Our new lives in Bangladesh have settled down fairly quickly. I have built my new routine of daily life, the kids have made new friends in their new school, even the weather and trafic don't seem to be that bad after a couple of weeks.

The apartment we are staying at is huge, probably the biggest place I've ever stayed at so far. It has three bedrooms, all with en suites. On top of that, there's the maid's room and the guest's room, both with ensuites as well. The area we live in is the High Commissions district. Almost all of the foreign embassies/HC/consulates are nearby, which's quite an essential feature for us as these are also where you'll find the bars that sells alcohols, swimming pools with clean water and play grounds that actually meet our safety standards. These maybe something we took for granted in Australia but they are definately not so easy to find in Bangladesh.

The first week I stayed home most of the time as it was raining most of the days. The streets were so flooded that walking the kids to school one morning was more like swimming than walking. The kids had great fun though, because I know no matter how careful they are, they'd get wet anyway, so I just let them loose and splash around, not forgetting to bring a spare set of clothes for them to change into when they get to the school.

The second week I went shopping. Dhaka is an amazing place for textiles and handicrafts. But for me it was more of grocery shoppings that I must do. There is a German Butcher which's been known for its top quality steaks and porks, well there isn't really much competitions as porks are not available anywhere else. Fruits are readily available however the quality is not very high. Vegetables are a bit limited due to the rainy seasons so western style vegies such as broccoli or zucchini is very rare other than the expensive shrunk up ones in the supermarkets. There are lots of big modern super markets here but the good'o fashion local markets are really where all the actions lie. Even in the city centre, these markets are muddy, dirty, crowdy and smelly. It reminds me of the markets in my father's tiny hometown a couple of decades ago. However people are honest, warm hearted, and welcoming. You can find virtually everything for your grocery here, but there are things that we just cannot make any substitutes, such as, Australian milk and juice.

There is an Australian Supermarket nearby Axe's work. It's only tiny but the luxuries that an Ozzie would crave for are all here. Tim Tams, cereals, pasta and sauces, and even the UHT milk and juice don't taste too bad, although wouldn't have been in our shopping lists if we were in Australia.

There are quite surprisingly a number of theme parks here in Dhaka. One just down the road is Wonderland, then there's the Fantasy World about 1 1/2 hours drive away, then there's the Nandan Park another further hour drive from that. We all found it very amusing that when we show up in a theme park, we instantly became the feature of the day. There were usually a bunch of people surrounding us, some children would even follow us everywhere and try to catch every chance to interact with our kids.
 
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