We will be out of Internet contact for the next few days. Tomorrow morning we travel 3 hours by bus, then 4 by sea to St. Martin, a tiny flyspeck off the southern coast of Bangladesh.
Cox's Bazar is huge and astoundingly clean. I don't know how they do it, but the B'Deshis have done a great job preserving this stretch of coastline. It is just about at a midpoint of turning into a monstrous Las Vegas/Panama City Beach scene, but for me it is almost perfect. People are still everywhere. On the beach, we are almost always surrounded by troups of kids singing their hello-goodbye songs.... "Hello? Hello? Hello? Goodbye! Bye-bye!"
They say that this is the longest and widest stretch of Beach in the world. Sure - I'm not in the mood to measure. It is really fricking long. Unlike the beaches in Orissa, we saw no-one discharging onto the sand. Discharge is now M's favorite word. It really is astounding at the lack of public pissing in Bangladesh.
We've seen pleas from Bangladesh to the rest of the world: "Look at me! Look at me!" There is a noticeable air of neglect compared to it's neighbor, big-brother India, but things are booming here. Like we saw in Chittagong, there's and abundance of butt-ugly skyscraping hotels of glass and cement. It reminds me of Hotlanta in the early 90's with bamboo scaffolding and construction sites everywhere.
I am the king of speculation without actually knowing what I'm talking about, so take this with salt... This growth is immense, I doubt the governments ability to shape it, let alone, monitor it. With the development at such a clip, I guesstimate that the buildings are not quite earthquakeproof. We'll just have to wait and see what happens. NGO's are more common following social services, not building codes. Building codes and zoning in India are often seen as set-up lines to big jokes. I hope that they can get it right here.
Apparently, the ecotourism bug is doing quite nicely in St. Martin, so I'll give y'all updates. Until then, you will just have to explore the newly linked:
Billmon's Whisky Bar and Joanna Kirkpatrick's fucking incredible Ricksha Arts of Bangladesh Page.
Have yerselves a merry little christmas.
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Jamie and Michele have rallied against all popular wisdom and good advice (again). Their visit to the indian continent should provide you with hours (if not minutes) of reading pleasures. Please sit back and relax as they selectively share their entanglements and stories of woe.
