Ah the jet lagged life of a cabin crew. So I finally managed to fall asleep at 9 am thinking I'd sleep in late and be fully rested for my flight at 2 am tomorrow. Instead I wake up at 3 pm and probably won't be getting a nap in before my flight. Luckily its only a short 5 hour flight to Dhaka and ever luckier I get 24 hours there. I was looking through my pictures of my past trips there and unfortunately don't have any interesting pictures to share (unless you REALLY care about what I ate and what the hotel room looked like!).
I do remember one trip however, where the crew & myself ventured out to Bangla Bazaar to go shopping. As Bangladesh produces clothes for Mango, Zara etc. we thought it would be a good idea to shop in the bazaar to get some great deals for a fraction of the cost. One of the crew had previously been to the bazaar and warned us about the "guides". Basically as soon as we got out of the taxi it was very clear that we were all tourists (4 girls & 2 guys all different nationalities). Right away we were swarmed with "guides" that wanted to help us guide our way around the enormous, confusing bazaar. They claimed to lead us right to the stalls that sold the Mango & Zara clothes (without the label) and that without their help we would never find it. Now of course this "guide" comes with a price and the crew told us we would be fine on our own. After 45 minutes of being followed by 4 guides constantly harassing & taunting us ("You are getting farther away", "You are not going to find Mango"), we finally got so fed up and just left. The few things we saw and bargained for the guides whispered to the stall owners and suddenly the price went up for us. We managed to snag a few deals but in the end were so annoyed that we didn't bother really looking around that much.
That definitely was quite the experience though! I think if I ever venture there again I would pay for a guide. I don't mind paying to help another make a few bucks to survive...
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