I must take back my assessment of urban public transport in Bangaldesh. Up until yesterday I had still not ridden the public bus system, it just seemed too chaotic to me. Often you see people jumping on and off busses while they are still moving. However yesterday we bumped into a group of interns from Germany who had a Bengali guide showing them around.
The guide was going to take them back to the hotel on the public bus, so we thought it might be fun too. We took rickshaws to the nearest bus station and then waited for the Germans to catch up to us. Several times though people came up and asked us where we wanted to go, and we could have easily caught our own bus.
It was a fun experience which I wish I had earlier in my trip. The bus had extremely tiny seats, and took even longer than usual but on the whole the ride was nice and relaxing. To get from old Dhaka back to our hotel in the suburbs it took about an hour. The same ride in a tuk tuk (auto rickshaw) would have taken about 45 minutes depending on how motivated your driver was and his sense of direction.
I now know the names of several of the bus stops in central Dhaka, so I can hopefully find busses that go to them from our hotel! Unfortunately I will likely not get much chance to use my bus skills since I am going to be away for the rest of my trip pretty much.
It is confirmed, we are going to a Grameen Fund "Booth" from Tuesday to Thursday. Ross, Melanie and I as well as an intern with Grameen Fund will be going to do a report and study their operations. Then Friday afternoon I am flying out to Kolkata and flying back early Tuesday morning!
Cheers,
Mike
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