What Is Bangladesh?
When we talk about our travels in Bangladesh, the mere mention often evokes a reaction that says, “Bangladesh? What is it? I’m curious.”
For good reason.
People don’t know what to make of Bangladesh. They know the name, but often only because they’ve caught a short blip news cycle item like a natural disaster.
Here, we take a different tack, a cue from the game show Jeopardy to introduce another side of Bangladesh.
Country where ordinary visitors are most likely to feel like rock stars
Feeling under-appreciated? Starved of attention? Then Bangladesh is the place for you.
How to feel like a rock star? Easy. Just to go Bangladesh and walk down the street. Then stop for a more than a few seconds.
And bam! You are the main attraction. Oh, and the questions Bangladeshis ask.
During our five-week visit to Bangladesh, we ran into a grand total of five tourists. One a week by our count.
Home to the city with the world’s worst traffic
“Dhaka has the worst traffic in the world,” our friend told us definitively when we first arrived.
“Worse than Bangkok?” we asked, memories of jams dislodged.
“No comparison.”
We figured he’d gone soft. Then we tried to get across Dhaka during a low traffic holiday.
It’s difficult to describe traffic in Dhaka in any way that does it justice — other than to say that there are few rules and even less sense of “public good.” Bicycle rickshaws, men pulling carts, auto rickshaws, cars of every size, and wheezing buses all share the same clogged space. There is no apparent organization. But of course there is, it’s just that millions are moving at once, desperate to get through, trying to push ahead. Add to that incessant honking, lurching, and brake-riding, you just might feel like your destination doesn’t exist in this lifetime.
Each time we returned from a cross-Dhaka trip, hard liquor was in order. And we swore we’d never leave the house again.
Birthplace of Microfinance
Occasional darling topic of the development world, the concept of microfinance was not dreamed up by Economics and Development PhDs at Harvard or Yale. Instead (and very arguably) it was hatched in the mid-1970s in the villages outside of the town of Chittagong, Bangladesh when Muhammad Yunus began experimenting by providing small loans (originally with his own money) to rural women.
Why Bangladesh for microfinance? Need. Necessity is often the mother of invention.
Most Densely Populated Country in the World
We know, you’ve heard this from us before. But 150 million people tucked into a country the size of Wisconsin. The magnitude of this reality bears repeating, often.
Put it another way, given the same population density, India would have over three billion people. And the United States? Over 11 billion.
Take a few turns of the ol’ wheels for this to sink in.
What Is Bangladesh? | Uncornered Market
99% world population dont know about Bangladesh so they try to gain attention of their illegal inmates' Master by trolling on forums like this