Eid Day as a tourist

Friday is when the Christians in Dhaka go to church. Jerry & Ethel invited Carolyn and I to join them at an Assembly of God church. The usually overflowing streets and sidewalks were empty and the shops closed. Despite having no idea how to get to the church and getting slightly lost, we were still on time due to the lack of traffic and the nice taxi driver. The service was weird because it was exactly like church at Five Forks or Bluffton chapel. The attendees and worship team were mainly foreigners, we sang the same songs that we sang in the U.S. before I left, and the preacher had a nice outline printed in the bulletin. The main difference was that the service lasted two and half hours and we had tea afterwards. It was like reverse culture shock, but in a nice way.

Jerry, Ethel, Carolyn, and I determined to visit Old Dhaka and the Pink Palace. We had our Lonely Planet tour book, and quickly found some rickshaws wallahs who probably had a feeling that it was going to be a very good Eid. (A good tip when traveling is that just because the tour book says “Old Dhaka” and “Pink Palace” doesn’t mean that the locals know what that is. “Old Dhaka” and “Pink Palace” are not Bangla words.) In spite of our lack of knowledge about tour books, after talking to half a dozen people and a policeman, we found the pink place. And we escaped the anger of the rickshaw wallahs only by giving them each as much money as it takes for a three hour bus ride. The pink palace was closed, which we expected on the biggest holiday of the year. We wandered down to the river, and I convinced Jerry and Ethel to go on a boat ride. I had done this with Philip when I first arrived in Dhaka, so I knew where to find the boatmen. Unfortunately, I think I scared my country representatives in the process – they weren’t really sure where I was taking them. I just went down by the river and asked the boatmen to take us on a thirty minute trip. Then the boatman ignored me he saw Jerry and finished bargaining with him because he is a man. The boat ride was nice as we were away from the crowds and there was a nice breeze on the river.

Jerry and Ethel left us, and Carolyn and I were free to enjoy a mela (fair) that we happened upon in Old Dhaka. I corrupted Carolyn by buying her some delicious spicy food from a roadside stand for lunch (but we didn’t get sick!). We bought some sweets and found a rickshaw to take us to Hindu Street (not its Bangla name, which may explain why we didn’t find it) in another part of Old Dhaka. I don’t know where the rickshaw wallah was planning on taking us, but when we were almost to the airport – which is in north Dhaka and Old Dhaka is in the south – we decided that we better stop or we would have another massive fare to pay. As we paid the rickshaw wallah a fraction of what we had paid earlier to get to the pink palace, the rickshaw wallah said that he was “happy” and that is why he didn’t charge more.

On our way back to the guesthouse Carolyn and I saw a lots of people around the Parliament buildings, which is usually closed to the public. We joined the throngs of people showing off their new Eid outfits (literally – there really wasn’t anything going on). When Carolyn and I spotted some people on the steps of Parliament taking pictures, we decided to submerge ourselves in the role of tourist. It wasn’t like everyone wasn’t staring at us already (I was surprised to find that even in Dhaka we were gawked at). I walked up to a guard with a big gun, gave him a bigger smile, and asked if we could take pictures on the steps of Parliament. He said yes, so we each mounted the steps and took each other’s pictures like the perfect tourist. The only flaw in our performance was that a rather large crowd gathered to continue their gawking. Hundreds, maybe thousands watched us. As we were exiting, the ever present children beggars followed us. Since we are foreigners we obviously have a lot of money, these children touched us and walked so close to us that we couldn’t walk in a straight line. We would lose them but soon more would come. That ended our walk around Parliament.