But it does get thousands of expatriates, NGO workers, volunteers and diplomats every year. And all of these ‘tourists’ could be a part of your potential market.

So how do you get your product in front of that market?

Answer: Advertise in the right place.

Bangladesh: The Bradt Travel Guide
Most of you know I’ve been working very hard in creating a totally new guidebook for Bangladesh. For 2.5 years I have tried almost every travel experience your country has to offer, both good and bad, and earned the expertise that travellers want. I then spent six months writing a totally new guidebook for Bangladesh.

This August, we will release our new guide to the international market, and you need to be there if you want to reach new travellers to Bangladesh.

Bradt Travel Guides are very different from the competition. Our guides are known for their authorship and detail, something that is very attractive to the kind of person who would consider a visit to Bangladesh.

And even better: most of that market already knows there’s a new guidebook coming soon.

The power of social marketing
For a long time now, I have been working on a pre-book release website under the URL http://www.joybangla.info for the upcoming title of ‘Bangladesh: The Bradt Travel Guide.’

Under this website we have evolved a loyal following to the upcoming guide, which has earned over 30,000 individual views since early 2007, with over 100 individual views per day. Does your website have that much traffic?

We also have a loyal Facebook group with over 150 members (mainly used to promote upcoming Bangladesh trips), a building Youtube audience with travel videos, and a stunning collection of Flickr photographs which we would also like to use for a photography book entitled “Bangladesh: A Journey of Images” (PDF primer and dummy copies are available for interested publishers).

There are already thousands of potential readers out there, learning about our work, and our book, every day.

So do you want access to those readers?

Stand apart from the pack
In the international world, visibility is an important part of any business. It’s a competitive market out there, especially in one as small as Bangladesh. So you’ve got to stand head and shoulders above your competition.

Advertising in our new Bangladesh guidebook will help you achieve that, and at great value.

For as little as BDT10,000 you can be positioned in the new guidebook. For up to BDT1,10,000 your advertisement will be unmistakable.

Below are the advertising documents and information. Advertisements range from £100 to £1,156 (BDT 10,000 to BDT110,000), depending on size and colour.

Don’t know how to design an ad that is attractive to foreigners?

No problem.

For a minimal fee, I can help you create an advertisement that represents your unique product, or give you some ideas about how to do it.

Contact me for more information. The advertising submission deadline is April 24th, so you’d better act fast!

You can download the Advertising Info here (Word Doc, 352KB), and the Advance Book Information here (PDF, 1.5MB).

Best regards,
-Mikey Leung and Belinda Meggitt
Authors, “Bangladesh: The Bradt Travel Guide”

As part of my last days at VSO, I helped raise the above amount for flood relief work in Bangladesh. More pictures here. Full update on our work at the Flood Relief page.

At the moment, though I’m honestly thinking that the miniscule scale of our response against the disaster became extraordinarily clear when I was told that our relief package would only supply enough food for two to three days in a regular-sized family.

Better than nothing, yes. I have no doubt that many would agree that we in Bangladesh need to move from a culture of relief to that of prevention. Easier said than done..

“The benefits yielded from tourism should be fairly distributed,” said Professor Md. Anwarul Islam, in a keynote speech addressing participants at the Bangladesh Travel Tourism Fair 2007 (BTTF). “Only then will tourism become participatory, and thus the rights of the local residents will be properly recognized. In this way, tourism will become responsible and sustainable.”

Professor Md. Anwarul Islam presented a position paper on the use of Responsible Travel to fight poverty in Bangladesh. Philip J. DeCosse, Chief of Party of the Nishorgo Support Project, also presented (on left).

6 Sept 2007 – www.mikeyleung.ca

Tourism can be a powerful force in eradicating poverty, says Dhaka University Zoology Professor Anwarul Islam.

“The benefits yielded from tourism should be fairly distributed,” he said, in a keynote speech addressing participants at the Bangladesh Travel Tourism Fair 2007 (BTTF). “Only then will tourism become participatory, and thus the rights of the local residents will be properly recognized. In this way, tourism will become responsible and sustainable.”

The fair was organized by the Tourism Operators Association of Bangladesh in an wide-ranging effort to build and promote Bangladeshi tourism. Tourism has grown widely in the last few years, with more and more private operators setting up shop in the tiny nation. Many local operators expect growth in the domestic market over the next few years.

Philip J. DeCosse, Chief of Party of the Nishorgo Support Project, described the recent growth in the industry as encouraging. He also cautioned that profits must reach the right people in order to create change.

“The statistics for the number of paid visitors to the Sunderbans is up to nearly a million today—huge growth in the last few years,” said DeCosse. “The top 10 percent are earning more and more. What people generally do after making enough money, they want to pay for environment. They may travel just for enjoyment, but they will also pay for nature.”

He cautioned operators to not take advantage of Bangladesh’s few remaining natural areas and the people that live there, as this will be counterproductive to tourism growth.

“When you bring visitors out, you must remember that revenue belongs with the community,” he stressed. “I think the state can also step in and say that when you visit, there will be community structures that directly receiving benefits for their efforts in protecting these areas.”

Padma River – Floods, originally uploaded by Mikey Leung See more photos here.

Remember the movie Waterworld, starring Kevin Costner? Today the unearthly vision of that movie rings true in Bangladesh.

I didn’t really know how bad the flood situation actually was until my phone rang late in the evening two nights ago. It was an old friend of mine from Canada, ringing to ask me for a hit on the afternoon news in CBC Calgary. Because I was on the road I wasn’t following the latest in Bangladesh, namely the fact that 40 of its 68 districts were now underwater because of heavy monsoonal rains. As of this moment, Sunday night, over 120 have died in Bangladesh because of the flooding.

Today we made the trip back from Khulna, and for a solid hour before and after a ferry crossing over the Padma river, we saw life struggling onwards despite the inundation they were suffering. My most vivid image (not on camera) stuck in my mind is that of a rickshaw wallah struggling to pull his vehicle through chest-high waters, seen from the highway.

Of course, for my family and friends out there who might be wondering about the situation here, I am fine and safely tucked away in my fifth floor Dhaka flat, and most highways, despite being inundated on both sides of the road, do still support traffic flows around the country in most regions. Where there is no road, there are now scores of boatmen waiting to ferry you around.

The real concern is with the poorest and most remote people of Bangladesh, most of whom already lack the fundamental basics of the broader society. When their wells go underwater, they no longer have access to potable water. They must then rely on water purification tablets from the government—very slow in coming. Others are telling me that if you’re a rich person and your house goes under, you simply move to a hotel.

From what I understand, this flooding is not nearly as bad as it has been in previous years, and in the northern parts of Bangladesh the water levels are slowly beginning to move down again. However, this doesn’t mean that the flood waters will recede immediately. I read on the news that poorly maintained flood embankments—some of which broke and let floodwaters in—will also have the reverse effect of not letting the waters recede very quickly. Some areas could spend the next two weeks underwater, giving rise to waterborne diseases. The ICDDR,B, an international-level local hospital known as the “diarrhea hospital” for its work on cholera, is now setting up more facilities to treat incoming patients.

More news to come as I find it..

Chengdu-Pandalicious, originally uploaded by Mikey Leung.

I’ve visited the Panda Research Breeding center well over a dozen times in my previous lifetime as a tour leader. The array of souvenirs at the center was extensive–but now they’re going organic instead! “Artisans” will now craft souvenirs from Panda poop. I almost want to make a trip back there just to buy some!

China’s giant panda centre sees profit in poop

Zhengzhou, July. 30 (PTI): The world’s largest giant panda research base in southwest China’s Sichuan Province has come up with a novel way to profit from panda dung – crafting money-spinning souvenirs out of it.

Researchers at the Chengdu centre have sculpted photo frames, bookmarks, fans and panda statues out of the 300 tonnes of droppings produced by 60 giant pandas each year.

An official of the base, Jing Shimin said the souvenirs would be relatively odour-free.

“They don’t smell too bad because 70 per cent of the dung is just remains of the bamboo that the pandas are unable to digest,” he said.

“We used to spend at least 6,000 yuan (USD 770) every month to get rid of the droppings but now they can prove lucrative as half of them will be sold as souvenirs,” he was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

According to Jing, the panda dung is carefully selected and then smashed, dried and sterilised at a temperature of 300 degrees Celsius to provide clean raw material for the manufacturers.

“Craftsmen then draw or sculpt the cuddly bears by hand for tourists to take home,” he said.

Jing said the base was working with a local handicraft company to produce the souvenirs, but their prices have not been set.

The most expensive of the souvenirs will contain a panda hair in each package, he said, stressing that the hair is collected from the wild.

Cox’s Bazar: Random Potholes, originally uploaded by Mikey Leung.

To travel is to expose oneself to the great adventure of the open road—sometimes literally. In Dhaka, the chaos capital of not just Bangladesh, but perhaps the entire Indian subcontinent, it is the open sewers that pose a unique hazard to unaware visitors. And I’m sorry to say that I’ve already had the rather miserable experience of falling into one.

A few weeks ago, I was cycling around the upscale neighbourhood of Gulshan, where a good deal of the foreign missions situate themselves in the capital. Normally, I am a fairly agile and coordinated person and I find it quite easy to nimbly pilot my half-size, folding bicycle between rickshaws, busses and donkey-driven carts.

As I came up to a major road from a side street, I spotted the culprit sewer before I even began my crossing. It lay in the center of the road, between the opposing traffic flow and sandwiched between two pedestrian barriers. A two-foot wide strip of concrete bridged the sewer, via which pedestrians could make their crossing.

As I cycled up to the gap, I was entirely conscious of the oil-black pool’s presence, not wanting to imagine what kind of microbial cultures bubbled away beneath its surface. Unconsciously, however, I knew I needed to stop in the middle of the road and wait until traffic travelling on the other side of the street cleared enough for me to pass.

As I rode onto the thin concrete bridge, my hands instinctively squeezed my brakes so I could check the oncoming traffic. I put my right foot out, and rather comically, there was nothing there to meet it except the fetid puddle. With a screeching yelp—the volume of which probably turned every head within 30 metres—my entire right leg plunged into the breach and I toppled over. Fortunately the sewer’s opening was not human sized and I didn’t tumble into the gaping hole whole.

Unceremoniously, I picked myself up and hobbled over to the other end of the street. Distraught and disoriented, my stomach churned with the thought what just happened. I finally gathered up the strength to meet the eyes of the 15 or so Bengalis who had witnessed my fall and gathered to watch what I would do next. I managed to blurt out, in my broken Bengali, that I needed some water. Immediately the small crowd parted to offer a three two-liter bottles of water, and, without reservation, they poured it over me and I bathed right on the street, Bengali style.

To their credit, I do not recall a single person laughing at me. Everybody, including a nearby policeman, came over to offer me ashen faces and politely ask after my nationality. I even recall that some of the crowd shook their heads at the fact that a bideshi (foreigner) could have such an undignified experience in their country. Once I had collected myself enough, I shrugged my shoulders and simply laughed it off and eventually they smiled too. I then hailed a baby taxi and tossed my bicycle inside. The driver’s confused expression gave me away—no doubt most of his recent customers didn’t stink of sewer like I still did.

Random gaping holes in roadways, back streets and footpaths, are a fact of life in Bangladesh. During the incredible downpours of Bangladesh’s monsoon season, they often become dangerously obscured to the inattentive visitor. The caustic effect of corruption and a corresponding lack of enforcement are the greatest contributors to this phenomenon in the capital. I reckon that most people who live in Dhaka have had the unsettling experience of stepping in something foul at one point in another, or at least missing by only the narrowest of margins.

Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to assume the city I currently call home is full of gaping chasms ready to swallow its unwary citizens, but there sure are a lot of them. Since that untraditional Bengali baptism, I’ve noticed that the local papers often publish photographs of these perilous holes, in the hopes that the authorities in charge will finally take the steps to get rid of them before they injure anybody else—local or bideshi.

The current caretaker government in Bangladesh certainly gives me hope that the country’s deep disparities—both physical and economic—will eventually be closed. The administration is currently pursuing a drive to cleanup corruption, and recently added former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to jails that are already overflowing with corrupt businessmen, politicians and whoever the administration deems to be an enemy of the people. Hopefully they’ll continue plugging the other random holes as well.

I’ve been organizing my photos at Larry into easier to browse groups. All the VSO photos are in one place, and I’ve also grouped the travel photography in to one place. I’ve been pretty lucky to see as much as I have in the past few years… I invite you to browse the pictures for more.

I was in Dinajpur’s Parjatan Motel, and there it was. I finally saw this poster on the wall, and what can I say really, it’s true! You should visit Bangladesh before the tourists do. It is an experience you will never forget.

Chittagong – Hillside Kids at Dusk, originally uploaded by Mikey Leung.

It was October 2006, and I’d been in Bangladesh for all of two weeks. As a VSO volunteer, part of our introduction to the country included a weekend exposure visit to volunteers located outside of Dhaka and I settled on Chittagong as my choice.

Bel was there waiting for me on the other end at the bus stop, wearing the same ebullient smile she greeted me with when I’d landed in Dhaka—my journey to see her again was complete. I’d packed light, so instead of heading home we decided to wander off into the back streets of Kulshi, one of Chittagong’s hilly areas.

Eventually we reached the end of a road that became a rough footpath into the hills and into a small slum area of the city. For a moment I hesitated—where were we going? Bel hadn’t wandered here before and I didn’t have confidence in my ability to get around yet.

But I’m glad we didn’t stop. We went over the hill and came into an area with several tin shacks and I immediately felt relieved. Women in colourful saris came out to greet us, holding up their gorgeous babies for the camera, while curious kids followed us around with the normal battery of questions. We came to another hill which took considerable effort to climb up, given there were no steps and recent rains made the hillside more sllippery than I liked given the fact my DSLR was slung around my neck. But in the end we were rewarded with some great views and a memorable Bangladeshi afternoon.

Because of this experience, it makes me entirely sad to hear recent news that over 100 people died in Chittagong due to mudslides caused by monsoonal rains. I’m left wondering if the kids in the above photo are still alive or if their house was completely buried by mud. Experts quoted in the Daily Star attributed the hillslide disasters to indiscriminate hill cutting practised by construction and logging companies. Whatever the reasons, the deaths were of course, entirely preventable. More information resides here. Be warned—the pictures at this link are graphic.

Some of my other, more uplifting pictures from the day can be found here.

Dhaka – Lalmatia’s Minar Masjid, originally uploaded by Mikey Leung.

Lalmatia

Whilst Gulshan – with its Pizza Hut (www.pizzahutbd.com) – has all the modern amenities and conveniences servicing Bangladesh’s upper crust, consider basing yourself in the local enclave of Lalmatia (Bangla for ‘Red Earth’) for a far less sterilized experience of the capital city. Many Bengali non-government organizations situate themselves in this part of the city, with a (good) lot of them offering accommodation at excellent value. You can rest assured knowing your cash is supporting local development agencies.

Besides being close to major city sites, it is the maze-like nature of Lalmatia that makes it a great area to get lost in on morning strolls. Its sounds are vibrant: Vegetable sellers ply the streets, calling their wares to the low-rise apartment blocks, while ubiquitous construction buzz and rickshaw bells add a rhythmic baseline. In the evening, vendors take their candle-lit carts into the streets, selling tasty snacks like chanachur (a mix of peanuts, crunchy noodles and spices) and fushka (a delicious mashed potato and chickpea mix served inside a crispy shell, topped with finely chopped onions, tomatos and green chillis). Finally, the density of mosques here is extraordinarily high: the pre-sunrise prayer call rolls over the neighbourhood like a late-night karaoke competition. By the third day, you should be used to it and sleeping normally again!

Lalmatia’s location also makes it a good location for exploring the city’s more well known sites. You are within walking distance of Bangladesh’s National Assembly building, a uniquely modern Louis Kahn design reflecting the relative youth of Bangladesh as a nation. During the last few years, severe political instability has meant the magnificent building has been terribly underused. Behind parliament you’ll find Zia Uddyan, the mausoleum of Bangladesh’s leading freedom fighter and one of its early presidents, Zia Rahman (or General Zia as he is more popularly known). The Uddyan, or garden, is a rare bit of green space in an otherwise crowded city. During the evening, you’ll see many young couples sitting romantically close together in what is an outwardly conservative culture.

Great shopping is also accessible. At Prabartana, only female customers are allowed to sample the custom tailoring (men can accompany women but men cannot come alone). Aarong, situated just at the edge of Lalmatia, offers quality handicrafts produced by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC, www.brac-aarong.com). Finally, New Market is just a rickshaw ride away, by far and away the city’s biggest and most chaotic shopping bazar. You will find rickshaws all over Lalmatia, but to catch a baby taxi or regular taxi you must make your way to a main road.

Finally, a brief word of caution: Muggings have occurred around the nearby Mohammadpur Market mostly after 23.00. As with any big city around the world, it is unwise to wander the streets after this time.

Hotels

• Roudrachhya (10 rooms) 1/2 Asad Avenue, Block-A, Asad Gate, Mohammadpur; tel: 02 812 3021; email: hasab@bdmail.net; www.hasab.org. Spartan yet inexpensive guest rooms of the HIV/AIDS and STD Alliance Bangladesh (HASAB) offer the chance to learn about development work whilst supporting a local Bengali NGO. Close to major transport and the National Assembly. Tk300 for standard double with bath.

Restaurants

• Shad Tehari Ghar House 2/4, Block C, Lalmatia; tel: 02 911 8695. Lalmatia’s best-kept secret. Kababs, naans and snacks at excellent prices (come at dinner when full menu available). Distinctly hard to find: keep asking your way there. Inexpensive; mains Tk50-80. Open Sun–Sat 11.00-22.00.