Cox’s Bazar City and Beach. Long red line represents a length of 90 Km. Short red line represents the long axis of St. Martin’s Island (5 Km).
Enterococci Concentrations Measured along Cox’s Bazar Beach. The red line is 25 Km in length. Yellow is 100-800, orange is 800-1600, red-orange is 1600-2400, and red is >2,400 MPN/100 ml.
Multi-purpose municipal building in the center of St. Martin's Island. First floor is a mosque, the second floor is a school, and the third floor is a police station. The whole thing is a typhoon shelter for the residents during typhoon season (April - June).
Island of Cherubdib, 1 Km south of St. Martin's Island. You can walk around Cherubdib in about 20 min. Great snorkeling when the water is not stirred up by waves. You can rent a fast boat with a driver and guide to take you here for the afternoon for about 20 dollars.
Coral surface on Cherubdib. Lots of little tidal pools filled with crabs and bright colored fish.
Traditional fishing boat on St. Martin's Island.
Hills along the southern tip of Bangladesh along the Naf River which separates Bangladesh from Myanmar.
Forests of Coconut trees inland from Cox's Bazar and near the hilly region bordering Myanmar.
Fishing boats along the beach 20 Km south of Cox's Bazar city.
Residential area for locals along nothern segment of Cox's Bazar beach where we found the highest concentrations of Enterococci (>3,000 MPN/100 ml).
Beautiful forest likely protecting beach from erosion and communities from Typhoon flooding.
Big modern hotels springing up along Cox's Bazar beach in recent years.
Last week I went to the Bay of Bengal for a break from mapping community wells in Araihazar. One of our field assistants, Shovon, came with me as my guide since he is from that area and is apparently related to every 1 in 3 locals. We flew one hour on a twin engine airplane from Dhaka airport to the beach city of Cox’s Bazar in the southeast corner of Bangladesh, close to the borders with both India and Myanmar (Burma). On our trip we brought some extra luggage consisting of an incubator, a UV lamp, a cooler, nutrient broth for growing bacteria and a hand held GPS. The cooler wasn’t for beer (you can’t get that in Bangladesh L), it was for river and sea water samples along the 70 Km stretch of sandy beach extending south from Cox’s Bazar to the Naf River which marks the border with Myanmar. We checked into a nice hotel (50$/night) and then took rickshaws and baby taxis (3 wheel gas powered carts) up the beach taking samples and interviewing locals about where their sewage went. The beaches are really beautiful. We found an area away from the hotels, still in the city of Cox’s Bazar, that had a beautiful forest on the beach and in between the trees were hundreds of tin huts where people lived. Although they live the same primitive way as most of the people in Bangladesh (latrines, shallow wells, cooking with cow dung), they live on one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve seen. I felt envious. They were laid back and friendly and didn’t seem to want anything from us (unlike many experiences in Araihazar, close to the capital city of Dhaka). They fished in the sea and played soccer on the beach in the evenings, surrounded by a largely unspoiled natural place (the city of Cox’s Bazar is a glaring exception). We decided they were hippies, living on the beach in tin huts.
The following day we drove south in a hired baby taxi along the endless beach. We took samples from the ocean and rivers discharging into it, and caught crabs with local kids, who thought we were a lot of fun to have around. Looking at a map, we decided to go back to Cox’s Bazar along the hilly inland route close to the Myanmar border. We had heard that the hills had robbers in them and wasn’t safe. Our driver however, was from Ukhiya, a little town on the way, and he wasn’t concerned about safety. So along we went through rolling hills, coconut trees and rice paddies. We passed many Buddhist temples and monasteries, something you don’t see in the rest of Bangladesh. We also passed some UN refugee camps which were likely for people fleeing Myanmar. Hills are rare in Bangladesh, so it was great to see some vertical scenery again. As the sun was getting low we reached Ukhiya, the half way point back to Cox’s Bazar and our driver’s hometown. It was a big bustling long bazar filled with traders, customers and men just getting out of the mosque wearing their long white cloaks and flat white hats. When we reached the end of the bazar, our driver turned around and started driving back, thinking we wouldn’t notice. After several direct questions and insisting on straight answers, we discovered that our driver didn’t actually know how to get from Ukhiya (his home town) to Cox’s Bazar, where he presently lives and works! He did have another idea how to get back, but first we needed to retrace the last 30 minutes of driving.
It was getting dark, we were near the Myanmar border amidst sparsely populated hills and forests and our driver was lost! Perhaps we could knock on the door of a Buddhist monastery and ask them for a room. Eventually we found a road that he felt pretty confident would take us back. It’s hard to get straight answers in Bangladesh. Many people here have a combination of overconfident bravado, combined with tendency of telling the boss whatever he wants to hear.
For example.
Question: “are we lost?”.
Answer: “no boss, ok”.
Meaning: we are lost.
This kind of thing happened over and over again. People would essentially lie to us to placate us while not being able to do what we hired them for. Eventually we made it back just after dark and I was glad we had done the trip. There was one moment that I held my breath when our driver rammed through a crowd of people on the road who were backing up a truck to turn it around. They proceeded to beat our baby taxi and try and beat our driver before he plowed through them further and kept going. He lost his tip for that, and I told him so. I took GPS readings and plotted the points on Google Earth to make sure we were headed in the right direction. We ended the day at KFC eating a family meal for four between the two of us (we hadn’t eaten anything that day).
The next day we left our microbiology lab supplies at the hotel, with a bell hop trained to count the Enterococci in our water samples, and boarded a bus for a 2 hour trip to the docks on the Naf River along the Myanmar border to take a ship to St. Martin’s Island, the furthest southern point of Bangladesh. The bus looked and felt like something out of post apocalyptic movie. Imagine a bus that zombies had been living in for two years and driving around randomly colliding with trees and houses. I popped my Dramamine pills and went to sleep since it was still only 6:30 am – the middle of the night! Along the Naf River there were some high sharp hills in the Bangladesh side and across the river (south) there was the long Myanmar coast with even higher hills rising up behind the fenced beaches with watch towers every 2 Km or so. It looked far less populated than the Bangladesh side.
The boat ride out into the Bay of Bengal was great! I got to sleep some more. And a lot of people stared at me and wanted their pictures with me, something you get used to, after a while here. They think I’m a Hollywood star. I met a kid who wanted to be a physicist and had been to the Netherlands with the Bangladesh math team to compete in the world math Olympics. He was probably the only person I met who was not disappointed when I told him I was a scientist and not a movie star. He spoke perfect English. I told him I don’t know too much physics and the physics I do use is more like fluid mechanics, like Bernoulli’s law. To this he replied “which of Bernoulli’s laws? The Bernoulli-Hess Law? And he rattled off a few more. I was thinking “Bernoulli had more than one Law?!”. But I changed the topic. Gifted high school students annoy me.
St. Martins Island is a coral island that has been tectonically uplifted so that the coral forms the base of this low lying sandy island. The beaches are stunning, especially on Cherubdib, a smaller island just south of St. Martin’s. I tried some snorkeling here, but the water was too cloudy and stirred up by the waves to see much. You can walk around Cherubdib in about 20 min. Toward the ocean the beaches transition to flattened coral pocketed with depressions filled with water teaming with fish and crabs. There are some little trees and tall grass in the middle and piles of coconuts ready to sell to tourists. Apparently there used to be a family that lived on this little island, but the government forcefully evicted them because they were charging tourists too much for coconuts and snorkels.
Back on the main Island of St. Martin’s we had showers before heading for dinner. At first I didn’t want to shower because the position of the pumps and water hoses made it clear that the shower water was derived from a pond with a layer of scum forming on it. After the heat of the day and the salty water I thought it wouldn’t hurt to quickly rinse off. This was a mistake. After my shower I could smell fish everywhere I went. And not just fish, but rotten fish. Rotten fish is a delicacy in Bangladesh. They sell it all along the otherwise beautiful beaches. I just about threw up and passed out whenever I smelled the rotten fish. In spite of soap and shampoo, this is how I smelled for the next 24 hours until I got back to the relatively nice hotel and facilities in Cox’s Bazar, although it was somewhat diluted form the pure rotten fish. St. Martin’s Island is a paradise, but it is more like camping in paradise contaminated with some rotten fish and other smells, than staying in nice, clean resort with all the amenities.
We had paid a guy to take us to the Island of Cherubdib. In keeping with Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad, I will call him Ferguson. Ferguson was a gracious host and offered to stay on Cherubdib as long as we liked that day. The funny thing about Ferguson is that after he brought us back to St. Martin’s he followed us around the Island for the rest of our stay. In the evening Shovon went onto the Balcony for a smoke and Ferguson was down in the courtyard (a chaotic one with a scummy pond, but still it’s the best word) calling for Shovon to come down and watch Cricket with him. Shovon had already established that he was likely related to Ferguson since they were from the same home district, so he just laughed. I thought it was weird, but didn’t think much more of it until we were on our way to dinner across the Island and who should appear in the rickshaw behind us? Ferguson smiling and chattering to Shovon. When they told us that the dinner would take 40 minutes to BBQ the Coral Fish we had ordered, I went for a walk on the beach amongst 30 or so wild dogs all sleeping in the cool sand and howling fiercely at me if I got too close. In the dark I could make out someone walking towards me. It was Ferguson still smiling! I had to use my few Bangla words to say “you, stay here” and I walked on. I can’t think about coral reefs and enjoy the stars when I’m being suffocated. He stayed. The next day as we were boarding our ship who do you think boarded the ship with us? Ferguson! At this point I was angry with him for not leaving us alone. He sat next to me for half an hour as I was trying to read and enjoy my last few hours of vacation expecting us to have a conversation. Eventually Ferguson left. I said goodbye genuinely cheerful.
The next morning we rode a wild bus ride 14 hours back to the capital of Dhaka. The bus drivers in Bangladesh have a death wish for their passengers, themselves and anyone within sight. They spend about half their time driving on the right side of the road (the wrong side in this former British Colony), blaring their horn intimidating every smaller vehicle to exit the road quickly. When another bus or big truck comes they swerve wildly back and forth to try to convince the other driver that they intend to drive straight towards them if they don’t get back on their own side of the road or preferably leave the road. Two hours out of Dhaka our bus broke down in a thunder storm with lots of lightning, given shelter in metal huts, and then picked up by a another post-apocalyptic zombie bus for a bumpy ride into Dhaka. Strangely at this moment I couldn’t feel happier. I had survived the trip and I had a feeling of comradery with the other disgruntled passengers who were also just happy to be finally getting home. I didn’t even get car sick too bad! I had dinner at Pizza Hut with Babu our driver, and told him all about my adventures near Myanmar over strawberry milkshakes. It’s back to Araihazar now for more mapping of tubewells, geology and water levels.
