Bricks, Banging and...Boats!

It is apparently construction/roadwork season in Dhaka. It definitely is in full swing all around us. Above us, the landlord is adding another apartment at roof level, which means there is constant banging and clanging from construction taking place just above our heads. After having spent most of the day inside yesterday, we went for a walk and decided to have a little treat at Mango café. As we sipped our banana frostys we all noticed that we felt particularly relaxed and relieved, for some reason. The banana frosty at Café Mango is pretty delicious, but this seemed exceptional. Then we put it together that the construction noise that has been ever present above us for the last week or two was gone, and that it might have been driving us a little more crazy than we thought!

In addition to work being done above us, all of the roads in DOHS (our neighborhood) are being redone. The process is quite interesting to watch. For one, it began with the arrival of tons of bricks and brick breakers. Then there were giant piles of bricks everywhere. Next came the men with pickaxes that tore the old roads up. It is exhausting to even watch. The combination of the usual piles of rebar and bricks for the regular building construction, the added bricks for the roads, and the torn up roads has basically made the whole area look like some sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland. They’ve gotten our road mostly torn up though, so we’re excited to see the next stage. Here are a few pictures of the situation.

So, for reasons mentioned before, spending the day at home hasn’t had the same sanctuary effect as it once had. The positive side is that it motivated us to get out of the house today and check out the special exhibit on traditional boats of Bangladesh that is at the national museum. Atticus is a big fan of boats and he was excited to see all the models. The exhibit was well done, although a bit more information would have been nice. It had excellent replicas of different types of boats and the different regional styles. You can’t take pictures inside the museum, but here is a shot of Atticus with a boat outside of the museum.

We also looked around other parts of the museum and Atticus particularly enjoyed the exhibits on birds (of course). It is a little embarrassing to admit we hadn’t taken him to the national museum yet – and we felt all the more guilty as we remembered watching him today that Atticus is surprisingly fond of museums. We didn’t try to tackle the whole thing (it is a big museum and has widely ranging levels of quality in the exhibits), but we spent a while there and afterwards we had an ice cream cone out front. (In a funny realization, Sam noticed that she has gotten an ice cream cone outside the museum every single time she has ever gone!)

So it was such a nice little outing today - there weren’t really even any bad traffic jams going to or from the place. It was almost like Dhaka had noticed that it was being a little rough on us with the heat, gas shortages, electricity shortages, water shortages, traffic jams, construction noises, etc… and we were wearing down a little, so today it gave us a nice easy break. Thanks Dhaka, we needed it!