Going on 20

It might not sound like a big deal, but "The Americans WILL come" is turning 20. As in 20 thousand hits!

To say that I have been enjoying our adventures and sharing them with my gentle readers would be a gross understatement. Loving it would come a little bit closer!

Old dreams, new memories

Growing up in communist Romania, we did not have much other than dreams. The society was closed shut, very little was coming in and even less was going out. Our communication with the world behind the Iron curtain was limited to the Voice of America and Free Europe radio stations. Most of the time the transmission was jammed, and we had to guess the missing words.

My mom had a cousin who was lucky enough to work on a commercial ship. He would travel around the world, experience things we could only dream of. We were not very close, but once in a while we would see him. I so vividly remember listening to his stories. I was fascinated! We even got two gifts from the uncle. One was a coconut. We did not dare touch it for a long while, maybe because we were trying to prolong the magic. When we did it, it had already dried up. That was just fine, we still kept it in our living room, the same way an art collector would keep a precious painting. The second gift was a post card. A post card showing the Singapore skyline I still recall looking at it for minutes at a time, trying to observe any little detail. I am not sure what happened to the post card when I moved away. Maybe it got lost or ended up in some trash bin. But the picture of the skyline is still imprinted in my brain. Getting a chance to see it for myself now? How do I even describe the experience or the emotions? Priceless!!!

  

‘Tis the season to...throw a Molotov cocktail

Hartals are now in full swing in Dhaka and throughout the country. And not one or two a week. They now come packaged in the 60 hours variety. Before, people could still go back to "normal" after dusk. Not now, the hartal goes for day and night. With the national elections (un)planned for the beginning of next year, I’m sure this is just the beginning of hartalidays season.If there is one thing I learned during my stay here, is that Bangladeshi politics are quite complicated and confusing. You could spend years trying to fully understand how things work, or don’t work here. I am not sure if anyone really understands it.

How could a political system take Gandhi's concept of "passive resistance" and turn it into a terrorizing tool used against its own citizens it is beyond me. I get the concept of the opposition not being able to get its voice heard in Parliament and having to take to the streets to pressure the ruling government into recognizing their demands.

But to force the country to a screeching halt, to torch buses, cars, and tires, to restrict movement of people, to terrorize innocent citizens, what good does that do? There are fights between people who probably have no idea why they are beating each other up or killing each other. People often find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and get caught in the middle of violent demonstrations. Teachers and students are seriously impacted as exams have to be postponed or canceled. Mind you, this is in a country where the education system is struggling, to say the least.

I just wish that the political parties would realize that this is counterproductive and such an archaic political tool, that is reversing the progress this country struggled so hard to make with the help of international donors, aid workers and ordinary hard-working Bangladeshis.

To quote one of favorite characters: "That's all I have to say about that".

This bus is on fiiiiree!!!

This bus (not this girl) is on fire..... This is getting real! There is a bus on fire 100 meters from our home. I am assuming it is part of the newly declared 60 hours hartals! Needless to say that there is nothing that could excite Vlad more than this.

Buckle up, I am sure we have not seen the end of it!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J91ti_MpdHA

Comilla

It been a while, but I am trying to catch up. We took a day trip out to Comilla!

This is a city about an hour and a half from Dhaka, without traffic. With traffic, the story changes. Anyway, great opportunity to get out of the Mega City and see something on a nice weekend.

We went with the Munteanu's Travel, a group we hadn’t used before, because I had not discovered my hidden talents for organizing tours.

Big bus, big group.

One of reasons to visit Comilla is to see the Maynamati War Cemetery. It’s strange to think about WWII being fought here in Bangladesh, but the cemetery exists as a result of the Allied Forces being based in the region in an effort to stop the Japanese invading India via Burma during WW II. Interestingly there are even 24 Japanese buried here. 

We continued on to the ruins at Mainamati. The first stop was at an ancient Buddhist monastery called Salban Vihara. To me, the site is interesting because it shows the long and impressive influence of Buddhism in Bangladesh. Now Buddhists make up only a fraction of a percent of the population.

After all any  chance to escape the smog of Dhaka for the natural green of the countryside is a God given gift ! Just being on the road and watching the rural landscape is a nice change of pace.

Don't call me, I will call you

We are entering interesting times here in Bangladesh. We just hit an important date: October 25th. Political crisis is mounting over the next general election, which must be completed between October 25, 2013 and January 24, 2014. Prior to the incumbent changing the Constitution, it was necessary for the government in Dhaka to resign and form a non-party interim government to run the national election.

The Prime Minister Hasina has made crystal clear she would not go for a caretaker government and declared that the upcoming elections would be held under her Awami League led incumbent government as the Constitutional amendment had already scrapped the caretaker or interim government.

However, the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party maintains its demand that the government should bring a neutral government and that the present Parliament must be dissolved before the general election.

So what do we have here? A huge political impasse! Not to worry, Hasina promised she would call the opposition leader Khaleda Zia to settle the issue. For days everybody was holding their breath, hoping the ladies would get together and sort it out.

In the breaking news today: "Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called Opposition leader Khaleda Zia this afternoon to invite her to a dialogue over polls-time government but failed to reach. The prime minister called the opposition leader at her red phone at 1:15pm but could not talk with her as no-one picked up the phone for half an hour."

Shucks, we missed a huge opportunity. But, wait, there is another breaking news now:

"BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia will call Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at 6:00pm today".

So there is still hope after all! Once we get done phone tagging.

Angkor What? Angkor Wat!

As I am writing this back home in Dhaka, I am still thinking about Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat! To say that it was one of our most anticipated part of the trip would be an understatement. I was holding back the excitement since landing in Laos and being here finally is indeed a dream come true. Angkor Wat and the whole Angkor Complex is Shockingly Amazing! It is glorious. You feel dwarfed being in front of such a great work of genius but at the same time overjoyed as a witness to its grandeur and enduring magnificence. After all this is the Eighth man-made Wonder of the World.

At the height of Angkor Kingdom, the population was thought to have peaked at around 1 million. Angkor,until today,is still the largest religious building. It wasn't the first constructed but it is the mother of all temples in the Angkor Complex where thousands of temples are to be found.

 

 

 

The long, tiring day templed us out, but exhaustion was matched by a lingering sense of wonder at the magnificence we witnessed throughout.