Lessons from the road

Both from the sense of a traveller and literally from the road, I learned a few things today.  There is an after market for old buses here in Dhaka.  I am not sure what material they have used to fill in the rust spots and where lights and turn signals may have been but there are many buses on the road and many people on the buses.  And of course just an overabundance of all types using the roads (not necessarily the lanes in their originally prescribed form).

Double decker, single decker, they all move

Another thing to see from the picture above is that if you have invested in a newer vehicle, then getting the after market bumper is a must.

We were caught in bad traffic both ways today from our training at the VSO office and that is the norm if you are on the road any time after 6:30 am.  Our van driver on the way home had three separate horn sounds just for added effect, but essentially the horn is used here about every 5 seconds of driving by every driver that has a horn and depending on number of beeps and length of beeps has a different meaning that I have yet to figure out.

My learning as a traveller revolves around hand gestures.  Giving the thumbs up sign is one of the worst insults you can do here in Bangladesh and should not be used for any other reason.  Lesson learned