It’s been 5 days here in Chittagong and what an experience it’s been. There are 150 million people in Bangladesh. That equates approximately to 5 times the population of Canada. This country is about the size of Iowa. Five times the population of Canada…….in Iowa. Humanity is everywhere.
I’m back to commuting to and from work. We have a van and in the evening, to cover the 15km from the airport to the hotel, it’s taken as long as 2.5 hours. Pure congestion. There’s a hierarchy on the roads too, and being a mid-sized van, I’m glad we’re in the middle. You see, it starts off with the trucks…..and these babies are TRUCKS. They’re big-ass Bedfords from the 1960’s, and they all have cool customized paint jobs and they burn a lot of dirty diesel. Next are the buses. They’re in the same weight class as the Bedfords only because they’re packed full of people all the time. Then there is our class….cars and vans. It doesn’t sound like much, but we’re actually in a good place on the road because next you have the “baby taxis”. Those little bastards are like house flies. They buzz in and out of everywhere but you can’t hit ’em. Next are the rickshaws. These guys are basically the bottom of the barrel on the road but they still take pride in pimpin out their rides. I can’t mention the road hierarchy without giving special mention to the masses that dodge in and out of the traffic, and they seem comfortable with the fact that they are moving targets. They range in age from 5 to 75. And to top it off everyone has a horn, and I’m convinced they yak at each other using these horns in some kind of messed up morris code arrangement.
I’m exhausted by the time I get home, and I’m just chillin’ in the back watching the world go by…….. and a busy world it is.
