Hey, guys. I’ve been attempting to write this post but end up procrastinating because writing about this trip is really hard. Everyone has asked me about going to Bangladesh for the first time, but my only answer for it was that it was surreal. The entire time I was there, it didn’t feel like it was actually happening.
It was such a personal experience that I don’t know how to convey it into words.
I decided that I would start easy and work my way up. Expect a lot of long-winded travel posts. I plan on writing an expectation vs. reality video discussing everything people told me about Bangladesh versus what I actually saw. I also filmed a video of packing for a month long trip in a carry on and started outlining a “How To Stay Healthy While Traveling In Asia,” talking about all the medicine I packed and precautions I took in order to not get sick (I didn’t have a single allergy or asthma problem while I was there, thankfully.) There’s a lot in store for you, but it’ll take me awhile to get them all out there.
Anyway, I’ll stop rambling. Here are three (of many) takeaways from my trip to Bangladesh.
//My World Is So Incredibly Big
I think all first generation Americans know how big their world is. Being a child of immigrants, you are always reminded of the life your parents had. But there’s a difference between knowing it and actually seeing it.
I didn’t really feel this way until I was in Chittagong. The first city I was in was Dhaka, which is the capital of Bangladesh. It was like every other big capital city in that there were a lot of people and shops and traffic. Chittagong is a coastal city. The only way I can describe it is to say that it looks like all the documentaries you see about India.
You know, the super over exaggerated ones that only show poor people and don’t show any other part of the country. Yeah, those. It was very different. The entire time I was thinking about how my mom grew up there and how her world was so small and that she managed to escape it. My dad’s world was always big. He fled the military and moved to Thailand (completely different story) and grew up traveling around.
I don’t know how to describe it, but I saw how small people’s worlds were. I saw so many people who would be stuck in the same position for the rest of their lives. It was eye-opening to see. (Even though I already cognitively knew that)
I actually enjoyed Chittagong much more than Dhaka. There was something very beautiful about it. I remember riding a rickshaw with my cousin looking around in wonder. I told him it was beautiful, to which he responded, “How can you find this beautiful? There’s so much dust and pollution.” And I explained to him how everything is so different from what I’m used to and there’s something beautiful about that.
“You’ll see,” I told him because he’s a man and he has opportunities to travel and experience that feeling in person.
Before this trip, I had never been outside the country. My first time on a plane was only a few weeks before. At that point, I had traveled to the other side of the planet. My world got infinitely bigger, but I also saw how big my world already was in my childhood home in the suburbs of Atlanta.
Again, I already knew my world was big. But I saw it.
//There Are Different Depths When It Comes To Love
If you are a child of immigrants, you understand the feeling of loving people you’ve never met.
My experience in Dhaka was completely different from my experience in Chittagong. I grew up with most of the cousins I have in Dhaka, so spending time with them wasn’t new. My cousins in Chittagong were pretty much strangers to me because most of our interactions have been online.
My time in Chittagong was spent mainly with my mom’s siblings and their kids. I was worried that it would be super awkward and uncomfortable staying with them, but we all clicked almost immediately. It’s amazing how much connection I felt with them after only twelve days.
I was surprised at how much I was going to miss them at the end of the trip because I loved them so much. (I cried on my last day there) I was finally able to feel the familial love that comes with actually being together instead of on two different sides of the planet.
Then, of course, I flew back to Dhaka to spend my last two days before my three flights back to America. Those two days were so fun, but I had to say goodbye to everyone.
Right before going to the airport, my mom’s best friend gave me the tightest hug. She and my mom first met when they immigrated to Atlanta, so she was always there for the first half of my life. She and my mom were pregnant together.
She sobbed into my shoulder, “I love you so much.”
That made me think about how deep her love to me was. The kind that comes with being there, not from blood.
I am one of those people who doesn’t believe that blood makes a family. My family is huge and I have a lot of second and third cousins in America who aren’t as closely related to me by blood, but I am just as close with them as I am with my immediate family.
There are so many people who identify family based on how close they are by blood. That bothers me a lot, but I did see the power of being blood-related to someone while I was in Bangladesh.
The connection with my cousins isn’t deeper than the love my Khalamoni (my mom’s friend) has for me, but it was a lot more instant and effortless than the love that comes with knowing someone for a long time. 
I’m not sure if I explained that well at all, but do you catch my drift?
//Culture And Nationality Are Percieved Differently There Compared To The U.S.
At the second of three wedding I went to, my cousin’s cousin (I’m not related to him) asked me if I was going to have an American wedding with the white dress and everything. I told him, “No. I’m going to have a Bengali wedding.”
He said, “But you’re American. You’ve never even been here before. Why would you have a Bengali wedding?”
I then went to explain to him how everyone in America is from a different country and we still follow our old cultures. I’m never referred to as an American. I told him that we’re all identified as Mexican-American or Muslim-American and explained that many people still speak their parents’ language and follow the same customs.
I don’t think I explained it very well. It’s hard to describe a multicultural country to someone who’s never seen one before. Everyone I saw in Bangladesh was Asian. Even if they weren’t Bengali, they were from an Asian country, which is very different from my upbringing in Atlanta, so I told him about how cool it was to live in a place with so many different types of people.
Even so, it was great to be just American for a while. Not everyone shared my friend’s sentiment and considered me just as Bangladeshi as them, but it was nice to have my identity as an American not be questioned(something that has been far few and in between in the last year) and to be able to answer “I’m from Atlanta” without having the question “Where are you really from?” thrown at me.
The pictures above were more of the “artsy” photos I took while I was in Bangladesh. This seemed as good a post as any to put them in. I hope you all enjoyed this post and aren’t sick of all the travel writing just yet. There’s a lot more to come.
Where are you from? What was your experience going to the place your parents are from for the first time?