Getting to Dhaka
The stress of finals was barely in the rearview when the stress of getting my Bangladeshi visa started in full force. I underestimated the time it would take to get approved, because other Southeast Asian countries I've been to had such a quick and easy visa process. The few days before my flight were spent on the phone with the consulate, and praying that my visa would overnight ship in time. It ended up arriving about two hours before I needed to be at the airport. I have never been more happy to see anything in my life than I was at that FedEx envelope holding my passport and visa.
Then it was time to settle in for the 15 hour flight from LAX to Guangzhou, China. The flight left late, which would mean a tight connection in Guangzhou. During the flight, I caught up on all of the new movies that a law school schedule hasn't let me see.
In Guangzhou, the layover time had been eaten up with the first flight delay, and by the time I made it via shuttle to transfers, they were already boarding. I still had to go through another security, and I was sweating (maybe from the stress of a close connection, maybe because it was 85 degrees F in the middle of the night, who knows). After a light jog through that airport and up the tarmac stairs, we made that flight.
After landing in Dhaka, my friend had to get a tourist visa on arrival. The process was straight-forward enough, but really time-consuming. After that, we had to go through immigration, where they didn't seem to care at all about my hard-earned visa--they barely glanced at it. Trying to get to our luggage meant wading into a throng of men around the luggage carousel (the few women there were waiting at the edge for the men to grab it). After many fruitless attempts to locate the bags, we were informed that they were stuck in China for a "security check," and wouldn't arrive for 24 hours. By this time it was 1 am in Dhaka, but our driver and my contact at Winrock were cheerful and friendly as they transported us to our Airbnb. Ramadan has just begun here, so people's schedules are a bit different, and our hostess was still up waiting for us. She was going to get up again around 4 for a meal before sunrise.
So far, my first day has been spent sleeping, reading up on Ramadan and Bangladeshi culture, and venturing out to the grocery store. Hopefully I'll get my luggage later tonight.