I Blinked and I Missed It

After 4 weeks of contract negotiations, with the issues still not settled but on good faith, I decided to fly to Bangladesh. If only it had been that simple. First attempt resulted in my credit card being blocked for fraud prevention reasons, leaving me with no way to pay for the ticket. That was the first in a catalogue of errors.

One week later I find myself back in Thailand, after one failed trip to the airport to fly, followed by 4 days of more contract negotiations, followed by an actual departure and arrival. Upon arrival things went from bad to worse and the appropriate course of action seemed to be calling it a day - which I did - and after 2 days in Bangladesh flew back to Bangkok. So, that chapter is closed before it was written - and leaves this blog in a kind of limbo. It was, after all, the purpose of this blog to track my time in Bangladesh!!

Whilst I decide what to do with this blog, I will leave you with this, which is amongst a very small number of observations of Bangladesh, within my even smaller amount of time there.

Why is it that the less appealing a country is to enter, the harder it is to do so?

I have never in my travels come across a larger nor more complex immigration card (a fully fledged form) than the one needed to enter Bangladesh. Having to state the exact weight of gold you are carrying is quite straight forward for me, none. Ditto silver, gems and chickens. Detailed precisely on the form is what is permitted and from this what is not. For example, a 19" television is OK, 21" a definite no no.

One of the benefits of such bureaucracy is that it is so impractical that nobody ever bothers to check it fully. Not so in Bangladesh. One of the questions, and admittedly not an unusual or unfair one, was to state in which hotel I would be staying. Now here is the crux - I was not staying in a hotel, I would be staying in a guest house provided for me, the name or address of which I had no idea. To try and explain this on the form would have been impossible (the space reserved for each of your answers prohibited anything more than three letters), and to try and explain it to the immigration officials would certainly be a headache. What do you do in these situations? Lie of course. I have never been quizzed on this before; a believable hotel name is usually more than acceptable.

In actual fact, had I been more astute I would have been fine, but I tried too be to truthful. I had heard that other people I knew were staying in "The Manhattan Hotel", so that is what I put. The problem being is that I had made a mistake, and there is no "Manhattan Hotel" in Dhaka; a fact the immigration officials knew. I would have breezed through had I put "Sheraton" (always a good assumption), but that fact that I had put a hotel down which didn't exist was cause for great concern.

After being quizzed about this for a few moments, I realised the best way out of this was to lie a bit better. I successfully managed to convince them that the Manhattan was another name for the Sheraton - and as it sounds quite similar in Bengali (oh yes it does) - they were quite happy with this. In fact things started going much better after the mere mention of the word "Sheraton".

Naturally after they checked my baggage for 21" televisions, I was free to enter... and then leave again two days later.