On December 23rd, David and I got ready for a day of mammoth shopping. Yup, we geared up with a supply of water, plenty of taka, a backpack to stash our stuff, and of course some goodies to keep us going! Several CNG’s and taxi’s passed us up, not wanting to make the trek across town to the fair grounds. Finally we found an honest CNG driver who would use the meter (very unusual) if we would pay him an extra 10 taka. We hopped in and made it over to my old “hood” in no time and only had to pay 60 taka (less than a dollar)!

Standing in the women’s entrance line, I pushed my way to the tiny window and asked for two tickets. Considering that the entrance fee is only 20 taka, I think it’s more about crowd control than making a profit! We made our way through the big gates, trampling over millions of entrance tickets. This trade fair is set up every year with several Asian countries participating. You can find almost anything there; carpets, appliances, clothes, jewelry, handicrafts…..and the list goes on! So we set out to explore; making our way around the giant circle of stalls. David bought me some absolutely gorgeous pashmina shawls, and we rounded out our buying with some ties, nose rings, marble glasses and a carpet.

We were pretty hungry by noon so we headed to the restaurant part of the fair. We wandered into an area set up with chairs and tables and within five seconds one of the owners had grabbed David’s arm and was pulling him inside. Now there were about three or four “restaurants” set up there, each basically serving the same fare. We opted for some chicken and naan, turned down the scary cucumber salad and I enjoyed a Slice drink (a mango drink that brought back many memories of boarding school and India), while David relied on his trusty Pepsi. The photos above show David at our table, a scary bottle of who-knows-what, and our scrawny chicken and naan. It was really hard to find the meat on those bones!

We really enjoyed the time spent together browsing the stalls and finding some interesting items! This marble phone was hard to pass up. Notice on the clock that the baby’s head is not attached. In fact, the head rocks back and forth with each second! A little scary…

All in all, we enjoyed our time at the fair, and once we were done there, we headed out to Bashundara City, the largest “mall” (I hesitate to call it that!) in Dhaka to finish off our shopping, and that is an entirely different story!