March 17-19 (Thursday- Saturday)

Leaving Stanford and its many obligations was a much tougher endeavor than I imagined. For one, I had a presentation on my research (unrelated to this project) the day before, which resulted in two consecutive all-nighters leading up to the trip. After a phone conference with my collaborator at 8PM, I raced back home to pack, since we were leaving campus at 10. Turns out I wasn’t the only one scraping out—Seth had just finished six finals (the last of which was the day of the flight) and Pam had left for India on Monday—the day after she finally got her visa.

A few celebratory beers later, we were on a 14-hour Cathay Pacific Flight CX173 to Hong Kong, our first stop on the way to Dhaka. International flights are my opportunity to catch up on all the movies I’ve missed, and it appears I’m not the only one—four members of our travel group watched “The King’s Speech”. Quote Seth: “You know you’re growing older when you can watch a movie that involves a bunch of people just talking for two hours and you think it’s exciting.”

Can we go to Panda Express next? (Photo: Chris Stivers)

We then landed in HK, where Carey left to spend the day with her grandmother and uncle, leaving the boys to explore town. We were lucky enough that my friend Shane, also a third-year medical student, was in town with his family. He took us on a full tour of the city, including a Buddhist temple, British WWII memorial, open-air market, and many of Hong Kong’s massive architectural wonders (a mix of classic East Asian, super-modern industrial, and English colonial). 
I particularly enjoyed our experience at an “authentic” dim sum place (which apparently doesn’t really exist in HK anymore since they’ve mostly been replaced by quieter sit-down places with menus). We battled our way into several cramped seats, and enjoyed timeless delicacies such as pork bun and chicken feet—at least I enjoyed the feet, since it freaks out my American friends.

After our nine hours as bona fide tourists were up, we took a quick hop on Dragon Air and at last landed in Dhaka. At that point, we had been traveling for 20 straight hours! Pam had a flight going through Calcutta to visit her family, so we waited at glorious Zia Dhaka International Airport for her, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes the size of small cats. Once she arrived, we were picked up by a member of ICDDR,B, and driven to our guest house. 


The representative asked an interesting request of us on the ride over: could we sing the US national anthem? The video won’t be posted here, but I think our overflowing enthusiasm for the red, white, and blue overcame how out of tune we were. Being Americans, we then demanded fair trade and that he sing the Bangladeshi national anthem. I think none of us were expecting what we heard: “Amar Shonar Bangla” (My Golden Bengal) was so warm and tender, a song which really conveyed how much love the writer, national poet Rabindranath Tagore, had for his homeland.

Listen here (and ignore the randomly scrolling pictures and text): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIEzM7ZmfQk

This moment set the stage for the rest of the trip—realizing how different Americans and Bengalis are. The Star Spangled Banner represented the passionate, pugnacious can-do attitude of the US underdogs, while Amar Bangla embodied the peaceful, poetic understanding of our Bangladeshi hosts.