Day 3

July 31st, 2009
3rd Day in Dhaka

After an emotionally draining experience yesterday, I had a good night's sleep and felt well rested the next day. We took a bus trip to old Dhaka today. Since it's Friday, the Muslim holy day, the roads were amazingly clear until we got to old Dhaka. Our tour guide was one of the veteran teachers from yesterday who was nice enough to show us around. Old Dhaka is located right next to the Ganges and there are lots of fruit markets with amazing looking pineapples, mangos, and bananas. There were also lots of shops and stores selling leather goods and stack and stack of textiles. The fruit stands looked like hollowed out warehouses; they sold there fruit out of an opening right on the street but then store stretched back forever and had mountains of fruit in it. The road we took was very crowded and muddy and we went inch by inch. This was considered "no traffic" however and I dread to see what it's like on any other day of the week.
The Ganges even had a lot of traffic on it; small skiffs as well as large ocean liners. In Old Dhaka you could see architecture from the colonial days of India; big square houses with big shutters. Driving through this part of town was interesting and different. We would have people come right up to the window and stare at us but they weren't begging and they weren't being rude, they were just curious. People were very friendly and would smile and wave at us and take pictures of our bus on their camera phones if they had one. We felt like celebrities. One boy followed our bus for about 45 minutes. These people also liked having their picture taken by you and would often pose. People were also very nice to us and with our big bus it was hard to get through the narrow, muddy street. We had several guys who would hold up the rick shaw and cart traffic and direct our bus driver so he could get through. They were incredibly helpful and friendly to us strange white people.
We drove through the old Armenian section of the city and stopped at an Armenian church and graveyard constructed in the 1700's. You enter through a simple but beautiful gate and the gravestones are all cement ones either embedded into the walkway or slightly raised. They had beautiful inscriptions and designs. The inside of the church had simple pews and an alter. There aren't really any Armenians that live here anymore and the keeper of the church is one of the last and he is very old. After we had been there for about 15 minutes a crowd began to form at the gate. When we got back onto the buses there was a crowd of about 20 men just starring at us. Apartments surrounded the enclosed graveyard and you could see lots of kids on their balconies waving at us. We are an unusual sight here and we stick out quite a bit.
We passed several road side markets with huge green plants, leather goods, baskets, purses, etc. that my roommate and I made a mental note to come back to. In our area of Dhaka things can pricier, although, they're still not expensive, because they know a lot of wealthier people live there. We visited the University of Dhaka, which is a big red building with huge towers and arches.