Christmas in Bangkok

The Christmas season is in full swing here in Bangkok. Although most Thais are not Christian, they'll take any excuse they can find for a party. The hotels and malls are alive with tinsel and bright lights. While it's a little strange to see snowflakes, reindeer, and men in fur-trimmed suits here in the tropics (where the low temperatures are in the 80's Fahrenheit these days), the Thais don't seem to mind. They've also found some creative twists on the traditional Anglo-Saxon Christmas imagery.


This tree is reported to be the largest Christmas tree in Southeast Asia.















This tree is made of empty water cooler bottles, each with an electric candle inside.















This tree features a portrait of the King, who just celebrated his 80th birthday.














This is the Most. Disturbing. Christmas Tree. Ever. We don't know who's responsible for it -- it's at the Four Seasons Hotel -- but it really creeped us out.





We're off to the U.S. for the holidays. We'll see some of you there and catch up with the rest of you in January.

Have a happy & blessed Christmas and a good start to the New Year!

Cyclone Sidr and Bangladesh

On November 15, tropical cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh with winds of 155 miles per hour and waves reported to be more than 10 feet high on the coast. More than 2,000 people are confirmed dead five days after the storm, and the Red Crescent Society of Bangladesh fears the death toll could reach 10,000. Approximately 3.2 million people have been directly affected by the storm. The storm destroyed houses, crops, fish farms, trees, poultry, and livestock; obstructed roadways and riverine passages; and affected electricity, communications services, and other utilities countrywide. Electrical power in the entire country (!) was out for more than a day after the cyclone hit.

Now the relief efforts begin. A number of countries, including the U.S., have pledged emergency assistance to Bangladesh. Much of America 's relief aid will be delivered by the U.S. military, which has the people, equipment, and budget to do this sort of work. Two U.S. Marine Corps C-130 aircraft with Humanitarian Assistance Survey Teams arrived in Dhaka on Monday; two Wasp-class amphibious assault ships in the region, the USS Essex and USS Kearsarge, will each bring 20 helicopters for relief-and-rescue operations to the southern coast of Bangladesh by the end of this week.

USAID is also doing its part. Patrick's colleagues are working to program $2 million in emergency funds to help provide help to those affected. Even before Sidr made landfall, USAID had boats, water treatment systems and water ambulances for emergency operations ready to go. In cooperation with CARE and Save the Children, USAID helped set up 30,000 emergency survival packages and food stockpiles for immediate distribution after the storm.

But relief after a disaster like this is different from development.

At Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson scale for hurricanes, Sidr was the worst storm to hit Bangladesh in over 10 years, but its aftermath could have been much, much worse. In 1970 cyclone Bhola, a Category 3 storm, killed 500,000 people. Gorky, almost identical in strength and path to Sidr, killed 140,000 people in 1991. So as strange as it may sound, even if the death toll reaches 10,000, that would be more than ten times lower than the previous big storm. Why the difference?

After the 1991 cyclone, USAID and other international aid groups helped the government of Bangladesh with disaster preparedness programs. The U.S. government helped fund the construction and maintenance of flood and cyclone shelters (they look like concrete warehouses on stilts), wave-protection walls and earthworks to reduce flood damage. That is the long-term work of development. In this case, it looks like 16 years of work may have saved thousands of lives in a matter of hours.

However, Sidr will continue to hurt Bangladesh for months. Thanks to its extremely fertile land and hard-working farmers, Bangladesh just about manages to produce enough food to feed its 150 million people. Sidr destroyed about 95% of the December rice crop in the south. That means that the "monga," or hunger, season of January-March -- traditionally the leanest time of the year for the poor of Bangladesh -- will be that much worse next year. The government of Bangladesh has some stockpiles it can distribute, but only time will tell whether that will be enough.

On a personal note, Jennifer was in Dhaka for the cyclone and the aftermath. There was a lot of wind and rain, and a number of downed trees, but Dhaka was not as badly hit as the southern coast. Thanks to everyone who wrote to make sure that we were OK.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed here are personal and do not reflect the official policy of USAID or the U.S. Government.)

Hallowe'en, Thai Style

Patrick's office had a Hallowe'en party to celebrate (belatedly) the end of the U.S. government fiscal year, as well as to blow off a little steam and give the Thai employees a chance to enjoy some sanuk at work. Here are a few photos:

Patrick and his colleagues.



It wouldn't be a Thai party without food -- part of the huge spread!



Hallowe'en is new to Thailand, so it was great to see the creative thought that went into the costumes.



We played games, one of which featured a "Fear Factor"-style eating contest. Rich, pictured here, was a master at eating grasshoppers.



Some of the Thai staff dressed their American colleagues as traditional Thai ghosts. Molly is dressed as "Mae Naak," one of the most famous and feared ghosts in Thailand. According to legend, a teenaged girl falls in love with a handsome young man. They are married and she becomes pregnant. The young man is conscripted for military service, leaving his pregnant bride behind. Unbeknownst to him, she and their infant son die in childbirth ... but their spirits remain. When the young man returns, the ghost of the woman disguises herself and her son as humans. However, despite her best efforts, she cannot disguise her true nature from her husband, who flees in horror. The villagers resort to all possible spiritual means to exorcise the ghost, but to no avail. The young man remarries, enraging the jealous ghost, who terrorizes her husband and his new family. The young man finally flees to a Buddhist temple, where a gifted young novice imprisons the ghost in a ceramic pot and drops it in the river, freeing her to reenter the cycle of rebirth.

When Molly walked down the street from our office to the Embassy compound (where we had the party), the Thais on the street -- who knew nothing of Hallowe'en -- were stunned, if not horrified. "Mae Naak! Mae Naak!" they murmured, pointing at her and moving away...

The Blue Ball Cap in 45H

We haven't posted anything for a while, but honestly most of the pictures we could show you of things we have seen lately would show the inside of airports! No need to subject you to that, but we do have one interesting story to tell about our fellow travelers these days.

A Bangladeshi newspaper recently reported that so far this year, more than 475,000 Bangladeshis have left for destinations mainly in the Middle East -- Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, even Iraq -- to work. Some may do domestic work, but most of them are bound for construction sites in the desert. Firms looking for cheap labor hire companies who act as press gangs: they find the workers, check their papers, get them visas, etc. Some of these companies may be upstanding and legit, but recent occurrences with Bangladeshi workers have proven that some are not. They may take the (often exorbitant) fee the workers pay for the privilege of being exported, but then don’t show up at the other end of the plane journey to take the workers to their new job; so, workers are left on their own to be dealt with by the destination country officials. This happened to about a hundred workers who recently arrived in Malaysia. They were sent to a detention holding area for weeks until it could all be sorted out ... and then they were sent back home, hundreds of dollars poorer.

They’re easy to pick out in the check-in line. They usually wear matching ball caps or t-shirts with company logos and the name of the country they are going to. Ironically, they certainly can’t read what’s on their shirts, but I suppose the visual identity is enough. They usually have some sort of documentation with them – a work contract or the like – which they keep a death grip on throughout their journey. It’s obvious they’ve been told that no matter what happens, they mustn’t lose their papers. Most of them have never left their village before showing up at the airport in Dhaka to fly thousands of miles. Sometimes airlines seat them all together and board them first, which is preferable. Getting caught up in the middle of 50 of these guys as you board the plane is not something you’d want to do very often.

It's not just Bangladeshis who are leaving their rural villages to take jobs in the Middle East. On a recent flight back from Kathmandu, Patrick shared the plane with about 30 Nepali migrant workers (who were wearing blue caps, by the way). One was Patrick's seatmate in Row 45. During the entire three-and-a-half hour flight to Bangkok on Thai Airways, he watched Patrick carefully. One could almost hear the guy thinking: "Oh, these are headphones ... and they plug in here." "So, this button turns on the light." "Yes, I'll have some peanuts, too!"

Of course, he didn't speak English or Thai, so when dinner was served, he just pointed to Patrick's tray and nodded. Chicken, lamb or veggie? "I'll have what he's having." Water, soda, juice? "I'll have what he's having." Red wine, white wine? "I'll have what he's having." However, he got so involved in his food that he didn't really watch what Patrick did with the condiments. He ate his salad dry, with pepper and salt, and spread the salad dressing on his dinner roll. Then he discovered the butter packet. After studying it for a moment, he picked it up with both hands, held it between his forefingers, and pushed with his thumbs against the bottom, thinking to push whatever was inside out through the foil. Fearing an explosive result (which would have shot a wad of butter across the seats and into the back of the head of the guy sitting in Row 44), Patrick showed him that the foil top could be peeled off. The Nepali thanked him solemnly, picked up his spoon, and had a couple of spoonfuls of butter before he decided that it just wasn't his thing. Coffee, tea? "I'll have what he's having."

"Labor migration" is an interesting phenomenon for the academic types, and an entertaining debate topic for loudmouthed journalists, but for the workers, it’s about trying to make a better life. They’re just looking for jobs and generally have no idea what they’re getting into. For some, things may turn out fine – they’ll work hard, deal with whatever awful living conditions they’re put into and earn more money than they ever could in their home country. But for most, it can be a story of what is essentially modern-day slave labor. Yes, they do get paid, but is it is enough to offset the risks they must take at work, the conditions they live in and the money they had to pay for the job in the first place? When the alternative is no job at all, or begging, or whatever other trouble they can get into at home, it must be worth it. By contrast, a 20-year-old gardener working for foreigners in Bangladesh, who pay him $100 a month and care whether he lives or dies, is doing quite well.

A Pictorial Journey Through Four Wings Apt. 18C

To give you an idea of how we're living these days, here are a few photos of our apartment here in Bangkok.

Here's the front door from the other side.


This is our living room. The building supplied the couch and easy chairs; we were lucky to get the cream upholstery, which makes for easy decorating. We had the walls in this room painted and were very pleased with the results. We still have a few things to hang on the walls, once we find them. We're also considering a carpet for this room. There was no possibility to remove the built-in shelving unit -- "the Monstrosity" -- so we've tried to disguise it as best we can.


The TV room is where we spend much of our time. As you can see from the view, we're right in the middle of downtown. We were happy to figure out an arrangement in which the TV is hidden unless you're actually sitting on the couch to watch it. This was set up as a formal dining room, but we had the building management take out the dining room table and chairs. (We don't "dine" very often.)


The kitchen is small but functional. There's a storage pantry just off the kitchen. We have to use a water cooler because the tap water in Bangkok is definitely not safe.


A hallway leads back to the three bedrooms and bathrooms. The carpet is made from yak wool; Patrick got it from a Nepali carpet maker who works with Tibetan refugees.




This is our music room / office / spare-bedroom-in-emergencies. We turned the twin bed into a daybed for lounging. It's been a lot of fun to play with color in this room.


Here's our guest bedroom. This is the room we've spent the most time trying to fix up, including tailor-made bedlinens and curtains, and cool tribal cushions from a hill tribe in northern Thailand. The mirror on the left-hand side wall is a reproduction of a traditional Nepali carved window.


As you can see, the guest bathroom is spare but very clean. Each of the three bathrooms has a sink, toilet, and full bathtub with shower attachment. Each also has its own water heater, so we never have any problems with running out of hot water ... not that there are any cold mornings in Bangkok!



Our bedroom needs the most work. The curtains are a distressing splotchy battleship grey, made from some sort of weird acrylic. We'll eventually replace them, get a bed skirt made, and hang something above the head of the bed. At least we got rid of the hideous Embassy-issued lamps.


It's a great apartment -- just the right size for us. We're really happy here, and it's such a pleasure to come home to a cozy place like Four Wings 18C!

12.20 North, 99.58 East

This past week we had a much-needed vacation in Pranburi, about three-and-a-half hours' drive south of Bangkok, on the Gulf of Thailand. This was our first road trip in Thailand, which was not without its own challenges, but it was great to take our car out onto the open road. The highways in Thailand are very similar to those in the States -- at times we could've been on Route 460 on our way to Virginia Beach.


We stayed at a tiny resort called Aleenta. The resort has only fifteen rooms, four of them bungalows that sit right on the beach. The resort -- which has won awards from Conde Nast, Luxury Travel magazine, and a bunch of others -- was beautiful. Since it's currently low season in Thailand, there weren't many people around. From our bungalow we had an almost 180-degree view of the ocean and could watch the tides and the fishing boats right from our bed.


We didn't really do much other than lie around and read all week, which was exactly what we needed. We took a few walks on the beach, but we didn't risk swimming in the ocean, thanks to the hordes of very large jellyfish.


Our bungalow had a private plunge pool, though, so while we couldn't swim any laps, we could cool off whenever we needed to.


We drove up to the town of Hua Hin in the middle of the week to see Thailand's oldest beach resort. Hua Hin used to be a small fishing village, but it's grown up a lot over the last few decades. The King of Thailand has a summer palace there -- in fact, it's where he lives most of the time. We can't say we were real taken with Hua Hin, but we had a lovely lunch at the Sofitel Railway Hotel, a beautiful colonial-era hotel built in 1923. Its topiary garden is thought to be one of the best in the world, and it really was incredible. Most amazing were a pair of 30-foot-long peacocks, a flight of geese, and a life-sized elephant.

All in all, it was a wonderful week with lots of good food and relaxation.

Working with Ratt and Kook

Thais have nicknames. When a Thai child is very young, his or her parents will give the child a nickname to distract evil spirits who might want to harm him or her. Often the name is a shortened version of the child's given name -- not a bad idea with given names such as "Watcharaporn," "Potchanat," and "Saengroaj" -- or a descriptive term, such as "red," "shrimp," or endless variations on "small."

However, use of these nicknames doesn't end in childhood. Most people continue to use their nickname throughout their life. Thai custom encourages the use of these nicknames rather than family names (i.e., "Mr. Patrick" instead of "Mr. Wilson") in polite discourse, prefaced with the word "Khun," which is something like Mr. or Ms. -- also not a bad idea with family names such as "Komsatayapongvudhi" and "Damrongwatanapokin."

So, Patrick's colleagues include Mr. Ratt, Ms. Apple, Mr. Kook, Ms. Pim, Ms. Pum, Ms. Oo, and Mr. Boy, while one of the staff members in our apartment building is Mr. Aa. So far neither one of us has attracted a nickname, but it may just be a matter of time. Any suggestions?

From Dhaka to Bangkok ... and Back Again (Part 2)

The first few days in Bangkok were a bit of a blur, but quite fun. We arrived on a Wednesday evening just before a major holiday weekend, but hit the ground running on Thursday morning for extensive check-in procedures with the Embassy. The American diplomatic community in Bangkok – which includes the State Department, USAID and a slew of other agencies with southeast Asian headquarters here – numbers about 600 direct employees, not including families. Quite a change from the 75 or so in Dhaka! With a Embassy this large, this meant a whole new ballgame in terms of procedures and policies. We were whisked from office to office to have photos taken, fill out forms, choose furniture, etc. We were happy to know that a five-day weekend followed all of this bustle.

The next few days were spent walking around, wide-eyed at the amount of shopping, food and cultural activity on offer, and locating our new neighborhood (where our permanent apartment is) and Jennifer’s office. During all of this, we were doing our best to avoid being splashed with water and talcum powder, which is the traditional way to celebrate the Thai New Year, known as “Songkran.” The mood in the city was indeed festive and what was originally the splashing of a few drops of water on friends and family to signify the rebirth of a new year has now become license to pull out buckets and water cannons and soak any who cross your path. Pickup trucks loaded with young Thais armed with loud stereos and plenty of liquid ammo drove up and down the streets, joyfully blasting everyone in sight. It was a lot of fun!

We also decided that immediately upon arrival it was time to start making up for the last two years physical laziness! Our weekly ultimate frisbee game with friends and our daily walks with Bhago had become our only physical activity in Dhaka ... and we could feel it. Our temporary apartment was outfitted with a nice gym and we were a few minutes’ walk away from Bangkok’s biggest park. We really enjoyed the chance to get outside, wear shorts and t-shirts, and not be stared at during physical activity. Lumpini Park is an amazing site at 6:00am with hundreds of Thais and a few foreigners enjoying morning exercise – from jogging to tai chi, aerobics, calisthenics, and even ballroom dancing. Yes, they were dancing tango at 6:30 am! Coming from Dhaka, it was liberating to see people enjoying whatever activity they wanted outside in the open air.

After two weeks we were able to move in to our permanent apartment. It’s on the 18th floor of a high-rise apartment building in the middle of downtown. We live just off Sukhumvit, the busiest road in all of Bangkok. To one side of our building is “Little Pakistan,” featuring the Pakistani Embassy and all sorts of Middle Eastern restuarants; to the other is Sukhumvit Soi 11, one of the major entertainment locations for tourists in Bangkok, with nice restaurants, chic nightclubs, sleazy bars and cheap tailor shops galore. It’s a funky neighborhood, but we like it.

Our apartment is, thankfully, much smaller than the house we had in Bangladesh. We have spent most of our free time working on getting it set up the way we want it to be. One of our biggest mistakes in Dhaka was not concentrating on home stuff immediately, so we’re determined to have a nice place to spend the next three years! We’ve been painting, buying cushions and dishes, hanging pictures, and exploring the possibilities of what can be. Once we have a few more things taken care of, we’ll put up pictures here on the blog ... but we have a nice guest room all set up for you, so why not come see it for yourself?

However, life here isn’t all water fights and interior decorating. We have to work, too. Patrick works in an office building across the street from the U.S. Embassy. He has five colleagues in his section: two Americans, four Thais, and a Filipina. Patrick and the head of the office are the only men in the Regional Office of Procurement – and in fact, women make up the large majority of the Thai workforce at USAID. The current USAID Mission in Thailand opened in 2003, so most of the Thai staff are new to USAID and U.S. Government work in general. Everyone is remarkably friendly and happy – Thais believe that “sanuk,” or fun, is an essential part of anything one does in life, so they find sanuk in the office as often as possible.


Patrick brought the Nepal portfolio with him to Bangkok, and soon after his arrival took over duties for Vietnam, as well. When Patrick’s new boss left in late June to become the Deputy Mission Director in Bangladesh (!), Patrick gained East Timor, Burma, and Laos, plus regional disaster assistance work. He’s been back to Nepal twice since we arrived and is hoping to get to some of the other countries he covers soon.


Jennifer continues to work with the International Finance Corporation in Bangladesh as Communications Officer for the new Bangladesh Investment Climate Fund (BICF). As BICF begins operations and programs in earnest, Jennifer and her boss worked out a deal for a six-to-nine-month transition period to remain on board full-time, operating 50% remotely from Bangkok and 50% in Dhaka. Yes, that’s a lot of travel and the challenges of remote management when she’s not there have come to light. Still, it is a good job and the frequent travel to Dhaka is cushioned a little bit by friends and colleagues who are still there and generally happy to see her. She has seen Shanti and Rabin a few times to say hello, and even visited Bhago to receive lots of puppy kisses and ensure that he is happy and well, which he definitely seems to be.

From Dhaka to Bangkok ... and Back Again (Part 1)

It takes only a little over two hours to fly direct from Dhaka to Bangkok – and in doing so, you find yourself on a different planet! Having been to Bangkok a couple of times during 2006 for vacations, we knew what to expect upon leaving the airport. But to have come on a one-way flight with everything we own that hadn’t been packed and shipped a few weeks earlier, the feeling was different indeed. We were picked up by one of Patrick’s colleagues and a hired driver and taken to our temporary home in a swanky serviced apartment, as our assigned apartment was not yet ready for us. Whoa. How much life had changed in only a few hours!

While we were certainly ready to leave Dhaka, the last few days and hours were more emotional than we had expected. Bangladeshi culture was a big part of this – Bangladeshis are very emotionally demonstrative, no matter what the emotion. So if they’re happy, they’re dancing and laughing; if they’re angry, they’re shouting and throwing bricks; and if they’re sad, they’re not afraid to cry.

We had spent the last several weeks saying goodbye to friends and colleagues – in fact, we had another great rooftop party with all of our close friends from Dhaka.



Jennifer didn’t have to say too many goodbyes as she knew she would be returning for work quite often over the next few months. Patrick’s colleagues threw the traditional USAID farewell party for him at the office. His boss read a poem he’d written for the occasion while on an ayurvedic holiday in India. It featured such immortal verses as:

Patrick anchored the band with electric guitars
And helped shake the Atrium with other rock stars
He liked to play frisbee, but that game was to blame
For the month spent on crutches – he was totally lame

... and so on. After the poem, Patrick’s various colleagues throughout the Mission stood up to say a few words about his time there. The ten or twelve people who spoke had wonderful, kind stories to tell, so it wasn’t long before there were tears. Patrick himself could only get through about a third of what he’d planned to say before he broke down, too. Patrick’s farewell gift from the Mission was a painting done on aluminum in the style typical of Bangladeshi rickshaw art. The artist, S.M. Samsu, is the best rickshaw artist in Dhaka, and he did a fantastic job of capturing our likenesses – and Bhago’s too! – for the ages.


The hardest goodbyes were with those who had been a major part of our everyday lives almost from day one – Shanti, our cook/housekeeper, and Rabin, our guard/gardener. While we had our difficulties with the fact that having people to help you out at home was an absolute necessity in Dhaka, and our difficulties with Shanti and Rabin getting along and us getting along with them, we had spent almost two years seeing these people almost as much as we saw each other. We had developed quite a relationship.

The stress of packing out, cleaning up, taking care of last minute errands had kept us all quite busy so that there wasn’t time to really think about saying goodbye until those last few minutes once the van had arrived to take us to the airport. All of us became surprisingly emotional in these last few minutes. Shanti’s husband had come to help her transport some of the things we were leaving behind, and Rabin’s mother had come to see us off as well. Again, it wasn’t long before the tears started to flow. Then, in typical Bangladeshi fashion, a passer-by on the street who we did not really know stopped to become part of the hugging, well-wishing and crying ... by standing and watching with an open-mouthed stare.

So with a huge mix of relief that the moving out was complete, anticipation of our new city and an onslaught of emotions realizing we were closing a very interesting chapter in our lives, we waved goodbye out of the van window with tears in our eyes. (We won’t even focus on the fact that we knew Bhago was probably lying in the sun just down the street at his new home, unaware of our departure after we had visited with him briefly earlier in the morning before packing up the suitcases).

Bangladesh had one last parting gift for us at the airport. In Dhaka “expediters” – Bangladeshi travel assistants who take care of all of the paperwork, immigration & emigration, etc. – help us at the airport whenever we travel on official business. We had gotten to know these travel guys pretty well over our two years and had become friendly with most of them. So much to our disappointment, we had a new expediter, one we’d never met before, for our last official trip in Dhaka.

As we got to the check-out counter, we discovered we were overweight on our luggage. However, the man at the check-in desk didn’t bother to explain this to us. Instead, he simply motioned curtly that we had to leave his line (where we’d been standing for 20 minutes) and join another line. Patrick demanded to know why, but the man refused to explain. The expediter told him – and us – that we should be able to check in immediately and insisted that we not leave the line. Finally, a manager came over and explained that we would have to pay for the extra weight. “Fine, that’s no problem,” Patrick said. “It would have been nice if your colleague had explained that to us.”

Then, once the whole problem had been solved, a Bangladeshi man standing behind us in line decided he wanted to be part of the fun. He said something to the expediter along the lines of, “Of course they have to pay, why didn’t you tell them?” The expediter told him that the man at the check-in counter was to blame. “No! No!” the other man shouted, pointing at us, “you misled them!” The expediter shouted something back. Then the other man said, “No, you are stupid!” Apparently this was the wrong thing to say, because the expediter shoved the other man ferociously, shouting, “No! No! You are stupid!” (Remember what we said about Bangladeshis being emotionally demonstrative?)

Patrick stepped between the two so that they couldn’t start swinging at each other and finally had to drag the expediter away bodily to an isolated corner of the terminal. He then – quietly! – read the expediter the riot act. The expediter tried to excuse his actions by saying that he’d lost his head when the other man called him “stupid.” “I don’t care what he called you,” Patrick said, “you attracted the attention of every single person in this airport. You work for the U.S. Embassy now, and you just created a very serious security incident. I don’t think the RSO [Regional Security Officer] would like that, do you?” Finally the expediter realized that he’d put his new job in danger and apologized without further excuses. We didn’t report the incident to the RSO or the guy’s boss, but we did call one of our buddies on the travel staff and asked him to talk to the guy.

After that, we were really ready to leave Bangladesh!

A Tour of Old Dhaka

On our last Friday in Bangladesh, we decided we needed to go see Old Dhaka – the tiny warren of streets that eventually gave birth to this sprawling city of 15 million. Hossain and Mithu, two of the drivers who work for the World Bank, said that they would be happy to serve as our drivers, tour guides and personal security detail. That sounded a lot more fun than haggling with some commercial tour operator, so we took them up on their offer.

Since we went down on a Friday morning, traffic was light and many businesses were closed. Still, there was plenty to see and do (and smell). We ran across these guys butchering sea turtles on the street in the Hindu district.


Old Dhaka also features a few nice older buildings. Some, like Ahsan Manzil (also called “the Pink Palace”), which was built as the personal home of Dhaka’s wealthiest landowner in the late 1800s, are no longer used, but others from the period are still serving as office buildings, shops, or even apartment houses.




One of the most interesting places in this part of Dhaka is the Armenian Church. The church was built in 1781 as the expansion of a chapel from the late 17th century. The Armenians had come as traders to this part of the world for centuries. Finally a Moghul emperor in the 1600s invited them to build their own settlements in Bengal ... and thus they built a church. The caretaker of the church, Mr. Martin, showed us around. He was very friendly, very knowledgeable, and very lonely. There are only 10 families in the church now, and it’s clear the community is slowly dying.

We headed down to the waterfront to see the produce being brought in to feed the metropolis of Dhaka. (Watermelon is in season now.) Patrick was tempted to get a shave and a haircut, but eventually decided against it.




One of our last stops was to visit Mithu’s family and see his new baby daughter, who is only 18 days old. He is an extremely proud father.


Mithu and Hossain gave us a wonderful tour of Old Dhaka. It seems both strange and fitting that we waited almost two years to do this tour, right before our departure. Now that we’re leaving Bangladesh, we have become more open to seeing it with a positive attitude. It was a good way to spend our last Friday here.

Packing Up in Dhaka

We're in our last days here in Dhaka.

As you can imagine, this is a pretty stressful time, even when so much of our move is being taken care of. After three days of packing, our house is now empty, save for the Embassy furniture and four suitcases’ worth of personal belongings. Our calendar is filling up with evening appointments as all of our friends ask to see us one last time before we go. Rabin (our guard) and Shanti (our housekeeper) are sad to see us go and worried about finding new jobs, so we're helping with that as much as we can. During all of this, we still have work to do -- Jennifer has some big meetings and conference calls with Washington over the next couple of weeks, while Patrick will be in Nepal all next week for work. On 11 April we'll board Thai Airways flight 322 to Bangkok.

And then there's Bhago.

Bangkok is not a good place for dogs. It's a big, crowded, modern city. The public parks don't allow dogs. We'll live in a small apartment on the 18th floor of a high-rise, with no garden space or yard. So we've decided it's best for Bhago not to join us there. We have a couple of options for him -- including sending him back to the States to live on Patrick's aunt's farm in Georgia -- but we think finding a home for him here in Bangladesh would be easiest for everyone, especially him.

Still, it's hard. We're really going to miss our little monster, and we know that no one will love him quite the way we have. He'll be fine in a good home, we know – and being a dog, he won’t miss us the way we’ll miss him. It's just tough to say goodbye.

For his part, Bhago has been awfully subdued over the last few days. People project all sorts of emotions onto their pets, so we don't want to go far as to say that he knows what's going on, but I'm sure he's picking up on the various emotional states in the house. There have been movers here, packing up boxes, yelling back and forth, and basically causing a lot of commotion. Normally this would have Bhago jumping up and down, barking, sniffing ... you know, all of that fun doggie stuff. Instead, he's mostly just watched them go by, sometimes with a heavy sigh. Jennifer jokingly said to Rabin (who spends a lot of time with Bhago during the day), "Maybe Bhago knows we're moving." Rabin replied, "I am thinking, Bhago know everything ... he just not say.”

And yet, he’s still his irrepressible self sometimes:

Bonus Pictures from Nepal!

A few more pictures from our recent Nepal trip:

A (sadly) typical street scene in Kathmandu: traffic jam plus garbage heap. While we were there, one of the major landfills for Kathmandu was being blockaded by the people who live near it, so no garbage had been collected for about a week. Here the garbage has blocked half the street, greatly exacerbating the traffic problem (to say nothing of the smell).


This conveyance is very popular in Nepal. We've even seen them on the streets of Kathmandu. We'd bet that if you could make a kit for one of these -- call it the Himalayan Chopper Pickup -- you could make a mint selling them to rednecks in the States.


While we were walking through people's front yards, we came across this family making a phone call. They lived in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, so we were really surprised to see a battery-powered, cordless handset here! We couldn't really find out how they got the phone, how much it cost to make a call, or how exactly the whole thing worked -- after all, we were intruding on their personal family business -- but it was neat to see.


This woman is using a traditional Nepali method of carrying heavy loads. She has everything she wants carry in the basked at her back. A strap is running from the basket to her forehead; she uses her body weight -- and strong neck muscles! -- to keep the load balanced. Sherpas carrying loads up Mount Everest sometimes use the same technique, perfected over centuries.


This was a Red Cross clinic in a village in Pokhara. We spent a while visiting with these two guys, who volunteer at the clinic, doing health screening and giving advice. They were very proud of their work and happy to talk about it, even if you can't tell from the picture (though, to be fair, no one smiles for cameras as much as Americans do).


Believe it or not, this is our hotel room in Pokhara town. It was set up like a traditional Nepali cottage, complete with fireplace. Patrick used his firemaking skills (thanks, Dad) to warm up the place a bit before bedtime -- the bed was in a loft just above the sofa.


During our time in Nepal, a very important Hindu festival, Shivaratri, was celebrated. One of the most significant Shiva temples in the world is in Kathmandu, so thousands upon thousands of people gathered there to celebrate. They even celebrated in Pokhara ... right down to the dogs. If you look carefully, you can see a red mark between this puppy's eyes. It's what remains of his tika, a ritual mark used to anoit the Hindu faithful on holy days.