Home Archive by category "South/East Asia" (Page 2)

Category: South/East Asia

Buffalo arse on the road to enlightenment.

Buffalo arse formed the most vivid memory of the traffic jam. It was this that was responsible for much of the predicament, along with the dozens of dark, dusty grey creatures they were attached to of course, ambling at a stately plod over the dusty, potholed tarmac on the outskirts of Larkana, Pakistan. Sitting in the back of an auto rickshaw conveniently gives you an almost perfect eye level view of this feature of the animal. When confronted with such…

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Raving in the name of Allah

The first, deep resonant boom of the bass drum echoed around the courtyard, the cue for the men to begin to stand. The second boom commenced a slow deliberate beat, soon all were standing, swaying, letting the rhythm gently guide their motion. Little by little the beat picked up pace, the dancers responding to its energy until it morphed into an insistent roll and the movements became more agitated. The beat dropped into the breakdown, the piercing, discordant wail of…

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A week in Assam, India

The village of Charenghi Pathar has nothing to appeal to the average tourist. So effective was this deterrent that I turned out to be the first one they had ever seen there. Although its lack of appeal was motivation enough for me to want to see it, the same could be said of many places, so it was no random event that brought me there. It was the birth place of my dear friend J who had his first opportunity…

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Totally wired in Dhaka

Chaotic tangles of cables nesting above the pavements may be a common sight in South Asia but the Bangladesh capital Dhaka is certainly a prime contender for the International Excessive Wiring Award. For us tourists it can be treated as the light entertainment of an indigenous art form but for the residents it is more of a sociopolitical statement that goes to the heart of everyday life, a visible reminder of what’s wrong with the country. The imagery is not…

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Bangladesh: Let’s not hear it for the girls

Being the kind of guy that my government would denounce as a lefty liberal wuss I would normally praise with great fanfare a country that had managed to produce, not only a female prime minister but a leader of the opposition as well and particularly so when it’s a Muslim country. But, alas in this case, the two ladies have decided to take on all the characteristics that male leaders the world over have excelled in to ensure that they…

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How to waste $56 million in Bangladesh

$56 million is a lot of money, unless  you are a Saudi prince or a US arms manufacturer but, in a country as poor as Bangladesh, it’s a shit load of cash which could be spent on no end of worthy projects to help those suffering from poverty. But rich film-maker Ahsanullah Moni had a better idea to help the poor, he would build them a replica of the Taj Mahal. No doubt the masses were dancing in the streets…

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A tale of two beaches in Chittagong

The pair of young men gunned the throttles of their bright, scarlet motorbikes as they hurtled past me over the damp, beach sand. Cool kids in black and shades. Their girlfriends behind, clinging tightly, their black burqas streaming with a wild flutter in their wake. Back they raced to the throng of well to do families, having found the kind of seclusion at the far end of the beach that young couples seek everywhere, away from protective families. Just north of…

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The joys of Bengali haystacks

A shocking anomaly in the art world surely has to be the tragically overlooked form of the hay stack, where euro-centric critics have dismissed it as an agricultural craft discipline, devoid of true creative flair. If they only left their ivory towers long enough to travel to Bangladesh or eastern India they would surely realise the error in their ways and recognise that Bengali culture has devoted centuries to the perfection of hay stack construction as a higher art form….

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Big up Bangladesh

Just what are the fickle demands of tourists that relegate Bangladesh to the bottom of the tourist league in South Asia? People tend to respond to negative news but the country’s media profile has sunk into such a quiet backwater, that even the bad news, so demanded of media outlets, has been left on the international news margins, unlike India, Myanmar and Thailand, with the inherent risk to tourist numbers. In fact it’s never had enough of a profile to…

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Soul of the city: the sound of Dhaka

I woke to the sound of roar, a roar without end. What was it? A protest? A soccer match? Having arrived in  the early hours, when all was quiet in central Dhaka at the edge of the old city, I had only one option: to get out and explore. Besides, not being a botanist the lure of staying in and studying the abundant insect life crawling around my room didn’t seem quite so appealing. I soon located the source of…

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