City living has become quite normal

We've been here nearly 6 weeks now and life here has become quite normal. We are quite settled in our guest house where we get our meals cooked for us and our washing done for a very reasonable rate! The food is lovely, lots of familiar things like spaghetti bolognaise and pizza and always with really fresh and tasty salad. The stuff that is grown here like the tomatoes and cucumbers are really full of flavour. We are supplementing our meals with the occasional trip to an ice-cream parlour, which are really quite common where we live. The road that has become our main haunt has about 5 on it. A recent favourite was cheescake flavour icecream with twix bits in it. yum. There are quite a few things you can do here if you have the money, that give you a bit of a break from reality, i had a pedicure the other day at the Nordic Club which was heavenly and not what i thought i'd be doing as part of my trip to Bangladesh!

We're busy with work too, both of us have a lot to do before we come home and not much time left to do it in! A day at work is quite exhausting so we just potter around in the evenings, watching a dvd or reading or getting some extra work done.

We're planning a few trips over the next couple of weeks, one to the tea garden area in the east of the country where they have rain forests and lots of beautiful scenery apparently. We're also travelling all the way to the top of the country to Nilphamari to visit the bamboo coffin factory. we're going by train to both places which is a relief as i've not heard good things about the buses. We've also booked to come home via a week in Delhi and a trip to the Taj Mahal, it's going to be hot!

This is the view from our office balcony. It's the start of a colony of Pakistanis who have remained kind of stranded i think, since the war of independence in the 70's. Some very cute children play cricket on the street most days...

It rained for about an hour today and this was the side of the road on our way home! We were in a minibus thank goodness. Poor rickshaw wallah!

This is on the entrance of the road that our offices are on, just a bit of context really!

Man shining shoes on the main road near our offices. We sometime walk ten minutes down this road to get a KFC smoothie and sit in the air conditioned restaurant for a break from the office. There are loads more things i'd love to take photos of but we draw enough attention just walking down street, getting the camera out as well might be a bit much.

Watching one of the rainstorms from the safety of the balcony in the office. There is a t shirt printing factory over the road and some dye must have been left out, it was a river of purple.

Trying to cross the road.

More flooding

3 young chaps not bothered by the downpour

The storms are coming here and we have had a few corkers in the evenings and while we are at work. The road to and from work gets quite flooded as you can see in the photos, doesn't seem to bring anything to a standstill though! We're taking a tour of Old Dhaka this friday which is the heart of the old city, i can't wait to see all the old buildings and winding streets, we'll put some photos up to show you :)

Chloe