dhaka exploring

I was supposed to teach this morning, but the students are at a seminar north of dhaka until saturday night. so i decided to go exploring a little. My foot was feeling better. I was thinking of taking a local transit bus. But then i decided against it since i don't really know which bus to catch, its hard to tell if the buses are transit buses or buses that go outside of dhaka, and you have to run and jump on the bus while its moving. The last part would be kind of hard on my foot. I got a taxi and tried to get to a market called Banga Bazaar. The driver didn't know where that was, so he just dropped me off in the general area of where i thought i wanted to go. Dhaka is a lot quieter right now because a lot of people(1/4 of dhaka) have gone back to their villages for Eid, the celebration of the end of Ramadan.
When i got out of the taxi i just started walking around and taking pictures. i was on a busy street with lots of guys selling fruit, toys, clothes, and pretty much anything you can think of. Here's a guy that was selling lungis.
Then this Bangladeshi guy tried to get my attention and started following me around. He was trying to be my tour guide for the day. I decided to give in and he gave me a tour of the area. We first went out on a small boat and saw the stuff going on out on the water. because everyone is trying to leave Dhaka the boats going up north were absolutely packed. The whole dock we were on was filled to the max with huge boats. The boat below carries 5000-6000 people. There were like 10 other boats like this. All the people buy foot on the dock, set out a blanket on the floor of the boat, and eat/sleep for the 5-10 hour boat ride. Once we got off the dock we started walking over to Hindu Street. This is where the majority of the Hindus live in Dhaka. Although it was really small, it was probably my favorite place in Dhaka so far. There were a couple of Hindu temples and a bunch of craftsmen making various thins. They made bangles, which are white bracelets carved out of conch shells, drums, tombstones, and the coolest was the sculptures.
These guys made huge sculptures of Hindi gods and goddesses. Also, what i liked about this street was it was really narrow and didn't feel like any other part of Dhaka I'd been in.
While we finished looking at hindu street i noticed that i had a fat, painful blister on my foot that i broke. it makes sense since i haven't been walking on it much for the last 6 weeks and now i started walking on it a lot. We went to get some lunch, then i decided to take a CNG back go uttara. The tour guide kind of gaffed my on the price of the tour. I should have guessed that i'd get ripped off when he said i'd pay afterwards. Oh well. At least now i know the area a little better so next time i can go around on my own.
Besides my blister, my foot is doing pretty well. i walked on it quite a bit today and the bone really didn't hurt that much.