Hello world, Well I have returned from my Malaysian adventure and let's just say that it did not go as planned - but who is really surprised about that? NOT ME. haha I have really grown as a person this summer because being someone who loves planning and organization my patience and flexibility has been tested countless times. Whether it is work, life, transportation or general communication... nothing seems to be easy in these parts. So, it began when myself, Jess and Scott headed to the Dhaka airport to head to Kuala Lumpur. Their return flight had been canceled because of the volcano eruption in Indonesia (they were re-routing flights) so they were told to go to the Air Asia office at the airport -- CLOSED. They were told to just go to the one in Kuala Lumpur airport to buy a return ticket.. hopefully they are open and are able to get back to Dhaka *fingers crossed*. The airport is HUGE and we walk around to go find their tiket kounter (no misspelling) and they get their return tickets, WOOHOO. Find somewhere to eat breakfast and get some local currency, ringgit (RM/MYR). At this point it is about 8:30am and we are ready to leave for the city. A very convenient, albeit somewhat expensive, train takes us 28min to the center of Kuala Lumpur. Now comes the hard part... finding our hostel based on a poorly made map downloaded from their site. Very few landmarks as reference and about 100 streets are missing on it. After about an hour of walking in circles we FINALLY found it... the container hotel. It was EPIC... I love hostels like this. We couldn't check-in yet so we stored our bags there and went to find our way to the Batu Caves. Again, the transportation is incredible in KL and so we hopped onto a monorel (again, no misspelling) and about 20 minutes later we arrived at the Batu Caves. As we were ready to enter you walk by locals selling crafts and some snacks and I see a sign that says "Monkey Food"... so obviously I go there and buy a banana bunch. Right as we enter the gate a crowd of monkeys sees me with bananas and bum rushes down from the side of the mountain... clearly they know the drill. I was picking one banana off at a time and feeding to them -- they would jump up to grab them and even hold my leg to let me know they were there for more food. So, while shooting video of this I told Jess to hand me my camera so I could get a shot of one of the monkeys there with a baby attached... in leaning over to grab my camera, one of the bastard monkeys jumped up and grabbed the whole bunch of bananas I had left! hahahahaha, I was laughing my a#$ off! He knew exactly what he was doing. So then we headed for the painted statue part of the cave and walked a total of 200 steep steps that were treacherous! The paintings and carvings were incredible and I still need to look up the history behind them. Then we were off to the main part of the caves... a whopping 300 stairs up to the caverns. Painted stairs and more monkeys to harass you. The caverns were incredible, though a little touristy for my liking. Monkeys were playing and scaling the walls all while still harassing anyone with a bag that might have food... seriously hilarious. They were even pestering those that came to pray in the mosque -- very peaceful. So after looking around we went back down the 300 steps and on the way down a woman with her two children had a bag with some bananas, soda and water. Well the monkeys decided they wanted it and to top it off the kids and woman were incredibly afraid of the monkeys so she dropped the bag and ran screaming with her kids -- sadly I could not help but laugh so hard I almost peed. One of the monkeys pulled a frat boy move and started to shotgun the red soda -- looked like he had just murdered a small child and drank the blood... absolutely crying with laughter at this point. Scott was nicer than me and Jess and got the bag, with only waters left at this point, to give back to the frightened family. We then headed back to the city to grab food -- found a delicious little Thai place then went to the hostel to check-in. After showers we headed to this helipad turned bar ... yes it is literally a bar on top of a building with no walls -- SO SICK. It was a perfect place to see the sunset over the entire city with the Petronas Towers (remember Entrapment?) lingering in the distance. After a few drinks we just started walking around to find another place to hangout and ran into a friendly local Australian that got us to the awesome downtown area. Landing at his favorite bar, who to better serve us than some Bangladeshis?! They were THRILLED to hear that we had been living there all summer and working, they were really great. Finally around midnight we got back to the hostel and passed on out. I got up at the butt crack of dawn so that I could attend a crossfit class before we went hiking. The gym was in a large mall complex and to my surprise, all men! So different from my local gym in Gainesville. It was so nice to be back in a real gym and let's just say I am in for a rude awakening when I get back to the US... that workout KILLED me - puking would've been a nice relief haha. Arrived back at the hotel and then we left to find breakfast and then it was off to hike Bukit Tabur aka the dragon's backbone. My research told me that the hike is very difficult and some deaths have occurred... same as the Grand Canyon so what the hell, let's go! Scott and Jess did not share my enthusiasm so when another couple was ending the hike as we were starting and said how difficult it was they were like... NOPE. I had the brilliant idea -- let's just do it backwards .. so we did! It was still quite a hard hike and by the time I got up and took pictures the rain was rolling in and sadly by the time the other two got up the rain was pouring and view ruined!!! Going back down was a soggy adventure. Another 20 min walk until we found a teksi and he didn't care that we were soaking... though he sprayed air freshner the second we got out of the car. Another shower later we left to go to the fish spa... yes this is where you stick your feet into a fish tank and they eat all the dead skin off. It was such a bizarre feeling, can't really say I am a fan. You eventually get used to it but still very very weird feeling. Some walking around and shopping for shorts for my later trip (didn't pack any) and eating at a bomb latin american restaurant we headed to find another happening bar. Found a few, all of them have ladies night like every night so drinking was pretty cheap. There were Eid fireworks going off everywhere and it was a fun last night with my friends. Last time I saw Scott as he left for the states early this morning... such a great person. The next morning I left to catch a bus for Taman Negara. It was fairly packed but thought it was just that time of the week for people to head out. 3 hours later we get to the Tembeling Jetty which was lines galore to get your activities booked and get permit paperwork for the jungle. No one told me how busy it was in the jungle village... so I boarded the boat for the 3 hr journey to the jungle. Upon arrival I began walking around to hostels searching for a room and one after another.. booked, booked, booked. After about the 7th one I ran into a Swiss girl backpacking alone as well - Somaya. We decided to team up and keep looking. 6 more later (combined with the ones she had already looked at) -- no luck. We just started laughing at one point because we both have had too many experiences where things just don't work out. We decided to make the most out of it and got one of the hostel's to store our bigger bag and took off for our Night Jungle Walk tour. IT WAS A MAD HOUSE.. there were people jams on the trails and it was so freaking crowded. We were both over it so we took out our map and headed down a trail along the river. We stopped to swim for a bit, it is about 11pm at this point, and it was so peaceful and beautiful with no lights around. We thought about skinny dipping but then I thought about that little fish that swims up your hooha when you pee and passed haha. Once we got out we decided to trek to one of the jungle hides they have to view wildlife. 2 hours or so hiking in the jungle in the middle of the night we reach this hide that actually had wooden bed frames and a kitchen (didn't do us much good). So we settled in and got a few hours shut eye in our clothes using bags for our pillows. However, we woke up in the early hours of the morning because somehow the jungle went from suffocatingly hot to freezing!!! We decided we should just hike around some more to warm up -- this is about 4-5am. Go another hour or so and then take another trail back to the jetty so that we can go to the travel office once it opens. Ask if there are any openings anywhere and they said they didn't know of any -- so 9 am the next morning we were back on the boat for the 3 hrs back to the jetty and 3 hours bus to KL. She decided to move her flight up early going to Japan so I said what the hell I will go to the airport with you, another 30 min on train. I checked my airline for an earlier flight and no luck so just bought another return ticket hoping I will get a refund for my other. I would have spent more money than the ticket staying in the city for 2 more days so it was worth it. So 4 hours later I was back in Dhaka early... but weirdly missed it and am happy to be back. My jungle adventure was not what I expected but I would take that crazy 16 hours over the 2 days I would have spent there in a crowded, touristy nightmare. All in all I had a blast and it was the first time I have traveled with friends (at least for a part of my trip) and my god is that a blast. Traveling alone has its perks and I definitely recommend that you do it at some point, but it was too much fun having Scott and Jess there with me -- I made some pretty incredible friends this summer.
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Such a deep title for fieldwork you might say... and you are right. This blog post is a result of quite a bizarre set of events that transpired today.
So I want to preface this post with the fact that I have not felt unsafe at all since I have been in Bangladesh... minus the very regular near death on rickshaw experiences. I have even been going out on my own after 10pm (I don't even do that in Gainesville haha) and have felt very safe. However, today after getting home from the field all of us were sitting at the dining table doing work and they were chatting (in Bangla of course) and I thought I heard "tranny" so I asked what they were talking about. They had heard that the transgenders were in our area looking for money. I thought.. "oh, that is so cool that the trans population here is so charitable". Oh no... I was way off base, guess I forgot where I was for a minute. To give this some background, I have to say that due to the predominantly Muslim culture in Bangladesh anyone out of the "normal" (not my words) are not accepted. This includes transgenders and gays... because of the shunning they cannot find jobs. I am not saying this gives them an excuse for their actions, I couldn't even tell you my opinion at this point. The guys told me that if there are children in the house they will grab them and hold them until the family does what they say and give them money -- if not they will take the children and do "not socially acceptable" things to them and to the parents. They are "not shy" so they will grab at the men and be forceful as well. This is a problem not even the cops address because they are "not shy". This paints the transgender community here very badly... they are accepted only because they are feared. OKAY, so about an hour after they told this story, Hossain (one of the guys on my team) started yelling something and two others got up very quickly and ran to lock all the locks on the door. They told me to turn my music off and the other guys shut the balcony door of the front room. Sure enough the transgenders that they heard were around found out that a foreigner was staying in our apt building. It was not hard to find ours since we have about 9 pairs of shoes outside of our front door. It started with loud banging on the door, jiggling the door handle , clapping, and yelling in Bangla to let them in. We thought it might die down but they kept being very forceful at our door so Al-Amin started talking with them through the door (no idea what was said) and they were threatening to make a mess (poop and pee kind of mess) in our doorway if we did not let them in. Finally Emran said they should just open it and negotiate with them (everything here is negotiable). As always I go hide... my room is in the very back of the house but you can see in my door from the main room. I went to my bathroom with my laptop (grab the expensive stuff right?!) in case I had to lock the door. Within a minute Al-Amin came in and shut my main door and told me to lock it as well (there are deadbolts on every door in Bangladesh). After about 10 minutes they were able to negotiate with the 2 people that came and paid them 200 taka. I think we lucked out because Sumit doesn't look Bengali so they thought he was the foreigner... that could have been worse. Not knowing they were gone I was just waiting in the corner of my room like a sissy pants. All of a sudden very loud, aggressive knocking happens at my door. *Pee myself a little* -- It was just Al-Amin being a jerk face and scaring me haha. The guys all had a laugh when Al-Amin told them I was in my bathroom when he came to lock my door. In the crazy, locking my door I pulled one of the locks too hard or something and it broke so I was locked in my room and they had to come through the balcony entrance to break me free. hahahahaha Yes... it was as ridiculous as it sounds. After all of this transpired we all were obviously talking about it and I kept asking questions on why they do that, if the police do anything, if they are accepted anywhere, etc. I asked about how gay people are perceived here and of course "not accepted" was that answer as well. I was a little saddened when I asked if they had met any gay people and they were shocked and said "no way, why would I?"... I responded with "how do you know they are bad if you have never met one?" -- religious and society response. I told them about drag shows, Caitlyn Jenner (olympian who transitioned) and growing up playing volleyball with trans women... they were in shock. Why does the US think we are so much more evolved than other developing countries? We still have people that don't accept others -- I think I have found them a new home. Maybe living here would make those people realize they have bigger problems than fighting the good fight to stop gays from marrying. All in all I finally had a super sketchy moment in Bangladesh and I am extremely saddened at the lengths the transgender community has to go to just to make a living. |
Steph CinkThis is my way to share both my personal and research experiences with my family, friends and those that are interested.
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