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”

Bangladeshis already have a lot of experience with rising waters.

The nation is inundated with monsoonal rain and floods every year.

In the face of this rising tide, one organisation has developed a novel solution.

They’re delivering high quality health care to Bangladesh’s poorest people, in floating hospitals.

For Asia Calling Michael Leung spent a day in one such floating hospital.

Click the play button or watch the videos below to hear/see more. Or click this link to see a few more pictures.

A Hospital Morning

Quick Tour

“It’s about 9.30 am now, and the first patients are just arriving. A woman has come from a nearby village with her baby and the baby has a bad rash on its bottom and its face. They’ll be one of the first people treated this morning.”

The sounds of humming machines and busy nurses and doctors are familiar. But this is no ordinary hospital. It’s also a floating barge.

Called the ‘Lifebuoy Friendship Hospital,’ this 50-meter long vessel sails around Bangladesh’s remote river islands of Bangladesh.

About 3 million people live in these islands, known locally as ‘chors.’ Poverty forces them here, despite the threat of destruction during floods that hit every year.

And if predictions of sea rises due to climate change come true, these floods could be a more permanent reality.

There’s already little support here. No roads, no electricity, and before the floating hospital, certainly no medical facilities service the chors.

Dr. Shaiful Azam is the hospital’s main doctor. He explains that the barge was originally sailed to Bangladesh from France.

There’s an eye clinic, dental facilities, an operating room, a laboratory and even an X-ray machine.

Space is tight, but the hospital is well equipped and well-staffed.

Azam sees up anywhere between 50 and 150 patients in a single day.

He says that most government hospitals suffer from a lack of funds, so qualified staff won’t work there.

“There might be some doctors and specialists in Gaibandha hospital, they should be recruited. This is the usual procedure. But people are not coming here. They are not coming here … they need to earn money. If he is in Dhaka they can earn so much money.”

A lack of manpower isn’t the only problem for those in need of treatment. With no roads and many rivers to cross, the distances they must travel for treatment are great.

Anwara is one such patient. Her foot is so swollen she can barely walk. For treatment at the floating hospital, fellow villagers carried Anwara on a stretcher from her village two hours away.

“We know we can get good treatment at this hospital. If the hospital wasn’t here we would have had to go to the Gaibandha government hospital. We are very poor, and treatment there would be far too expensive for us.”

Had she gone to the government hospital she would have had taken a local transport boat, crossed two rivers and then ridden another eight kilometers in a cycle rickshaw.

All of this adds to the cost of already unaffordable treatment.

At the floating hospital however, Anwara pays only a small fee for her treatment which will probably take three or four days.

The rest of her bill is paid by a major international food corporation, which is finding most of the hospitals operating costs.

In the capital Dhaka, workers are currently putting the final touches on a second floating hospital.

This time, the charitable foundation of an international airline has funded the project. It will cost about $750,000 dollars to build and another $150,000 to run it each year.

Runa Khan is the director of non-profit organisation ‘Friendship’, which established the floating hospitals.

“Health, you see, is one of the most essential components, if not the most essential component, to any development project. Because when you are suffering you cannot do anything. There is no development intervention possible when you are suffering.”

The sufferings are numerous along Bangladesh’s vast river networks, home to some of the world’s poorest. And if global temperatures continue to rise, more snow will melt from the peaks of the Himalayas causing bigger floods downstream in Bangladesh.

And the threat of a rising sea could also force tens of millions from their homes permanently.

This is why boat-based development initiatives are starting to take off in Bangladesh.

Khan says that using corporate donations has made innovative ideas like her hospital possible.

“Also, these corporate companies have another advantage. They are very open to innovative ideas, they have only one target: you should actually be beneficial, it should be useful and you should see the result directly in front of you. This is what the private sector can do, including the NGOs. They can bring out models of innovation which would help the government to replicate models elsewhere. Through these innovative models we can take fund risks.”

The Lifebuoy Friendship Hospital sees over 50,000 patients each year. And the second hospital is expected to serve a similar number in Northern Bangladesh.

Despite the looming specter of climate change, projects like Khan’s show people there are ways to deal with climate problem.

The documentary talks about the lives of a group of women inside a brothel in Patuakhali, a town situated in the Barisal district of Bangladesh. She recently did an interview with the Calgary Eyeopener, whom I used to work for at CBC a long time ago..

And perhaps some of you might be interested in hearing that interview. Here’s the link. You’ll need realplayer to listen to it (annoying I know, but what can you do).

Recently, Forbes.com pronounced Dhaka the world’s second dirtiest city. But according to me, there are still some fun things to do here.

The evidence is clear that money was transferred. Sheikh Selim, Hasina’s brother, told authorities that he passed one third of the money to Hasina in the presence of her sister. And that’s why she’s in jail now, even if the original businessman didn’t name Hasina in the charge originally.

Listen to my piece for more:

I’m getting a pretty good kick working in sound again. It’s an “old” new medium for me, much more visceral and far less removed than photography. Please have a listen to know more.

These villagers are moving a small shop to another location. See more pictures here.

Caught by surprise

Cyclone Sidr tore through Bangladesh late on the evening of November 15th, three days before I was scheduled to return to begin work on the Bradt Bangladesh project. At first, Bel and I weren’t aware of how bad the devastation would be. But as my phone started ringing from news agencies around the world, the true depth of the disaster began to emerge.

On Nov. 20, four days after the cyclone struck, I was sent by Indonesian radio program Asia Calling to cover the disaster from the ground. What I saw was a gradually increasing picture of devastation. Sixty-foot trees were upended and tossed into nearby houses. Village homes, most of which are constructed from bamboo and corrugated tin, were simply blown over or tossed about like tumbleweed. Those situated in the coastal or river areas were also the victims of a tidal surge, which at some places was said to be over 12 or even 20 feet tall.

I can’t imagine the terror these people must have felt for that one, very long evening. One man I met, Alamgir Hossain, said that he and his children took refuge in a tree after a huge tidal surge destroyed their home. After the night had passed, they found themselves 20 feeet above the ground.

Many inhabitants were able to make it to one of Bangladesh’s numerous cyclone shelters. As a result of these shelters, not as many have perished in this cyclone as have in previous disasters. But because Bangladesh’s infrastructure, health and education systems lag far behind, people who live in the cyclone’s path had their homes and livelihoods destroyed, with no safety net to help them recover.

Sundarbans hit

The disaster also calls the Sundarbans one of its victims. As the world’s largest littoral mangrove forest, the Sundarbans is Bangladesh’s prime tourist attraction. Early reports have said that over a quarter of the forest was damaged. Although I have yet to confirm that report, it is well known that several local fishing villages in and around the Sundarbans were badly hit as they bore the brunt of the storm, including Dublar Char, an island on the southern edge of the forest.

As a result of the above, Guide Tours, one of Bangladesh’s most established and best tour operators, has embarked on a relief effort to aid the people of the Sundarbans. They will be using their company boats to deliver immediate aid and long-term assistance to victims located in the Sundarbans. I have republished their relief appeal at Joybangla.info and now ask you, my friends, contacts and previous donors, to consider committing some of your resources to their efforts. Please read their appeal, and if you cannot donate this time, please do forward the message to others.

In a more ideal world, a disaster like this wouldn’t strike a country like Bangladesh twice in one year. Nonetheless, our responsibility to aid those who are suffering cannot be denied. It is my hope that one day the people here will be able to protect themselves from the ravages of a disaster like this.

Why support the Guide Tours’ relief effort?

As we (Bel and I) move in to the role of travel journalists and promoters of Bangladeshi tourism, we have consistently found Guide Tours to provide the most consistent and high level of service for travellers to the Sundarbans, both international and domestic. As we also believe in the majestic beauty of the Sundarbans and its preservation, we believe that our relief efforts, however small, should go towards the preservation of the World Heritage-listed forest whose presence, by slowing the tidal surge of Cyclone Sidr, also saved lives.

If you would like to learn more, please listen to my radio reports, using the below player, or read about Guide Tours’ relief appeal. Otherwise, please read this excellent editorial about the disaster written by a media colleague, Zafar Sobhan. Finally, you can read a previous article of mine on the Sundarbans here.

Every donation helps!

Guide Tours has indicated the following when it comes to usage of the donations:
For your information:
1 US$ = 3-4 Liters of Safe Drinking Water
10 US$ = 20 Kilo of Rice or 10 Kilo of Lentils
100 US$ = one day ship fuel required for transport

***

What will happen with the funds raised?

In order to facilitate donations, we (Belinda Meggitt and Mikey Leung) are accepting funds on behalf of Guide Tours via online payment gateway Paypal. You will need your credit card to donate. Simply click the “Make a Donation” button below and follow the instructions. You will need to register for a PayPal account in order to donate. On Nov. 30, we will pass what we have raised so far to Guide Tours, and on Dec. 7, we will conclude our fundraising and then wire these funds directly to Guide Tours for long-term restoration work in the Sundarbans.

Otherwise you can wire funds to Guide Tours directly using the following info:

Name of the account:
The Guide Tours Ltd.

Name of the Bank:
Standard Chartered Bank
Dhaka. 2, Dilkusha c/a, P.O.Box-169, Dhaka-1000
Swift Code Number: SCBLBDDX
Account number: 01-1104772-01
Comment: Cyclone Relief

For those of you who sent me messages of concern, my apologies for not letting you know about my status sooner! Thanks, it’s good to know people think of you when stuff like this happens.

A visitor to the Bangladesh Travel and Tourism Fair 2007 admires the artwork promoting Bangladeshi tourism. In 2006, there were over 200,000 visitor arrivals to Bangladesh, the majority of whom were business, development or diplomatic workers.

7 Sept 2007 – www.mikeyleung.ca

The world’s largest littoral mangrove forest is in danger, say tourism operators of Bangladesh.

“If we continue to destroy the Sundarbans, then we will not have something that attracts tourists,” says Elisabeth Farhni Mansur of Guide Tours. “And we will destroy our only protection from natural disasters that come from the Bay of Bengal.”

The Sundarbans is also the home of the Bengal tiger, the animal that has widely become the mascot of Bangladesh to the outside world. Hasan Arif Rahman, a researcher with the Sundarbans Tiger Project, echoed Mansur’s message.

“As a top level carnivore, the tiger needs a large area to live,” said Rahman. “Because it is prone to habitat interference, poaching and prey depletion, there is a very high mortality rate.”

Mansur stressed the need for more solid research in the forest. As it stands, the Sundarbans is widely known to have depleted in the last 30 years and is under severe pressure from land shortage and uncontrolled economic interests. The area is also one of the biggest drawcards for international tourists, in a nation that is lowest performer only to Bhutan in South Asia in terms of visitor arrivals.

“Conservation is absolutely required for the Sundarbans forest to survive,” said Mansur. “But without conservation based on solid research, the forest will be finished. In order to have an effective conservation we need to know what to protect and how to do so.”

Mansur presented on the subject at the Tourism and Conservation in Sundarban Forest seminar of the Bangladesh Travel and Tourism Fair 2007. The seminar also had presentations from the Sundarbans Tiger Project, the Bangladesh Cetacean Diversity Project and Guide Tours.

“Unless we understand the tigers and unless we understand their needs, we will not be able to preserve the tigers. We can’t judge any of the management projects unless there is a baseline for measurement. “

Major Zia Uddin, a former freedom fighter who has now worked in the Sundarbans forest for several decades, noted that over 200,000 people are economically dependent on the Sundarbans and need some form of alternative income in order to protect the forest.

“The Sundarbans as you see it today is not the one it used to be. It has been squeezed to a few thousand square kilometers and this is the line we must draw,” he said. He also expressed dismay at the state of enforcement in the forest. “It is so unfortunate that the illegal wood logging, killing of wildlife is not in front of blind eyes, but it is in broad daylight.”

The Sundarbans is also host to several rare and important species, including Bangladesh’s most dangerous snake, the monocellate Cobra. There have also been sightings of other rare species such as clawless otters and elusive barking deer, and several species of dolphin that were, until only very recently, not known to exist in Bangladesh.

“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.”

I’ve long been watching the work of Shahidul Alam, an acclaimed Bangladeshi photojournalist and head of the Dhaka-based DRIK Photo Agency.

The agency uses the benefits of technology to broadcast its messages to the world audience. In a vivid contrast to the dormancy being displayed by Bangladesh’s mainstream media, blogs and other online media have been more vocal than ever in highlighting human rights issues in Bangladesh and the plight of its poorest people.

On Tuesday, September 4, DRIK will open a new photographic exhibition called “Bangladesh Now,” which will present some strikingly poignant images presenting the appalling conditions many people suffer under because of the caretaker government’s misdeeds. See this link for some of the best in online photojournalism.

I’ll be at the opening tomorrow at 5pm. See you there?

Drik Gallery
House 58, Road 15A (New), Dhanmondi Residential Area, Dhaka 1209, Bangladesh
Tel: (880-2) 9120125, 8123412, 8112954, Fax: (880-2) 9115044
http://www.drik.net