Solutions

It has taken about two weeks of living in Dhaka to realize that you have to be creative to find things to do in Dhaka. Things must be pretty bad when someone like me notices a lack of nightlife. It is worth noting that we are on another level from the Hoboken-has-no-nightlife kinds of complaints. To buy alcohol at the liquor stores in Dhaka, you have to present your foreign passport. That's right, no liquor for bangladeshi citizens. There are bars in this country, but only at some of the high-end hotels and the international clubs. I've only made brief visits to the American and Australian clubs, and I haven't been to any of the bars yet but it's not lookin' good, people.

Now begins the search for things to do. Since Sara, Beckley and I are younger than the other employees at the school, I remain hopeful that we may not be out of luck yet. With few exceptions, we are also noticeably younger than all of the ex-patriates in Dhaka, who are mostly employed by Embassies, Businesses and NGO's. The international clubs seem like a welcome luxury (you can play Tennis, hire a hitting partner, and a ball boy for under $4 an hour) but if I work at an American school all day and then hop on over to the American club, why am I living in Dhaka? It's time to start exploring!

Well today Beckley and I went on a Hash run, which is this international organization of people who run and drink. Nope, not water. We met in front of the Parliament building, that Louis Khan building that people seem to know about.


Here was our meeting spot, before most of the people arrived. There are separate, simultaneous running and walking hashes, so all sorts of people show up.


I didn't bring my camera on the run, since I am as fast as a bullet and I don't like blurry pictures. We ran through Dhanmondi, which is a neighborhood close to the heart of downtown Dhaka. For Dhaka standards, it was a nice neighborhood, since it had some small lakes and walking paths. I don't ever see tourists in Bangladesh, and pretty much only foreigner sightings I have are in the Diplomatic Zone, where I live. Thirty foreigners running through downtown Dhaka was apparently an event worthy of pictures for the Bangladeshi kids with cameraphones. Not a moment went by without Bangladeshis looking over double-taking as they saw our human caravan jog leisurely on by. I'm not going to pretend that it isn't incredibly entertaining to be a spectacle literally everywhere you go. Speaking of the diplomatic zone, the US and Australian Ambassadors were along for the run, which probably means that I can't say anything else about what transpired. After running, we congregated on the roof of a five-story commercial building downtown.


There was a nice view from the building! I did all my picture taking too early, but dusk was gorgeous from the roof.



As dusk approached, everyone caught up and people were forced to drink beer for all sorts of silly reasons, which is the obvious thing to do after you run for 90 minutes. We found something to do in Dhaka!