One of the first things that I did when I arrived in Dhaka was go to New Market. To get there from where we were staying in Rayer Bazar, we hopped into a rickshaw and headed off through the dirt alleys. The colorful designs of the rickshaw covers were like a sea of snowflakes; each one was unique.
Luckily traffic was light during our trip over because of the massive call to prayer going on. Fridays at 2pm is the time to travel. That is the equivalent of “Sunday morning” for the Muslims here. We passed a few mosques on the way that were apparently past their maximum fire occupancy. People spilled out onto the streets praying.
To the outside world, Bangladesh is most well-known for textile manufacturing. When a batch of shirts is ready to be shipped out to Abercrombie & Fitch, PacSun, or whatever overpriced, Western store hired that particular sweatshop, they are inspected first, for quality insurance. They wouldn't want inferior shirts being sold in their stores, no would they?
Inevitably, there will be a group of shirts that doesn’t make the cut because of some small flaw, and thus are never shipped off to America, or Australia, or wherever. This small flaw could be a misprint, a small tear...
It could even be a red dot!
All you Seinfeld fans out there will get that.
Anyway, those rejected articles of clothing are sold right here, in New Market, for next to nothing. So while you’re paying $100 for a pair of jeans in America, Bangladeshi kids are buying almost the same pair of jeans for less than $1.00.
New Market is place of intense commerce. It's one of the most densely occupied stretches of Dhaka. You will feel like an out-of-place drop in a hot, smelly ocean walking through this market. It's overwhelming but enthralling. Every inch of this market has something interesting happening. Feel free to stop for a Chai or a Lassie and soak it all in. You might feel uncomfortable walking around alone here, but I found Bangladesh to be a friendly, albiet, often uncomfortable place to stroll.
Check out this chaos:
Disclaimer:
You should known that, walking through this market, you will see some pretty horrible things.
The "3rd world" is sort of an antiquated terms today, but if you’ve ever been to a country this far down the socio-economic totem pole, then you may have been confronted by beggars with hideous deformities before. If not, brace yourself for New Market. Sometimes it’s hard to even look at. You’ll see people with missing noses so that their faces look like a skull. You’ll see people with missing eyes. You’ll see people whose knees bend the wrong way. You’ll see beggars laying on a blanket having a seizure, foaming at the mouth, in the middle of a crowd. Nobody will seem concerned though; they will quite literally step over their convulsing bodies to get where they're going.
New Market is a hard place to be. But that’s Bangladesh. These things can be seen all over Dhaka, but I found them to be a bit more concentrated in New Market. I don't want this warning to scare you off though! You should still go! I just want you to understand what you're signing up for.