We got the coach from Darsana to Dhaka on the 27^th, leaving as the sun rose up the main road out of town. Our seats at the front of the coach left us next to the horn, which the driver used with reckless abandon as he powered down the centre of the road, tilting round corners and swerving away from goats skipping across our path. We stopped at a few huddles of houses and establishments hugging the road, picking up a few more passengers and zooting off, the doorman executing a well-practiced running jump back on to the accelerating coach.

After driving for three hours, we came across a snake of trucks loaded with logs, bales of straw and animals that took over half the road, forcing the two-way traffic onto the remaining lane. Other busses and coaches contended for space and often pushed us onto the dirt sides of the road. The python led down to the river’s edge where it waited at the ferry port for a way across. Our road disintegrated into dirt hill running down past wooden shacks to a bobbing metal platform.

A ferry approached from the river in front of us, creeping forwards and revealing its mass and girth. Our coach stood amidst a tangle of large and small vehicles: other coaches crammed with passengers; vans and cars squeezing between; and motorbikes nipping down the narrow alleys created in the jigsaw.

Whilst we waited, hawkers travelled between the standing vehicles, laden with baskets of peeled cucumbers on their heads, or dragging sacks of dried cereal. A man clutching a stack of Bangla books stepped up to ours, walking down the aisle, and moaning his merchandise call in a nasal voice.

I heard in translation from Solomon that our lengthening delay was caused by a small car up at the front that was stuck whilst boarding. Our coach driver began reversing, manoeuvring the beast in the cramped space and escaping the stinking mass of vehicles. He took us around to another ferry port with no queue. Close up, we could see the vessel clearly now: a platform stretching the length of the boat holding the busses, coaches, lorries, trucks, vans, cars and motorbikes; and a series of rooms suspended above this, supported on either side. We headed up steep metal steps into the passenger area, a dark, low room, already filed with families and groups of men, sat and squatted around dirty tables amidst newsstands of crisps and biscuits.

We sat in a quieter area for tea before climbing to the top level, roofed but open to the elements with metal railings for walls. The water wrinkled below us, shimmering in the sun and looking like crinkling plastic. The journey across river was not far, but we moved slowly. Once at the other side of the Clingfilm river, we sped off again, playing chicken with all other vehicles and sometimes having two or three games going at once. Rice fields grew walls of stone around them and the stores or huts evolved into larger complexes, huddling together between fields. Telegraph poles became a mess with more and more wires, and roads as big as ours began to cut across our path. What were once just small hovels transformed into two-storey buildings, tailors, metal merchants and market shops on the first floor, living space on the second.

We moved through the suburbs of Dhaka, watching the city build up around us and the roads widen into dual-carriage express ways, lined and split by trees and hedges.

The traffic amalgamated into a heaving mess and the wind rushing in through the window became a gentle breeze of hot, dusty, polluted air. People started to get off the coach before its final stop, where we transferred to a smaller public minivan, cramped into the small seats and paying an extra fare for colossus, taking up a seat of its own. We stopped on another nameless, busy street and down-graded again to two rickshaws, taking us down the bumpy narrow side streets, twisting like capillaries away from the main artery. We arrived at the guesthouse where we stashed our bags in rooms stemming off of an open kitchen and dining room area, looking to be able to cater for the whole guesthouse.

Saying Goodbye

Our stay was brief as we headed off to Gowair to meet with the boys from the project. I was back in a familiar setting again, riding the bus along the snaking freeway past various military bases and museums, past the derelict national stadium, over the tops of houses on the adventurous flyover and between the beginnings of a new one. Welding sparks rained down from half-constructed support pillars marking the proposed path through the city like stakes of wood in a low river. The bus route took us as usual to the airport, where we switched to easy-bike and wound through fields and bogs before entering Gowair and bumbling along the main road. We passed the stinking spice shop, the small alley-market, the short cut to school, and the row of convenience stores on the corner of ‘guest house road’. Mohsin emerged first, his hair cut short, clasping my hand in greeting. He had been sitting exams recently and now had just two left before a five-day holiday. I asked how they were going.

“Yeah. Well. I think I will get eighty per cent in all. Except maths,” he smirked, “but in maths I was lucky. I memorised a lot and more than half came up, so I will pass.”

We waited for the others to turn up, Yasin, Jewel, Nazrul and a few more. They arrived and we were joined by Rahima from the school choir group, a small twelve-year-old who acted twice her height and had a calm sense of confidence about her. Fiona and I followed the troupe to someone’s house, where three more boys, some of whom I had played table tennis with back at the school, sat waiting. Cups of tea and biscuits were brought out for Solomon, Monju, Fiona and I whilst we asked more of them about their recent exams.

We had planned to show them some of our pictures, ones taken during the project, as they always seemed keen to look at pictures of themselves. The laptop cycled through the collection, some bringing laughs at funny faces. We also showed them the cringe-worthy video of Fiona and I dancing to heavy Bangla pop music with the girls at Pinky’s house. “Tumi najj shunder!” you dance beautifully, they kept saying, whilst I attempted to goad them into demonstrating their own moves now. Before long, it was time to leave. We said our final goodbyes and puttered back to the airport to catch the bus back to the city.

The next morning, we returned to Dhakinkhan and Gowair one final time to drop in on the Dhaka Project office and hand over a few gifts. Touhid greeted us and sat us down to accept the donations. The encounter was awkward: we had bought a fan to be used by Mohsin in the Catalyst room—where currently they had no fan in the stuffy closet—but upon telling this to Touhin, he at first seemed confused, saying that the Catalyst Project had been stopped months ago. He then simply stated that it would not be possible, “maybe Mohsin is doing something separately, not part of the Dhaka Prokect. But we will see where we can use this, in the nursery perhaps.”

Disappointed, but not wanting to take back the gift now given, we departed and headed for the airport for our flight. We were through to duty-free in no time, using up some of the last of our taka in a restaurant. As we descended in to Bangkok, I had hoped to get a stunning aerial view of the bustling city with all its concrete streets and high-rise buildings. Instead we touched down amongst rural Thailand, small clusters of buildings dotted across otherwise featureless fields of rice and other crops. There was one large building close to the airport, a Holiday Inn no doubt.

Bangkok, like Dhaka, is stinking hot in April. We happened to time our travels to coincide with the hottest time of year for all destinations except Australia. Thankfully, we had skipped the hottest part of the day whilst on the plane, and now boarded an air-conditioned taxi as the sun hung low in the clear sky.

The exit from the airport fed into hyper-express way threading south like a Scaelectrics track into central Bangkok. The corners even tilted inwards on corners, as if anticipating a Formula 1 race to come by. Several separate lanes wound slowly into one like spinning thread, merging into a six-laned ribbon bounding across the landscape in frequent hills and troughs—imaginary as the land around us remained flat.

It accepted tribute from many feeding lines connecting like hospital drips, the newcomers swept along and soon lost in the storming traffic. When we reached the main city of Bangkok, the highway swept higher still, taking us above all but the skyscrapers. For a moment, we dropped from the sky, down to the low-way some ten metres below, threading between the concrete pillars of the flyover above. Back in the sky, the road began twisting amongst condensing high-risers, joining and splitting with other high-roads before dropping us to the ground on a wide, tree-covered boulevard.

We now progressed down ever-shrinking roads and streets, circling around a red-roofed wat. Our driver stopped on Thanon Phra Athit and we lugged our bags down a small side-street bustling with restaurants, bars and backpacker-hostels. In the dimming sunlight, lights twinkled on, speckling the street with balls of multi-coloured light.

Before collapsing into bed, we had time enough for a quick meal at Roti Mataba around the corner, a simple delight of rotis with curried chicken or soup, with the added delicacy of a sweet roti smothered in chocolate sauce and condensed milk, and stuffed with cooked banana.

A Baby’s Smile

After a morning spent sorting travel to Cambodia as well as funds for Bangkok, we ventured across Banglamphu to visit the Queen’s Gallery. We headed off down Th Phra Athit, passing through countless street stalls growing like abscesses from the main shop-fronts and creating cramped, covered walkways, shielded from the sun and traffic. Their stalls were lined with shirts and trousers, or stacked with children’s toys, or piled with nik-naks, or serving  fresh-cut pineapple and watermelon.

Walking away from the main backpacker district around Thanon Khao San, the heart or Banglamphu, the street-vendors petered out and the road was left open to various shops. We began to pass homes, too, mixed in with the seven-elevens, typewriter shops and shuttered facades.

We passed Wat Wowonniwet, a modern Buddhist temple with a steep, tiered roof, spiking up at the corners like peaks in meringue. Within the white-washed walls, a colonnaded courtyard surrounded the central building. One smaller shrine in the courtyard had a huge footprint stamped into stone. Hundreds of coins lay scattered across the surface of it, pooling in the toes. Half of them balanced on their edge, nestled in grooves and ridges.

Circling the main temple building, which held a gathering of Buddhist monks and devotees sat listening to readings from an elderly monk, brought us to a gold stupa raised on terraced walkways. We ventured up and circled to the top, hot-footing over the sun-baked stone that burned our soles.

We moved on down Th Phra Athit, passing in to a progressively less touristed area until we reached a leviathan of a roundabout. The seven feeding roads collided in a tangle of traffic, crashing into the main boulevard running East-West and emerging on the other side shaken and askew. Three routes out bounded over bridges and two more twisted away, following the brilliant white wall of a fort. The Queen’s Gallery was closed for preparations for the next exhibition, so we crossed the junction, dodging tuc-tucs, cars and motorbikes.

On the far side stood Wat Thepthidaram, a Buddhist temple constructed in a pyramidal structure: five floors towering above the roadway and topped by a tall spire piercing the sky. Inside, the first floor contained a maze of thick columns, with some of the pathways blocked by elements of an exhibition. At the centre of the column forest, a wooden spiral staircase wound up to the top level.

We made our way up through the levels, walking around a library of copies of the same book and an empty floor dedicated for walking meditation. Towards the top, we emerged over the high roofs of the floors below, giving us a view over Banglamphu. I looked over the traditional-style roof of a nearby wat, with pattern of vibrant green and rich orange. Beyond sprawled the messy modern cubes of buildings built out of sync with each other. The trees lining temple courtyard and wider streets thinned out and shrunk amongst heaving blocks of concrete. Old eventually gave way to new with high-rise tower blocks in the far distance, breaking up the horizon in a pixelated earthquake. Faded past this harsh, digital line, a hill formed to the West—but knowing the flat delta of Bangkok, I knew this to be artificial, made up only of a conglomeration of skyscrapers in central Bangkok.

Back on the ground, we braved Khao San Road, something that up till now we had only heard legends and tales of from guidebooks and travellers in Cambodia. Walking down it in late afternoon, it felt a little like two beach-side rows of junk shops. But the striking thing was not the trinkets and clothes for sale, but the people: waddling, loping and browsing in all shapes and sizes, wearing very little—a skimpy spaghetti top for the women, bare-chested for the men—or far too much—baggy khakis and army jackets ,with huge shades and a baseball cap. The hairstyles would shock and please a barber simultaneously, everything from neat crops and tight plaits to three-weeks-unwashed and messy dreadlocks, that look like heads of old, frayed rope. People flocked here from all over the world, even in this, the low season. I saw Germanic Europeans, Russians, Scandinavians, Upper-Class British, Greeks, Africans, Jamaicans, Americans, Chinese, Australians, and Thais. They mingled and laughed amongst strange friendships; a dreadlocked Austrian lounging with a Chinese youth, an old, wrinkled ex-pat sharing stories over a beer with teens from America.

It reminded me of a book I once loved to read as a young child, Ketchup on your Cornflakes. It featured a range of dual-pages combining normal items such as milk and cornflakes, but also allowed you to put two altogether different things together. That had happened here, not just between people but also many times on one person. Older couples walked along like teens, wearing short-shorts with braided hair and looking so far out of place and yet, amidst the crowds of misfits, seemed to belong here.

Khao San finished at the gates of a Buddhist temple, one we had explored in the morning. On the main road running perpendicular an army of taxis and tuc-tucs crying out to other travellers and tourists as they emerged, dazed, from the social and cultural confusion of Khao San. We circled the temple along a small alley. The atmosphere changed and relaxed. Restaurants had glowing lights encased in coloured balls of paper maché. Along the temple side, stalls of hanging t-shirts stood next to a row of cushioned deck chairs. Two of them had a couple relaxing whilst two Thai women rubbed their feet for half an hour. Other masseuses sat idle, attempting to reel us in as we passed.

Some people had already been drinking, though it was only just getting dark. We retreated to our guesthouse and head the sounds of drunken laughter sporadically over the hum of traffic and toots of tuc-tuc horns.

Bordering the Temple