What a mood board!: In Dhaka by car

(The hotel on the right hand side.)

Today I decided to post a couple of pictures on my visit to Dhaka, Bangladesh, that happened in early 2011. It was probably the poorest country I’ve ever been I always say. These pictures were taken by my dear friend Heleen who fortunately flew there with me. She carried the camera with her the whole time and was shooting the place, in and out of the car. We paid around 30 dollars to the staff of the hotel to drive us to the markets. The man drove us there and waited outside with the car hardly parked in the busy and noisy streets of Dhaka. At the market we were the only non-Asian I could see walking through the hot hallways of the brassy clothing place. The items in general would cost less than 3 Euros a piece! Still we didn’t do that much shopping as we couldn’t find anything suitable or nice! Unless the 1 Euro belt that I remember hearing Heleen say “Make it two!” when I was ordering! Still there were bookshops where we found a couple of interesting things. The books were in English and Bengali. I bought a map of the world so I could pin it with all the places I had been to and Heleen bought a few canvas to start doing some painting that I’m not sure that she has ever done!

This was quite a memorable tour. We had the children running after the car selling pop-corn for money. Most of the kids are playing at the streets and spend most the time on their own or working hard indoors. Mothers often abandon their children because they can’t keep them. And then these kids start working since very early when they’re around 5 years of age (or even less), because someone finds them at the streets and takes them to work in clothing industry.

We took around 2 hours on the way back to the hotel, the weather was hot and humid and we were sweating like crazy. The traffic is insane, the cars and vans are old and almost broken!