Road 79, House 18 (Carolina), Apt. A5, Gulshan 2, Dhaka

We have moved out of the hotel, and into our apartment using a “camping set” from the embassy.

We looked round at an additional four apartments, but in the end chose to stay in the same place as Lon’s predecessor.  There is a known issue with noise from the building site “The Serenity” next door, but the other apartments had problems too, damp, mold, being on next to a busy bridge with constant horn tooting and pollution, having a kitchen with no work surfaces or really low ones etc

We enter via a lift, and charming door (the lens fogged up – it IS humid here!)

 

Then there is an entryway, there are 3 directions to choose – living room, what will be library but is currently dining / laptop area and passage

Right to the passage (the door is to the kitchen)

Straight to dining table

Left to living room where Lon may or may not be shooting zombies on an ipad

 

Living room

Here I stood in the arch between living / library and took the shots

passage

Entrance with large camouflaged fuse box

Kitchen

Off the kitchen by the sink is the laundry / servants quarters

Then off the kitchen behind the door is a storage area

kitchen from passage

kitchen facing door to passage

staff bathroom / shower

laundry area

staff room

storage room

Guest room – where we are camping, as the windows are smaller, and we have something to cover the windows with

Then the “family room” which is a big room between the hallway, which you go through to reach the main bedrooms

The one on the left, will be our bedroom

I prefer walking into a shower rather than clambering in and out of a bath on a daily basis

view from our bedroom to the "serenity" site

The balcony runs along the two bedrooms – and varies in width because of the pillars.  There is a bird that “lives” here, which makes odd noises – a bit like a toy version of a cats meow

still not used to the humidity

up road 79

middle

down road 79

 

The lake view clinic is at the end of the street, with a lake view

 Ah - defogged now, the balcony is 1- 1.5 m wide - it is big enough for a couple of chairs and a small table should we want to sit outside - there is certainly enough space for some potted herbs

The one on the right – designated the Master bedroom will be a dressing room / storage room

 

The lamps throughout – rather too bling for our tastes…we’ll see what we can do!

I hope you enjoyed the little tour.

We'll be camping like this for a few weeks yet as our container is expected to arrive at Chittagong Sea Port on 10-9-2012.

PS - we haven't got our internet connection organised yet - but are freeloading off a neighbour!

Dhaka!

We arrived yesterday morning early with all our luggage after a long uneventful flight from Amsterdam via Istanbul. If you ever get the chance to fly Business class with Turkish Airlines and need to change planes in Istanbul, plan at least two hours stopover time - the lounge is amazing! (sadly we had 20 mins).

One of Lon's colleagues kindly got up a stupid o'clock on his day off to come and collect us, and take us to our hotel, which we really appreciated.

Not much to tell about the journey from the airport, 6 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday = Sunday, so we didn't see the infamous traffic, but we did appreciate that it is humid.

view from 15th floor of the Westin

Dhaka City Corporation Market Gulshan-2

We fell into bed to catch up on some sleep, before having breakfast. The Westin where we are staying is a very upmarket international hotel. Facing choices of breakfast European, Continental, Oriental, Bangladeshi styles was hard - especially when somewhat jet-lagged. We look forward to testing more of what they have to offer.

walkthrough closet, rather than walk in

We didn't venture far out of our hotel - just a walk round the shopping center across the road and a bit of the market. One boy asked us for "small money - you are in hotel, you have big money" true indeed, but at that point all we did have was big money straight from the ATM.

We went into a supermarket to see what was available and at prices. There seems to be a great deal available, and I was surprised to see items from British supermarkets (Tesco, Waitrose, M&S), as well as dutch PCD peanut butter! but the prices are going to cause me headaches and heartaches - a packet of M&S shortbread cookies, 1000tk - my immediate thought was wow! good value (cfa 1000= 1.5 euro) but then the currency conversion hit me 1000tk = TEN EURO!! Luckily the more nutritious day to day stuff like eggs, chicken and rice were more reasonably priced, and the fruit and veg available at the market looks very tempting.


New address:

c/o L Zomer
Locatie 204 / HMA Dhaka
Postbus 12200
2500 DD Den Haag

or in English

c/o L Zomer
Location 204 / HMA Dhaka
Postbox 12200
2500 DD The Hague
The Netherlands

Telephone numbers

Lon: (+880) 01755645402
Hazel: +880) 01755645403

Moving

I think the pictures tell the story here.

Monday and Tuesday the Transdem guys packaged our household goods into 518 boxes and loaded it onto a container.  

We had along the way the usual nightmares of whether the boxed items would fit within our cubic meter allowance, and the occaisional cavalier handling of boxes marked fragile - but mostly Lon and I sat down and "supervised" or got up now and then to label the boxes being packed

Mostly there appeared to us to be orderly chaos, with guys being allocated a space to pack up, which they then stuck to.  Apart from a small handcart, there was no "machinery" and all the boxes were walked out to the container and hefted in manually, while the guys inside played a huge 3D game of tetris

 

Yesterday we said goodbye to the staff, and the house. Sad, but not as sad as leaving Kigali was.

We are staying in http://www.princessyenengalodge.com/en/accueil.html until we fly next Friday.  It's a small hotel, with more greenery and character than the one we stayed in on arrival, and we are lucky enough to have a suite with kitchenette, so we can make a sandwich at lunchtime, rather than eating out twice a day.

stormy weather

Yesterday we took the Prado (SOLD btw YAY) to the garage for a service, and in the afternoon went back to collect it

As you can see - the sky went ominous, and we could see that a dust storm was approaching - the question was - how fast?

the streets are emptying

Lon in the embassy car in front of me

It was quite impressive - I managed to just get home as the world was turning orange - it felt like the opening to the Wizard of Oz, Lon was driving back to the embassy, and had to put on his headlights as visibility got so bad.  When I got home, I asked Habibou if it would rain as well - she said no...just sand.  Ten minutes later it was bucketing down..

Unrelated - but seen on the way to pick up the car

yes we do transport panes of glass with our bare hands on the back of motorbikes

what do you mean Health and Safety??

The moving has started

---again, it feels like only yesterday we were packing out of Rwanda

we have a date set for 9th July when the fine gentlemen of Transdem will pack our belongings into boxes

however since our last moving experience is so fresh in our minds we are starting to pack up now, little by little ourselves. Last time, a lot of IKEA furniture didn’t get taken down and so took up more space than needed, and the IKEA furniture that was taken apart, wasn’t done that well.

We found this under a cupboard in the corner of the bedroom! Not the kind of roommate anyone wants

Our Congolese console table and some of our stools are getting shipped back to NL with one of Lon's colleagues, to go into storage - we have much more that we we'd like to store out of the humidity in Dhaka but we are happy to have at least this safely away.

Centre Delwende

Back at the end of May we took a lot of old clothes and shoes to a project that we had heard of, but not yet visited. In Ouaga expat slang they are known as the sorceresses, but the reality is much sadder.

Elder women are cast out of their villages penniless accused of witchcraft.

Out of respect we chose not to take photos as we were just dropping off a donation, but some more details and pictures can be found here and more information

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/may/14/burkina-faso-women-accused-witchcraft


http://crs-blog.org/delwende-in-burkina-faso/

I bought some of their hand carded and spun cotton yarn to knit with – wonderful, but tricky wind into smaller balls.

The orginal spun ball was like this…

 

And ended up like these – plus the big knotty mess on a stick!