in, something about them not wanting to go to bed with impure women!!!!!! The next night was the best night, the Thai's retook the despicable Khao San Rd. For those unfamiliar with this ugly side of tourism (maybe I shouldn't say this cause it makes it sound like there is a good side), this street is full of the worst kind of tourist. There are a few Thai's on the street but mainly all foreigners, probably best to keep us to one area. But the thai's retook the street and went nuts having a massive talcum powder and water gun fight, needless to say a very big afternoon turned into a ridiculously big night. So now to Bangladesh. After this night of Thai craziness which left me in a not particularly messy state, but I wouldn't say in the clearest frame of mind I got onto a plane for Bangladesh, to the heart of Bangladesh. I had some concerns about flying on Biman airlines, apparently they've been banned from the U.S. for their safety record, so I touched a lot of wood before I left and since you're reading this email, if you are, I'm not dead. Its hard to describe getting off the plane and walking into the subcontinent, and been confronted by the particularly bizarre form of human existence that people eke out here. Dhaka is a place where children don't know their age, the pollution is so intense it seems ridiculous not to smoke, the power cuts out a dozen times a day and the smell wow the smell. I so much prefer the smell here to the smell of despicable dirty perfume or deodorant that people wear at home it is the insane smell of life. Of 10 million people packed together into far far to small an area, of open sewers and the bin that is the street. The smell of people straining under 35 degree heat and god knows what percent humidity, ohhhhh you've gotta love it. And the tuk tuks those ridiculous two stroke motorbike converted taxis that spew out a cloud of black....ahhhhh Dhaka. Yesterday was an important day for Muslims as it was the day Muhammad son died 1400 years ago, I couldn't really figure out the importance of this but the fundamentalists had a procession through town dragging all these horses along, yeah the people were dragging the horses, in the midst of all this a boy of about 10 years of age was accosted by about 5 guys and dragged off as they beat him. It is in this context that I ask myself WHAT AM I DOING HERE????? Why leave the comfort of my home where I know everything back to front to come to this? I must be completely insane. But I've been through this in my head many times before in all sorts of states and come to the same boring conclusion so I won't go there. I had a little clue from Tanbir the other night as I was going to sleep. He said to me "Jesse you have no discipline". This is my first hint at maybe why I'm here. It is two fold, on one hand I am here because the Bengali's are the most amazing people and the second is maybe this is what I need, discipline. The discipline that he was referring to was discipline of the mind and I think he has a pointhere. First to the Bangladeshi's. How can you even start to describe a people? How do you describe these people? People who are so generous, who are so passionate about life, yet live in all these amazing contradictions. I guess everyone does and every people do, but wow, the Lao existence that I briefly experienced last year made sense, the way everyone relates to each other, the way they organize their society, nothing makes sense here, I love it, my brain never stops thinking, every person I meet is intensely interesting and this is what I want. I left the boredom, for this, yet another power cut and I've lost a few lines. When I first got here I cam straight to my friends house that I stayed at last time I was here, in the house lives Tanvir, Towhid and Tahmina, plus their parents. I went to the university the other day with Tanvir. There were three demonstrations going on at the same time. There was the socialist student front of about 200 students doing loops of the campus, with cops with riot shields in front an behind of them. There was another group which were in support of the opposition which is trying to bring down the government, also with a whole load of cops. Apparently the cops are needed cause the students end up fighting, I was assured this could well happen, which I was eager to hang around for but was told its boring and happens all the time. The other demonstration was by a group supporting the party in government at the moment and commemorating the formation of the provisional government when Bangladesh declared independence on 17th April 1971 from Pakistan. So to some more of the general craziness. Maybe to the lack of personal space, its so important for Australians, even though we pack ourselves together in cities there is a feeling they we are only a few people inhabiting a ridiculously big land but here, its excellent, people are forced to be truly the social beings that we are, there is no escape from the rest of humanity. And to the begging and the same old boring issues surrounding this. Tahmina gives to beggars a lot more than I remember, although she is quite discriminating about who she gives to, I just say jao, bangla for go. When I was speaking with my mum the other night she said that I should make sure I filter the water here before I drink it as the world health organization has put out a warning on Bangladeshi water as there are high levels of arsenic in it. I met this Bangladeshi Rotarian the other day and discussed this with him, he assured me there were no problems in Dhaka it's a rural thing and affects 1-5% of the population, out of 120 million people that the government estimates live here although everyone I speak to reckons its heaps higher. Apparently it leads to lots of pain, your skin getting all maggoty, your limbs ballooning out then an eventual painful death, so I'm trying to figure out how to use my filter. Speaking of water there are problems even getting water at Towhid's house, sometimes the tap works, most times it doesn't, I asked where they get water from when the tap isn't working and no one seems to know. Aside from all this my health has been good so far, I'm making a point of avoiding meat, but its difficult. I'm progressing along with Bangla and am probably about a week to 10 days off being functional in it. I've got the basic stuff down now, name, age, country, how hot it is, etc. Its fun learning a new language, although their grammar is no where near as easy as Thai or Lao but at least its not tonal. I'm thinking of maybe heading off in about 10 days to the south west of the country with Tanbir, he has some friends down there who smoke heavily. I'm also thinking of buying a rickshaw and riding around the country, they mustn't be that expensive, there's 170,000 of them in Dhaka alone, a rickshaw is a bicycle with two seats on the back which some poor intensely thin guy will ride you around town in for next to nothing. The heat is incredibly oppressive here, I've got a dainty little bamboo fan which I've been fluttering non stop in front of my face in the vain attempt not to melt down but....its going to be hotter next month. So I'm thinking maybe I should head out of Dhaka at some point soon, it'll be cooler in the countryside. Although I woke up this morning with about a dozen mosquito bites, following which I hurriedly asked everyone about malaria to be told there are no malaria cases in Dhaka, they're all in the countryside. I was then told that what the mosquitoes can give you is Japanese encephalitis which kills you in a week, so maybe this'll be my last email...hahahaha....probably not cause I got immunity last year, this could well be $240 well spent, although I winged about it at the time. Rereading some of this has made me think about Tanbir's comment about me lack of discipline, he's right I am all over the place, he says I change topics non-stop, although he does as well. I read the other day in the newspaper that there is going to be a general transport strike starting today as the leader of the transport workers union has been gaoled by the government. The paper said this was in response to the union setting up tolls all over the country on not allowing anyone to pass unless they paid. Its an interesting issue with the trade unionism here, cause I used to receive emails about the Bangladeshi (just picked my nose and its all black, YUCK) garment workers union and how they were fighting injustice here. I was discussing this with Towhid the other day, cause the work he is involved in is clothes manufacturing for a UK owned firm and exporting to Europe and the US. He says the trade unions are corrupt and don't support workers rights. The company he works for exists in this zone called the economic free zone, they have all their own utilities, like power and water which are guaranteed to work, a wage that for the workers that is set by the government, no corruption (according to Towhid, which I find hard to accept here, Tanbir was telling me that next door have never paid an electricity bill, they just pay the electricity man when he comes around to check the meter) and no trade unions. He says this is to encourage investment...hmmm....I think I'm going to have to investigate this a little more, I can't believe trade unions are all bad here, maybe this is middle class hysteria like at home, simply class interests. I did my first tourist thing in Bangladesh ever the other day, I went to see this half completed Moghul palace. It was built in 1624 but the collapse of this part of the empire put a halt to its construction. Big buildings and temples are pretty boring though and I can't help but think about the poor people who built them. How can a ruler manage to harness so many people, especially in pre-industrial times, to build these things. I can only think that these societies must be full of extreme injustice for this to occur. Just rereading this email I realized I have painted the darker side of the apocalypse that is Dhaka and Bangladesh, maybe it is this side I get off on. The insanity is contrasted with a massive amount of trees, all tropical trees growing everywhere, it is quite a green city, if it wasn't for this I think the city would probably be uninhabitable. There is water everywhere, Bangladesh one giant delta, this water I would not describe as drinking water, not even cleaning water for pots and pans, I wouldn't bathe in it, or have anything to do with it, yet the other day I saw this woman cleaning her pots and pans in it. Nevertheless this water definitely takes a bit of the edge off the city. The people are the basis for my love of this place, its indescribable their friendliness and their passion for life, holding an opinion and for argument. The way people relate is craziness, they yell at each other non-stop, fire up so easily. They're are in a state of constant political turmoil, Clinton on his recent visit here said this was the main impediment to Bangladesh growing, yet somehow they manage to maintain a sort of democracy. Maybe I shouldn't say a sort of democracy, cause in many ways the political life here is a lot more vibrant than Australia, people seem to participate more in the political process, there are demonstrations non-stop, maybe this is because there are an unknown number of people living here. Reading the newspaper is ridiculous, strike after strike, everyone trying to bring down the government, the government trying to bring down the judiciary and the judiciary describing the entire process as embarassing. Everyone is pulling different directions at the same time. I've watched a few movies with Tanvir and Tahmina on their computer, the video cd's are prolific, most of them are from India, yet Indian movies are banned. They say that if the government allowed them everyone, including the two of them would claim that the government was selling the nation to India, yet everyone happily watches the movies and sings along to Hindi songs. Maybe its just an outsiders perspective that it doesn't make much sense, or a twisted upside down sense, although Tahmina describes the government and the way things work as stupid. Tahmina just said to me that the government is the best one in the last 21 years. Everyone holds up the first government the Father of the Nation Sheik Muzibur Rahman as not god like cause that would be a challenge to Allah but as beyond any wrong doing. He was murdered by the army apparently at the behest of the US, I like this it reinforces my political prejudices. There is currently a court case going on charging a whole lot of former generals with his murder. His daughter is the current prime minister. What is it with these daughters, Megawatti in Indonesia, Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, that Italian Gandhi in India, even though her family bears only the name of Mahatama Gandhi. Should I throw some aspersions on the Asian mentality about dynasties, nah there are the Kennedy's, and the tradition of monarchies everywhere .I would think it would be the other way around but......Anyway I've babbled on again, the Bangaldeshi's are truly excellent people, I think I'm just at a particular point in my life where I get off on the darker side of human existence so emphasize this in the picture that I paint. None of this should be taken in contrast to the excellentness of Australia cause there are heaps of really positive and negative sides to both cultures. I might describe the weather a little more, it is intensely hot, so hot, and its going to be hotter next month. There have been a few crazy storms, its seems as though the weather can't be mild. Last time I was here people were dying because it was so cold, now everyone swelters all day, then if it rains it doesn't just drizzle it buckets down, to the point of worrying about the structural stbaility of the building you are in. A door upstairs got blown off the other night. The food, its hard to be really positive here, although I'm getting used to it, they eat straight sugar, rice, roti, chilli and seafood. As you can probably tell by this email I'm feeling a mixture of emotions and thoughts at the moment, maybe they'll settle, maybe they won't. Nevertheless I'm been challenged and its far from boring here. I have now had 3 attempts at sending this and have failed due to bangla.net intensly slow connection to the net, I think that might have either one or maybe two 56k modems dialed up to India for the whole country, so I have more to type. This email is getting quite excessively long so apologies for this but I hope that I'm portraying where I'm at and a reasonable picture of Bangladesh. I might go to another discussion I had with Robin, who I described earlier, I have learnt the Bangla words to describe this guy, lulu which means crazy and mata kharab which means out of mind, both are particularly applicable to him. He is studying sociology at Dhaka university and we have had a few conversations in there now. The other day when I was in there I saw painted up on the wall "student union something or other about defeding or fighting or something for something" which made me think of student unionism in Australia, I asked him about this and he said student unions, which are dominated by the left here as well are "classic examples of failure", I can see a bit of a parallel here. I had this interesting discussion with himand this other Islamic guy about Islam and the challenges of modernity. He loathes Islam, he sees it as unchangeable as the Koran says that it is the last word of God, there should be no interpretations of it, it cannot be taken metaphorically and it must be taken as a whole. I posited that this was the case for all religions with the possible exception of Buddhism, I think he's just got a number of issues with Islam. I'm developing a less romantic view of Islam than what I had last time, I think the procession that attacked the 10 year old boy did not help the view that Muslims are compassionate, although Tanbir said most of the country abhor the fundamentalists and you can't let the actions of a few individuals taint your view of a religion that encompases one fifith of humanity, but its pretty brutal for a bunch of guys to beat up a 10 year old, then no-one who I standing by, including the police take any action. Maybe the romantic view that I've held, and still continue to hold to an extent relates to it been very much the other to western society. I've been thinking about this subject that I did at university about the how thewestern construction of the other. Maybe I missed the point in this subject, maybe my memory has faded over time, maybe my memory has been destroyed, to remember the subtleties of the argument but the fascination with the other, although maybe serving political and cultural ends is very much prevalent here, as it was in Laos. It seems a natural human curiosity, hmmm that should be put better as there is no human nature hahahaha sigh, to be facinated and want to learn about what you are not. From finding attractiveness in darker skin, the beautiful sound and rhythm of other languages that you cannot understand to simple curiosity with people that look different or say different things, this is definitely not a western thing. Maybe it has taken on a particular political dimension in the west in order to subjugate non-European peoples but its basis is in curiosity. This came out of a discussion with this fantastically beautiful girl Rabbi, a friend of Tanbir's whom he described as a "black diamond". Had a pretty magical night, she can also sing amazingly well, singing some order and beauty into the apocalypse. I also had an interesting discussion with her about Bangladeshi life, she decries it. Everyone here wants to come to Australia, they can't understand why I've come to Bangladesh, they ask me why but I can't really explain as I don't know myself. She was saying that Bengali's are too emotional, everyone explodes about little things, which is definitely the case. You should here the way discussions evolve over the course over a few minutes from friendly opening words to harsh screaming, its quite amazing the way the tones they use change, she hates it but I love it, such is life. Maybe those that are in a pure state of happiness have no need to travel, no need to explore the unknown in anyway because they are completely content with who they are and where they are at. She says everyone takes too much interest in your life, you can't do your thing here, maybe this is a result of 130 million people packed into a very small space, maybe we could organise some sort of land swap between Australians and Bangaldeshi's? I have a note down here about the way they interact, no-one says please or thank you except under circumstances where they completely mean it, a fair bit different from silly English nicities. They don't seem to have conversation starters, if you want to talk to someone, there will be a reason for it, so you start with the reason. This does not mean they don't converse a lot, they are constantly talking. Tahmina just berated me for saying that they are not polite, but I think she has misunderstood, it is not that they are aggressive or rude people in comparison to Australians, I think the issue is that they have a ridiculously high population density everyone is in each others faces all the time, so you get to the point, they don't didle daddle around with superflous stuff. You go around to someones house you don't bother with nicities to start off with you go straight into the reason for been there. I need to add in a few more culture shock, economic shock, discomfort from the general, no not discomfort but surprise at the way things don't work. The various attempts at sending this email are a classic example, I went around to this friends of Tanbir's house to send an email, they have an analog exchange which basically means major problems for transmitting data, I asked if they had a mobile that they could hook the modem up to but they said you can only make mobile to mobile calls!!!!! From their house, on about the 12th fllor I got a new view of Dhaka, it is a city of 4-8 storey buildings....ohhhh...the traffic jams, I haven't mentioned them yet, somehow or other, it doesn't matter the time of day there are traffic jams. Probably funniest of all was the situation with the phone at Tanbir and Tahmina's house. They pay 1000Tk a month US$20, regardless of the amount of calls they make, because they got what is known as a ghost bill, a bill for non-existent calls, aparently this is a common problem on the analog network, so Tanbir said they cut a deal with the government to pay this amount per month. He assured me that this was not illegal and was not organised with the telephone man but with the telephone company. Click here for Bangladesh Photos

Bangladesh, Thailand, London – Mash up