Heart-breaking Bangladesh

This section is just a very small insight of the people living in the streets of Dhaka. My heart was constantly shaken by what I was seeing...





There were guys with these machines making sugarcane juice.

You see so many kids in the streets instead of being at school...
They work, they beg or they just look for food in the rubbish.
It's just horrible...




These kids were in front of Dhaka's best hotel. They were begging and asking for money. One of them approached me and asked me for 10 Takas (local currency). I had to ignore him and swallow my egoism and selfishness.

This man had only one leg and was making inhuman efforts to walk while begging in the street.

This other man had its legs completely atrophied. He was laying on a small wooden plank with wheels and pushing himself with his hands. He was going around the cars begging for money. He approached me and from his small plank, he looked-up at me and extended his hands towards me asking for money.

A dad with his naked baby chasing his other kid who was hiding behind the bicycle.

The streets are filled with piles of rubbish. You also see trailer trucks filled with garbage and spilling all over the streets sickening liquids from the putrid waste. I have no words to describe the awful smell that invades the streets...
In this picture, you can see that everyone is putting his hand over his mouth and nose to avoid inhaling the horrible rotten smell while kids and mums seek in the piles of rubbish something to take to their mouths...


Me cago en la puta... que injusto es este mundo!
Fuck the shit... how unfair is the world!

Heart-breaking Bangladesh

This section will show you a quick snapshot of the streets in Dhaka. They are generally very dirty, horribly smelly and packed with rickshaws. I found inhuman that means of transport as these poor guys, skinny like a stick spend their days pedaling on those bicycles under a burning sun. The streets are sooo crowded that many times they get blocked, forcing rickshaws to engage in a short battle.





Although I see the rickshaws as a torture machine for those who peddle on them all day long, they are quite nice and very colourful.


Do you think those buildings are still under constructions? You're wrong... they are finished and people live in them.


This is a Bangladeshi Pepsi truck...
Walking around, I ended-up in a shopping mall. Every floor was dedicated to one type of product: shoes, mens wear, mobiles and women clothes! It was quite nice to see these shops with chairs where women used to take a seat while the shop owner was showing them a bunch of colourful fabrics to make their own dresses. Why in Europe nobody dares to wear colourful clothes and everybody dresses with black, grey and brown?? It's all in the soul and mind...

The buses there are completely scratched and smashed! It's amazing, they just bump into each other all the time! And the funny thing is that they don't stop! They have no doors, so people just stand by the exit/entrance in order to jump in or out while the bus still running. When the bus is packed and somebody wants to jump-in, the people inside the bus help the guy to enter by holding his arms or clothes. Really spectacular!

And that was the view from my room... I could see the kids playing naked in that slum.

Heart-breaking Bangladesh

I will start by showing you some of the first pics I took when I discovered this local street market. I took the pictures from the distance using the zoom (from my rather bad pocket camera) as the hygiene conditions were extremely bad and I didn't dare to approach the animals.



As far as I know, there are important problems with bird flu in Bangladesh...


Take a look at the hanging meat... It was almost 40ºC in the street!

The black dots on the rice were not dried raisins or spices... but flies!

Heart-breaking Bangladesh

On the first week of April '07 I went to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh for a couple of days. My colleagues already warned me of what I was supposed to see there, but I didn't realise it until I faced the horrible reality. You can not know what poverty is until you have seen and felt it.

After walking for two hours on the streets of Dhaka, I returned to my hotel room unable to articulate a word. Every night I thought of all those who were out there, fighting to survive, looking for clothes or a small piece of food among the rubbish, while I was comfortably seating in my "luxurious" hotel room. The feeling of guilt and unfairness has invaded my soul for two long days. I must admit that every night, few tears dropped from my eyes...

The pictures I have selected to show you may not give you the most accurate impression of the poverty in Dhaka. But try to imagine a whole city filled with nauseating rubbish smells, kids working, skinny people and naked kids looking for food in the rubbish.

Besides all that, I was nevertheless amazed by the friendliness of Bangladeshi people! Many people had a good command of English (contrary to many European countries!). After all my trips around the world, and specially after my last three trips (India, Philippines and Bangladesh) I have realised that the lesser the people have, the more friendly, kind, polite and respectful they are. Does that mean that France (for example) is FUCKING RICH!??? We, Europeans, have a lot to learn...

Philippines - Manila

Soon after being in India, I flew to Manila. Mmmm... What is there to do? Not much besides unsafe sex and... unsafe sex! It's a polluted huge city, with horrible traffic jams and many beggars in the streets.

I only managed to do a couple of interesting things: shopping and visiting the old Spanish quarter called "Intramuros". Here are some pics of that area which looks soooooo Spanish!









Have you ever seen a Spaniard with a horribly gay Philippino hair dressing? No? Well... here you are!
Madre del amor hermoso!!!
I had the great idea of going to the hairdresser to get a hair cut. They did a great job! But when it came to the brushing...
(NO COMMENTS ARE ALLOWED)

Incredible India! - Goa गोवा

Portuguese merchants first landed in Goa in the 15th century, and annexed it soon after. The Portuguese colony existed for about 450 years, until it was taken over by India in 1961.

We (Inge and myself) stayed in Goa 4 days, having great fun and visiting as much as we could. As soon as we got out of the airport, I saw this little penguin... I had never seen a sexual penguin before...
SOOOO FUNNY!


As we arrived on a Wednesday, we left our suitcases in the hotel and we rushed to the flee market. I think I have never seen so many colours together besides a gay parade! Beautiful place! Weird and lovely people!





There are a bunch of Portuguese-style houses and churches all over the state. The houses are painted in green, yellow, purple, red, blue... a great palette of bright colours.





I love this picture! It looks like an ad for United Colors of Benetton!

Goans are just like all the Indians: friendly, laid-back, joyful, colourful and very respectful!





A local tuk-tuk:

Amazing sunsets!