Day One

Finally arrived in Dhaka around 6am this morning after around 34 hours of traveling. The last flight was so chaotic it was almost comical - I've never seen so many people use an airplane bathroom on a four hour flight. I don't think any of them were unoccupied the entire time. Once I arrived it took an eternity to get out of the airport because Gulf Air apparently thinks it's efficient to transport 3 or 4 bags at a time from the plane to the baggage claim. So after an hour and a half wait for my one bag, I finally met Anisur, and was very glad he was there on the way out of the airport - although the crowds didn't quite rival the spectacle that was Yoff airport in Senegal, I was more than happy to have someone help me out who knew what they were doing.

There were no traffic jams on the way to the guesthouse, but we narrowly escaped being squished between two minibuses. From the looks of them, we would not have been the first to hit either bus, though.

After much uncertainty about what "guesthouse" might mean, it's pretty much what I expected. Here are some pictures of the space I'll be occupying for the next week or so:

The room

The bathroom



The view from the bathroom (complete with some serious construction work going on just outside the window)
Downstairs there is a "restaurant" and some common space that I have yet to explore. I'll be heading into the EPRC office later today. More on all of that later!