So we have moved again

Hi all The blog is back in action now that we have left Bangladesh and moved to Melbourne. We arrived on the 4th July to the welcome of Emerson taking us in to stay for a bit until we get jobs and a home. The process so far has consisted of: - getting a bank account set up - getting mobile numbers set up - and making it our mission to get a job...both of us It is nice that at least we know we won't have to worry about visas as Aussie is overrun with us kiwi kids. Also hopefully it means that jobs will be semi-easy to come by. So obviously there will be more to come as things begin to happen. Cross fingers and look out Melbourne the Walkers have landed!!!

Chillin' in Chennai

Millar's tower!!!

The girls zoning out watching TV

After our fab trip to Agra, Jaipur and back to Delhi we headed off to Chennai.  I brother, his wife and their two kids live there at the moment so that was a good reason for us to go there one would think.  Seriously, I had not even heard of the place before my brother said he has a contract for 6 months working there and it sounded almost Chinese in origin rather than Indian.

It was so awesome spending 5 days there.  We went swimming at least once a day, Millar loved his inflatable shark birthday pressie so much!!!  We went to a mall and looked around, although this place without air-conditioning was close to unbearable.  It was nice to catch up, compare war stories and play with the kids.  Darren and Toushka even got a night out and hit the red pretty hard (success in our opinion)!!!!!

Reading "We're going on a bear hunt" with Millar.  He decided a spotlight was highly necessary...this was after Grant had made a fort with him out of cushions and blankets.

The pool on the roof.  Loved it!!!!

Grant and Xanthe waiting outside Millar's school for him to come out and catch the auto-rickshaw home with us.

Agra & the Taj

We were originally planning to spend two days in Agra, enjoying the Taj and having a relaxing time for our 4th Wedding anniversary, that plan was laid to rest when we tried to book train tickets, first through our hotel in Delhi and then by travelling the hour and a half to the New Delhi train station to visit the tourist booking office. After arriving at New Delhi train station and seeing the throngs of people and the absolute chaos, and realising we would have to repeat this journey and be at the station by 6am, with suitcases in tow we decided it would be easier to go by car.

We booked an all inclusive overnight tour, taking in Agra and Jaipur which picked us up from our hotel and dropped us back the following evening. We thought great we will meet some other people and have a great couple of days. Sadly we were the only people in the car, with a driver who was very enthusiastic, but struggled with our accents, and we would later find out after turning around a few times and going the wrong way, this was his first time driving this particular route. It was great to see some of the rural parts of India, and enjoy the Indian style of driving when in the countryside, which makes the cities seem tame. It is pretty much a drive as fast as you can, overtake everything, if something cant be overtaken safely, honk very loudly for a prolonged period of time and overtake anyway style of driving. The rollercoasters at Movieworld suddenly seemed very tame.

We did manage to arrive in Agra in one piece though and collected our guide Sanjay for our tour of the Taj Mahal. He was an absolutely brilliant guide and made what is a truly spectacular monument even better. The Taj Mahal was built in 1653 and is truly an absolutely amazing place. Better than I ever imagined it would be, and certainly lives up to its status as one of the wonders of the world.

Despite the fact some of the photos look photoshopped we were actually there!

Couldnt visit the Taj without a couple of cheesy photos.

It's Very heavy.

The entranceway to the Taj

Jemma recreating a famous photo

Inside the Taj, a replica of the actual mausoleoum which is directly below. Photography not allowed in here, unless your guide helps you be sneaky like ours

The detailing on the building itself actually looks painted on from a distance, but it is all carved inlay work. Incredible crafmanship in building the Taj. We visited a showroom afterwards and saw the direct descendents of the builders of the taj at work demonstrating there craft. We resisted the salesmans attempts to buy a large marble coffee or dining table (at several thousand dollars, and the promise there would be no problem, we ship it to your house. Yeah right!)  We did however settle on a small piece of marble with an inlaid elephant, much easier to squeze in the suitcase.

After a very average lunch at the Taj gateway hotel in the 40 degree plus heat we finally set of for Jaipur. More about that soon.

Grant

Delhi

So after what seemed like an eternity of waiting for the holidays to come, we finally made it to India. Neither of us particularly liked Delhi as a city, it is however not Bangladesh which made it better. It is such a sprawling city, and having found what seems like the only reasonably priced hotel (with a pool) in Delhi, we had to take a 15 minute rickshaw ride and the metro for about forty five minutes to get into the centre of Delhi.
The security in Delhi is quite intense, with metal detectors, pat downs and bag x-rays at every metro station, shopping mall and hotel. It did make us feel quite safe though knowing that they do take security seriously. The only slightly unnerving time was on a tightly packed metro train when a man suddenly started praying quite loudly, not something we would normally even take notice of. The whole train carriage suddenly looked very nervous, and being in a country where religous extremists have attacked before we all probably had good reason to feel a little uncomfortable (if it weren't for all the security to get on the train, I probably would have got off at the next station, better to be safe than sorry).
We enjoyed eating lots of great Indian food, and also took our chance to indulge in some faster food that we dont get in Dhaka. (Dominoes pizza do a great pepperoni!!) Traffic was not nearly as bad as Dhaka, which was nice, but its still a hard city to get around in because everything is so far away. We visited the Red fort which was amazing from the outside with its extremely high walls, and moat, but was a bit of a letdown on the inside. It was cool to go to India gate and see in person what we saw on TV when the commonwealth games were on. And there was a really great exhibition of bears (photos below) on in Connaught Place. There was one from each of the UN member countries.

A little taste of home.

Ireland

Red Fort from outside

These walls are massive, the photo doesn't really do the size of it justice

Jemma, with the Guard post behind, machine gun pointed at the entranceway just incase somebody decides to invade

Inside the Red fort, the buildings weren't very impressive inside, most of them are poorly looked after. The squirrels running around all over the grounds were far more interesting.

Weekend in Bangkok

As you all probably know we had a long weekend away in Bangkok to get away from the political demonstrations in Dhaka and to renew our visas.
We managed to get a few things we needed that we can't get here and enjoyed lazing by the pool, eating yummy food and generally doing it tough for the whole weekend.

Just down the road from our hotel was a mall called Terminal 21, absolutely massive and each floor was themed to a particular city of the world, with London, Paris, San Fransisco and Istanbul amongst others. Despite all the photos of food, we didn't just spend the whole weekend eating!!

A Place called BarBQ plaza, pretty self explanatory, you cook your own food on a mini barbecue.

It was a really cheap meal at approximately $12AUD including drinks.

The Paris themed floor of the mall.

A Japanese restaurant in the same mall,

The best cupcakes we have ever had, we had to go back a second time, just to make sure they were still as good two days later!

We went out to the Chatachuk weekend markets which are meant to be one of the biggest in the world. It was certainly easy to get lost in the maze of stalls, and we probably didn't even manage to get through half of it while we were there.

Yummy street food at the market.

Don't look too hard at the kitchen in the background.

 We ventured out to Chinatown, very interesting place, much like china towns in other parts of the world I imagine.

 And just to make you all super duper jealous, a photo of the awful pool we had to force ourselves to swim in!!

As far as weekends away go I'd have to rate it about a 12/10. Only ten days till we go to India (if you didn't know we are quite excited), won't be as nice as Bangkok I'm sure, but it will be a step up from Bangladesh for a while.

Grant

 

Ahsan Manzil Musuem

Some of the best phots would have been from inside this museum, but cameras not allowed inside.
The building is the former home of the Dhaka Nawab Family (long history, not sure on all the details, but am assured they were important) and was built in the 1860's, it has ben restored in part inside and rooms such as the ballroom and dining hall have been filled with exact replica furniture based on photographs from the era. The dining room, all set for a banquet is particularly impressive.

So no photos from the inside, but heres some of the outside of the building. It is set on the banks of the Buriganga river, in Old Dhaka.

 Will put up some photos from Bangkok soon, neither of us wanted to come back, but not long till we go to India so won't complain too much.

Old Dhaka

Old Dhaka is as the name might suggest the old part of the city. The streets are very narrow, there are millions of people and rickshaws everywhere and its just generally chaos. There are a large number of shops, markets and it is right on the river so a lot of ferries depart here.

Also managed to get a short video driving through the streets, a rather tame video actually, this was quite a quiet stretch of road.

Lalbagh Fort

 Lalbagh Fort was a bit of a mission in the car as it was in the middle of Old Dhaka.  The streets are incredibly narrow and full, to over-flowing with people, rickshaws, markets and more people.

We paid our 100tk ($1.20) to enter and we were pleasantly surprised by just how much land and the gardens were beautiful, in perspective of course being in Bangladesh where we are lucky to see any greenery!!!!

 The grounds were full of couples finding a quiet corner to canoodle with each other, paying their money to have some privacy.

While we were there we had numerous people come up to us and ask us where we were from, what we were doing in Dhaka and generally being noisy...however you get used to that as they hardly see people from around the world.

A LITTLE INFO ABOUT THE FORT!!!

Lalbagh Fort (also known as "Fort Aurangabad") is an incomplete Mughal palace fortress at the Buriganga River in the southwestern part of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Construction was commenced in 1678 by Prince Muhammad Azam during his 15-month long vice-royalty of Bengal, but before the work could complete, he was recalled by Aurangzeb. His successor, Shaista Khan, did not complete the work, though he stayed in Dhaka up to 1688. His daughter Iran Dukht nicknamed Pari Bibi (Fairy Lady) died here in 1684 and this led him to consider the fort to be ominous.

Lalbagh Fort is also the witness of the revolt of the native soldiers against the British during the Great Rebellion of 1857. As in the Red Fort in India, they were defeated by the force led by the East India Company. They and the soldiers who fled from Meerat were hanged to death at the Victoria Park. In 1858 the declaration of Queen Victoria of taking over the administrative control of India from the Company was read out at the Victoria park, latter renamed Bahadur Shah Park after the name of the last Mughal Emperor who led that greatest rebellion against then British empire.

It was an interesting sight.  To be honest we are not ones for buildings and architecture but doing something like this in Dhaka is a highlight.  At times it can feel like a small place, considering how many people and how big this city is.

More photos to come in the coming days...we have to pack our bags now to head off to Bangkok for the weekend.  Oh life is hard sometimes!!!!!!!!!

Jem

Aircon, Power and Beggars!

We finally had the airconditioning installed in our apartment. It was impossible to sleep at night, even with the ceiling fans on full so things are far more comfortable now. Although the airconditioning doesnt help much when the power goes out. This has been a regular occurence in the last few weeks and normally it goes out 6 or 7 times a day, usually for between 1/2 an hour and an hour. There is a generator in the basment of the building which should kick in when the power goes out, wouldn't that be nice. We've spoken to the building owner a few times and the people who organised the apartment at the school to no avail, it did take six weeks to get the washing machine and about eight weeks to get the aircon, so we live in hope. At least we have power sometimes, food on the table and a roof over our head, which is more than alot of the locals have. The hardest thing is seeing kids on the street begging, we have become slightly immune to the adults, not because we don't care, but because if you werent a little hard to it all, it would seriously mess with your head.

I think the hardest thing for me has been seeing kids going through piles of rubbish on the side of the road looking for food. It has certainly put life in perspective for me, at how utterly privileged we are being bought up in New Zealand. Some locals here say we shouldn't give money to beggars because it only encourages them, others have the opinion that it is our duty to help those less fortunate than ourselves. I am no humanitarian by any means, but I can't pass some of these people by, especially the kids and not do anything, if nothing else they at least get a little money to buy some food, and to see their little faces light up is an incredible feeling.

Grant

Jem Made the Paper in Bangladesh, well an advertisement anyway!

So weve been a bit busy the last few weeks and blog posts have been a little light, so stay tuned for a few in the next couple of days,

First off, Jemma made another appearance in the paper. The Daily Star which is the biggest English Language paper in Dhaka, you can see her down the bottom left hand corner, and I've blown up the add so you can read it too. Not too many people can say they made the front page of the paper with Barack Obama (top right), ok so that might be a little bit of a stretch, but gotta take all the fame you can.