So basically, this was the best day I have had in Bangaldesh. But there is so much going on that I won't go into that much detail. To start out with, the guide arrived for us promptly at 8:50 in an autorickshaw. With the driver, there were six people that needed to squeeze into this thing, which was surprisingly not difficult. Then we went to the national park to watch the Hoolock gibbons, hoo (haha) were apparently no in the mood to play since we saw none after and hour and a half of wandering around a small forest. Then we ventured to a Kashia village were I got to the start of a new tobacco industry. See, the Kashia, while a tribal village, spend their days farming Betel Leaves which are very addictive, popular, and cancer causing. They also turn your mouth red. It is their major cash crop. We literally saw hundreds of dollars worth of product in heaps laying around the village. We also saw lots of tv antennas and solar power panels. This was not at all what I pictured when the said, "tribal villages." Then we were off to a Manipuri village. Where I saw child labor at its finest (at least I thought I did until we visited the handicraft shop, but that will come in tomorrow's post). We stumbled across a rice ceremony, which was very interesting. For those of you unfamiliar, on his or her first birthday, a Hindu baby has a rice ceremony where they lay out a variety of of objects for the child to grab. Now, this child was crabby and would only grab the leaf that the items were placed on. So the family proceeded to shove items into the child hand, for the most part, it was money. My guess would be that it invalidates the meaning, but what do I know? Then we went to a pineapple plantation, a banana plantation, a gorgeous lake in the hills, a tea estate, a rubber plantation, and finally a tea house where they served us five color tea. Somehow, this man discovered a way to layer the tea so that it has five distinct colors and flavors. http://deepinthedesh.wordpress.com/2006/11/07/five-colours-tea/
Very very weird. We were headed back to Dhaka on the midnight train, so we got a cheap and crappy hotel room in the city, made friends with some other foreigners, and went to a Bangali movie. It was amazing. It was a combination of romance, comedy, thriller, kung-fu flick, and musical bound up in one gloriously sex free two hour extravaganza. Seriously sex free, we couldn't tell which one was the mother and which one was the love interest for half the movie. And there was audience participation. Lots of cheering, jeering, and clapping. It was awesome. The train was not so awesome. It arrived an hour and a half late and I couldn't use the toilet for the whole six hours. I was fairly certain that I was going to be sent back to the US with a kidney infection or something.

Two key additions:
1. We met some people that work for Grameen Bank which is a microcredit bank in Bangladesh. They were German, Australian, Thai, etc. We killed time before our train playing cards and drinking local rice wine that arrived in our recently emptied water bottle. It smelled like kerosene and was too diluted by 7 up to really taste.
2. I encountered the most aggresive beggar child to date. She ran up to me, threw her arms around my waist and gave me a huge hug. I immediately grabbed my purse for safety but she didn't seem interested in it and followed me for several blocks in this position.