Weekend in Dhaka

There is really not much to do in Dhaka. So what to do on a weekend?
Friday we slept till 1pm and then decided to do a boat tour in Old Dhaka. The lonely planet had said “if you only have time to one thing in Dhaka, take this boat tour. Hire a small boat for an hour go down the river”. This sounded very promising and so we did it. BUT instead of a chilled out boat cruise along the river this was 15 minutes spent on a garbage dump. The smell is indescribable, it is impossible to breath without using your jumper or so as a filter and to keep your nose shut. The water is black and the river banks simply consist of mountains of garbage. Thank you, lonely planet, it was a once in a life experience.

In order not to spend the entire Saturday in bed we went to Dhaka Zoo (pronouced djoo locally). The Lonely planet had described it as “despressing” and “not worth seeing”. So after yesterday’s experience – what was there to expect today? But we wanted to see a Royal Bengal Tiger (home in Bangladesh). So we went there, saw a couple of Tigers, lots of Indian Lions, etc. So it wasn’t all that bad…In fact us four were the real attraction in the Zoo (djoo) though, the locals stared at us more than at the animals. They have probably seen less Europeans than Tigers in their lives…

Since we are all tired of Asian food we found a way to cook pasta in our hotel room now. Take an electric kettle, add water, pasta and salt and press boil… works pretty well! Still we went for dinner to Bella Italia Restaurant… just because we cannot cook Pizza ourselves yet..