We had been looking into a car rental (it comes with a driver- we couldn’t possibly drive ourselves on these crazy roads) to drive down to Cox Bazaar, stay at a place called the Mermaid Eco-Resort for a few days, and then drive home. After asking around a bit, we got a price that seemed ok. Then Sam was talking to Taborok about it and he said he’d ask his friend who lived near him if it was a good price. Well, Taborok’s friend was about 7,000 taka cheaper – which is a hundred bucks – so we booked it through him instead. We actually even ended up getting a little microbus instead of a passenger car which was great since it ended up being quite a long journey. All in all, it took about ten hours of driving (with no stop for lunch at all – straight through other than a few gas breaks) and while it was fun to watch the countryside for the first several hours, the luster began to fade as more and more time went on.
In addition, this was no Sunday drive through the country (although, technically speaking, it was in fact a Sunday drive through the country…). The Dhaka-Chittagong highway can only be described as a crazy-freakout-hell-ride (name that reference and we’ll give you a cookie!). The road is a two lane, ultra-fast moving road cluttered with every kind of vehicle travelling at every kind of speed imaginable. The buses are particularly scary: they pass the slow vehicles in their lane by barreling forward in the lane for opposing traffic (aka right toward us!) and at the very last second, just as you’ve almost come to terms with the fact that this is the moment of your final departure, they switch over to their own lane. In fact, all types of vehicles pass this way, to the point that it is easy to forget which side of the road which direction is even driving on. All of this occurs, repeatedly, at very high speeds and accompanied by endless honking.
At some point, we all just had to resign ourselves to the fact that being tense about it wasn’t going to make any difference in the final analysis, and we had to just take on the ‘what will be, will be’ attitude. We were once again reminded that Bangladesh seems to have a special way of highlighting the lack of control in life we actually have, and while as uncomfortable/painful/terrifying as it can be, it is a lesson that can’t really be learned enough in life.
One part of the drive that was fun was through the outskirts of Chittagong city where the salvaged materials from the ship breaking get sold. Sam and Jon (and now Jon’s dad) had read about this section of road in a book about the ship breaking industry, which is a major industry in Chittagong. Massive tankers to little ferries are broken down and scrapped on the beaches of Chittagong. The metal from the ships is melted down and sold as rebar to build the rapidly growing cities of Bangladesh. Everything else from the ships are salvaged and sold, mostly on this stretch of road. The road is a crazy assortment of all the things tankers have on them. There are shops and yards selling furniture, sinks, toilets, staircases, life jackets, lifeboats and hundreds of various sized, colored and shaped tanks for holding who knows what. Basically, along the side of the Dhaka-Chittagong highway are deconstructed ships in piles for sale at piece rate. Atticus suggested that we could buy one thing from each place and reconstruct a ship - of course, all he really wanted is one of the lifeboats. Here are some photos from the area. The first one of the lifeboats is by Barry, that is why it is much better than the others.
And then of course, there were also good old fashioned ‘deshi sights like a downed-cow on the road as we crossed over an enormous bridge. This just illustrates the diversity of traffic on the roads.
So, by the time we arrived at the Mermaid eco-resort, we were exhausted, and hungry, and ready for some pampering. Well, this isn’t that kind of resort. You’ve all seen the last entry with out green coconut welcome drinks, which was supposed to get us in the tropical mood (although these are for sale on carts on every street in Dhaka.) The place is a somewhat new project from the makers of a well known and well reviewed café (Mermaid Café) but it clearly has some kinks to work out. First, while we knew that our “villa” (which was just a big version of the eco-cabins) was supposed to be open to nature- it was more than expected. The upstairs bed was in a loft type set-up that was basically visible and open to the outside from all sides. While the feeling is nice in theory- it isn’t really practical when you need to put your jammies on. We think some aspects of the resort were nice, and they’ve done a good job on the aesthetics, but as of right now, they are lacking in some of the more practical realms.
In addition to the lack of solid walls, the entire place was also built with bizarrely low ceilings, and weird, even lower, protrusions at random places. Within hours, Sam had hit head at least a dozen times, and Jon and Barry were close behind. Even Atticus hit his head a few times. Later, we saw another guest hit his head at the breakfast area and actually cut his forehead on the low bamboo roof!
Here are some shots of our villa.
Shortly after arriving we ate a little bit and all fell into a happy slumber. The next day is the next blog entry. Remember how many posts it took to describe our Srimangal trip? Well, get ready; we did a lot of stuff.
Wow. What an adventure!
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