~courtesy Moshiur R. Khandaker, Chief Executive, SAFE~

International Coastal Cleanup 2006: Bangladesh, originally uploaded by coastalcleanup.

SAFE has undertaken Cleanup Bangladesh Campaign in close cooperation with Clean Up The World campaign & Project AWARE. As part of this campaign Cleanup for Earth day will be held on April 22, 2009. Volunteers from different organization will be participating in this year’s beach and underwater Cleanup as part of an earth day activity at Cox’s bazar, St.Martin and Kuakata. It’s a great way for volunteers of all ages to learn about how to reduce the impact of waste and make a real difference in conserving the environment.

As a member of the ‘Clean Up The World’ campaign, our national efforts will be recognized internationally. Supported by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Clean Up The World is a global environmental initiative that attracts an estimated 35 million participants in more than 110 countries each year. To learn more about Clean up the World visit their website or the SAFE website.

Thousands of people across the globe will be having fun and getting wet to celebrate cleanup for Earth Day. A special SAFE team consists of doctors, first aiders & rescue personnel will be formed to ensure the health, safety and medical emergency of all the participants.

The main attractions of this event are following:

• Beach rubbish collection
• Separate recyclable rubbish
• Remove harmful marine debris
• Collect rubbish survey information
• Provide volunteers with a project AWARE Certificate of Recognition and more…

Thanks in advance for your co-operation. Your support in the Earth day activity will be highly appreciated.

Safety Assistance For Emergencies (SAFE); a leading voluntary organization born in Bangladesh protecting human lives, providing emergency medical aid to victims of any disaster and helping people avoid, prepare for, and cope with emergencies. Also strives to improve basic health, safety and environment issues in Bangladesh.

~story by Mikey Leung~

After visiting similar hospitality projects in Cambodia and China, I’m pleased to share what I believe is the first organisation I know of that explicityly brings disadvantaged youth into Bangladesh’s hospitality trade.

The Good Morning Guesthouse is now open in Banani, at Apt B5. Hse 5, Rd 10/A, Block H. Reservations can be made by e-mail to reservations[AT]guesthouse-dhaka.com or by telephone at +880 (2)886 0050. Click here for more information.

When I first encountered this concept in Cambodia, I found it a real inspiration to be dining in a restaurant that took Phnom Penh’s most disadvantaged youth and provided them with a roof, culinary and service training and a real opportunity to take hold of their lives. The food and drinks were excellent, the prices offered great value, and the service was genuine. It is now my personal hope that the folks at Vialisa are able to achieve similar successes in their work.

Judging by the pictures, the facilities appear to be basic but comfortable. The three-room facility has prices ranging from Tk1,200 for a single to Tk2,400 for a double, including breakfast and wireless internet. It’s certainly one of the cheaper places you can get in the Gulshan/Banani area, and you do benefit from the knowledge that your money is supporting disadvantaged youth to make a better living for themselves.

This is exactly the kind of tourism and hospitality that captures the essence of the Responsible Travel philosophy and is precisely the opportunity Bangladeshi tourism companies should exploit in developing the seedling tourism industry.

~story by Mikey Leung~

At the Guide Tours’ Hillside Resort, you awake to a stunning view of hills poking out from the clouds. See more photos of Bandarban here.

It’s absolutely outrageous to say this, but be prepared to be followed by the police where ever you go while visiting one of Bangladesh’s most attractive destinations, second only to the Sundarbans.

It happened to a group of us last week (all foreign tourists). Before we even knew it, we were being followed by three uniformed police officers carrying aging rifles. They were not aggressive or overbearing, in fact they were usually quite kind and curious like all Bangladeshis are, and they were simply doing their job. Nonetheless, we didn’t formally request their presence, but we got it whether we wanted it or not. It did sour our experience of Bandarban—I felt bad mostly for my group.

The bottom line:

We do not want to scare anyone with this article, as Bandarban is one of Bangladesh’s must-see destinations. We simply want intrepid travellers to be prepared for what they will encounter.

What the casual visitor is not initially aware of is that Bandarban is deemed an “insecure area” by the Bangladeshi government. Insurgent rebel groups are said to be operating in the remote parts of the jungle, despite the fact there was a peace treaty signed 10 years ago. Click here to read more details about the treaty.

Meanwhile there was a kidnapping last year a remote area of the CHT, and that is supposedly why tourists must now suffer with what seems like insane security precautions while visiting this highly scenic and adventurous destination.

And that is why we’d like to provide you with some suggestions when dealing with the security forces.

DO:
* Be aware of your influence on the situation, both positive and negative. You attract more attention and profile when you stay at Guide Tours’ Hillside Resort than if you stay in town. Because of an armed robbery in 2004, extra police have been stationed around the resort, permanently. Although it is safe now, the added presence means that when you want to walk around the resort to the neighbouring villages you must be accompanied by police, depending on the conspicuousness of your group (i.e. all caucasian people, or based on gender). Sometimes the accompanying police are plain-clothed, other times they are uniformed.

DO:
* Try and request a plain-clothed officer when visiting local villages, in order to minimize your impact. When visiting Hatibandha, nearby the resort, only one officer came with us. Be aware that sometimes officers are plain-clothed, for that matter! (The important one with the power is usually carrying the two-way radio.

DO:
* Practise patience and tolerance with security forces as the guys on the ground are just trying to do their jobs. If/when you must have armed, uniformed officers with you, please be patient and be prepared to subsidize their transport on your tour arrangements.

DO:
* Guide Tours’ Hillside Resort staff can usually work out your arrangements for you. If armed police must accompany you to a local village (usually handled on a case-by-case basis), ask that they wait a ways back as you must visit the village chief’s home before hospitality will be extended to you by the villagers.

DO:
* Work within the constraints specified by police. This is for your benefit and for the other travellers who follow in your footsteps. By hindering security forces from doing their jobs, you could potentially ruin access for future travellers, and decrease the opportunities for increased exposure to the situation that hill people face.

DO:
* Help us create enough support for the idea of a locally-based “tourist police,” who are specially assigned to work with tourists and the local security forces, so that our visitors can have the best experience possible in Bandarban. Charge a nominal fee under some kind of organized structure.

And here’s a video of a fantastic view:

~story and photo by Belinda Meggitt~

Originally published in the New Age, Feb. 13, 2008. More photos available here.

For a country that blossoms with national pride, the majority of Bangladeshis fail to respect the country’s natural wonders.

St Martin’s Island, where once thousands of migratory birds sought refuge, turtles laid eggs and coral grew, now bustles with migratory tourists and growing piles of plastic. Economic development drives tourism, but what tourists and hotel owners fail to acknowledge is their impact. The gold rush of tourism to St Martin’s Island will be short-lived unless changes are made immediately.

Only a few years ago, the island was an ecological refuge. ‘It was the best place for turtle nesting and even schoolchildren protected the nests,’ recalls Elisabeth Mansur, Chief Executive Officer of Guide Tours. ‘The biodiversity was truly amazing.’

Tourists were still able to visit, but it was a form of adventure tourism. The rocky journey – via a country boat crammed with the islands supplies – limited the number of tourists, as did the one beach hut. But the tourists that came were rewarded by natural beauty, an experience that didn’t resemble a Thai beach Mecca. Now, four large vessels ply the crossing daily during high season. Most tourists stay anywhere from three hours to a little over 24. It’s not hard to imagine why the island is disappearing in a state of disrepair.

Mansur says eco-tourism was discussed at length before the hotel explosion in 2005. There was a plan to maintain St Martin’s biodiversity.

‘Private industry sat for many months making a good development plan of how soft-ecotourism and responsible travel could develop,’ says Mansur. ‘But that’s when the government went ahead and opened the land rights for people from the mainland.’

The tourist gold rush was funded from the outside, and it looks just like that. As you approach the island, garish concrete monoliths litter the beach side dwarfing the small unobtrusive local bamboo village huts. Internally, hotel rooms resemble prison cells with stains up and down the walls, but it is nothing a good paint job couldn’t fix.

Nonetheless most hotel owners refuse to focus on upkeep when hotel rooms are fully booked during the peak season. They then leave the island with their pockets bulging after just four months’ work and return next year to repeat the cycle.

This same lack of care permeates the environment. Hotels are not managing their wastewater, causing damage to fragile coral reefs and marine biodiversity. Plastic bottles and litter float in the ocean or lay strewn on the beach. The scene resembles a battlefield where dead carcasses lie, yet these ones don’t decompose. A local shop owner stated: ‘There is a lot of plastic waste and it can’t be broken down, we all know it causes a lot of environmental damage.’

A change in wildlife patterns is a symbol of that. ‘There used to be a lot of migratory birds,’ recalled the shop owner, ‘but now they don’t come due to the number of crows.’ Crows are scavenger birds that reflect the extent of rubbish polluting the island.

Turtle nesting has likewise decreased. When questioned, fisherman and local shop owners all spoke of the marked decrease in numbers. Among the reasons proposed were the increase use of dragnets by fisherman that turtles get stuck in, hotel lights on the beach that deter nesting and even large tourist boats interrupting their path. No matter what the proposed reason, an easy hypothesis to conclude is that tourism is having an impact –– an impact that will permanently change St Martin’s Island, unless the form of tourism changes.

Amongst this destructive development, locals are forced to maintain their business. Largely excluded from the tourist labour force, they continue with their traditional fishing lifestyle. Fisherman use dragnets in a desperate search for fish and it is not uncommon to see small sharks, even endangered hammerhead sharks, for sale at the local market.

Tourist inflation is also evident. Local village children are now begging for Tk 100 rather than one, a familiarity that stings like tourism in Nepal. Yet a little initiative can go a long way and some children even offer their services as guides, or their boats to go fishing.

Tourism development can be a positive force, but it has to be managed appropriately. ‘You don’t have to discourage people not to go, but they should know what’s happening,’ states Mansur.

Responsible travel is an approach to travel that minimises negative environmental and cultural impacts, but encourages an understanding and transference of knowledge. It is an approach to travel that is sustainable and will bring lasting benefits to Bangladesh’s economy. It is not a quick financial fix. As a stance against the lack of responsible travel witnessed in St Martin’s, Guide Tours has recently removed it from their packages.

What stance will you take?

While the beach at Cox’s Bazaar becomes more and more crowded with people this tourist season, very few know visitors know that there is a refugee camp not far from Bangladesh’s much-heralded beach paradise.

And the people at this camp need help. World Food Programme Volunteer Lindy Hogan writes:

As most of you know, I work with Burmese refugees who are living in
two camps near the Bangladesh-Burma border (approx 27,000 refugees). Recently a library has been established in each camp but the problem is that they hardly have any books in them!

So I’m writing to request for book donations. Any type of material would be useful – kids books, novels, educational materials, textbooks, magazines etc – so long as it is culturally appropriate.

English or Bengali, new or second hand is fine.

Thought I’d get this out as I know a few of you are coming down this way in the next couple of months – so you can leave books with me then.

Thanks for your help on this everyone.

Cheers,
Lindy

VIDA Volunteer
World Food Programme
Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

To contact Lindy, please write to her by e-mail letting her know of your visit: lindymay [AT] gmail.com.

Bangladesh will become a traveler’s destination, but not the way you imagine, argues Mikey Leung.

This article originally published in the Daily Star’s Forum Magazine at this weblink.

The number of reasons that travelers avoid Bangladesh cannot even be counted on two hands.

On foreign television screens, riots and floods are the leading actors; their supporting cast is no less extraordinary. Pseudo-Islamic extremism garners a major role, while abject poverty plays like a forgettable soundtrack. Interminable corruption adds to the atmosphere of a Shakespearean tragedy: the characters always suffer inescapably under the weight of their own extraordinary gluttony.

For a country whose world reputation seems to be constantly drowning, it is hard to imagine that Bangladesh will one day become a traveler’s destination on par with its neighbours. How is this possible? In five years, the Bangladesh travel industry will be totally unrecognisable compared to the industry of today.

Tourism in Bangladesh is inevitable

Consider the Chinese tourism experience, a path this nation already treads. Little more than 10 years ago, Chinese domestic tourism was infantile, in the same way that Bangladeshi tourism is now embryonic. Powered by an upwardly mobile middle class, the industry evolved new tourism products while promoting existing destinations. The market was literally captive: very few Chinese had the means to travel outside China. Even today, very few do.

Even if Bangladesh’s tourism market wasn’t growing, worldwide travel trends, by virtue of their exponential increase, would inevitably prop it up. This is because intrepid travelers can and do hunger for new cultures and unvisited frontiers, as it is in the adventurer’s nature to seek both the exotic and the unknown. Each year, more and more travelers are willing to look over India’s border and discover what this country is really about. Seen in this light, Bangladesh is truly an unexplored treasure.

Responsibility lies with operators to drive the market

That being said, it is totally unrealistic to expect Cambodia’s overnight success or even India’s robust growth. The Sundarbans, as Bangladesh’s prime attraction, is simply not spectacular or iconic enough to prop up an entire industry the way that Angkor does. Nevertheless, local operators are now aware that people, both Bengali and otherwise, want to take holidays from their high-pressure urban lifestyles, and that untrammeled beauty lies just outside the atrocious conditions of Dhaka.

Like it or not, Bangladesh’s interim government now provides travelers with a form of relative stability, which goes a long way when planning trips inside the desh. But as the government remains unaccountable to its people, we cannot look to Parjatan, the national tourism organisation, for stewardship. The responsibility to manage and drive the industry forward lies squarely on the shoulder of Bangladesh’s tourism operators, who also have the most to gain from this growth.

In order for local operators to increase their share of the meagre but lucrative inbound market — i.e. the market that spends dollars, euros and pounds instead of taka — a change in priorities is required first. Marketers must realise that Bangladesh can only promote itself as an alternative travel destination and on the grounds of poverty alleviation, using means that go far beyond the slogan: “Visit Bangladesh Before Tourists Come” [sic].

“Responsible Travel” (RT) — www.responsibletravel.com — is a philosophy that is redefining the way people travel around the world, and the term is much more broad and encompassing than the well-battered word “eco-tourism.” Nowadays, under the auspices of RT, the discerning consumer wants a holiday that minimises his/her impact on the environment and detrimental influence on local cultures, while simultaneously enlightening themselves about the world abroad. Events such as the Banglalink International Coastal Cleanup, held in 2007, are encouraging in this regard.

Travelers, especially the kind that would travel to Bangladesh, aren’t content to lie like beached whales for weeks at a stretch. People want trips that broaden their life perspective and teach them far more about the diversity and cultures of our world. Bangladesh offers plenty of life lessons and eye-opening experiences, none of which top any of the “best of” or “top ten” lists — so why bother focusing on that humdrum market? Local operators must strengthen themselves on the responsible travel niche market and brief themselves on its requirements.

Serious perception changes are needed

Speaking of markets, the industry lacks marketing professionalism, which is severely crippling the industry’s inbound tourism growth. Because international travelers have a much higher service expectation than most domestic travelers, they judge operators (and hence destinations) on the basis of their professionalism. And although there may be many professional operations in Bangladesh, both large and small, there is a terrible lack of connection between their products and the discerning dollar-spending traveler.

Marketing is all about influencing the consumer’s perception of the product, and Bangladesh should stop leaving the determination of its image to the world’s merciless mainstream media. Instead, local operators should begin providing truthful, well researched and easy-to-understand information on what a journey to the country will be like, and why it will be memorable (see the Bangladesh section of www.undiscovered-destinations.com for an example of good, straightforward marketing).

Most operators have also seriously overlooked how to capture the captive market, i.e. locally based expatriates, and decent marketing would also help in this regard. Most of these expatriates suffer from a lack of knowledge on what to do and how to do it, as there is very little local or up-to-date info on the nuts and bolts of a journey in Bangladesh. Many perceive travel in the country to be inconvenient, unsafe and/or insecure, a perception that is mostly unfounded because of a lack of objective and adequate travel information.

At this point, you may have noticed the use of the term “traveler” instead of “tourist,” and this demonstrates the subtleties of effective marketing. A tourist is the kind seeking an ordinary holiday, where as the traveler seeks unique experiences that broaden their world. Because most expatriates who live in Bangladesh have already had the benefit of living outside their home nations, most consider themselves “travelers” and have more sophisticated tastes than the simple Thailand tourist.

Focus on strengths

To recap: thus far we’ve established that a) Bangladesh has a terrible world reputation that must be changed, and b) there already exists a captive market in Bangladesh (i.e. locally-based expatriates). So the question thus becomes: how do we change the perception of this target market? A good start would be to improve Bangladesh’s already existing “draw-cards” in the eyes of those who live here already.

The Sundarbans should be the first and foremost target of this image improvement. But it would help to actually improve the visitor experience of the Sundarbans first. Such initiatives need not be difficult, costly nor complicated. A visitor information centre, even one with the most basic of facilities such as posters and photographs, would go a long way in assisting the curious visitor to understand the unique eco-system at work in the mangrove forest. It would also help tourists to envision the lives of understandably shy wildlife, especially that of the Royal Bengal Tiger. As tourism growth occurs in Bangladesh, its impact needs to be carefully managed in the Sundarbans, lest the tourists destroy what they’ve come to experience.

The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) could also use a perception adjustment, as most local people who live there will tell you that it is safe to travel inside the tracts and that the security risk is terribly overblown (of course, there are some caveats depending on where you go). However, most foreign countries advise against travel to the CHT (or all but essential travel, depending on which country).

Again, the truth is that the CHT is one of Bangladesh’s most beautiful regions, and quite a treat to visit on the basis of its cultural, geographical and culinary diversity. When taking local advice, a journey to Rangamati and Bandarbans can be quite safe and very much a highlight of a visit to Bangladesh. Perhaps adventurous travelers are willing to look deeper, ask more questions and learn the truth about potential visits to the CHT. But, like it or not, the great majority of people are content to listen to their government’s advice, which in turn takes the advice of the Bangladesh government when creating its advisories. It is a shame that the Bangladesh government and its military still has so much to hide about the hill tracts, which makes visitor arrivals all the more important and necessary.

A not-so-obvious suggestion: Focus on the captive audience

Draw-cards aside, the tourism industry needs to create and aggressively market new products that focus solely on the expatriate market, as there are a tremendous number of expatriates who rarely leave Dhaka, and so their perception of Bangladesh is based solely on their impressions of the capital city. Not only is this a serious and grave error, these are the impressions that expatriates take to other countries around the world.

The fact is that expatriates are the springboard for accessing new tourist markets as one can never underestimate the power of the word of mouth. It is very rare to meet short-term visitors to Bangladesh, and the ones that do visit for less than a month are usually here as guests of people that already live here.

Currently, this same expatriate market generates a section of people who mostly choose to take their holidays outside Bangladesh instead of inside, which once again demonstrates the terrible lack of linkages between Bangladesh’s professional operators and the proposed target market.

It will be expensive and ineffective for local operators to reach the worldwide market at the current time, so this is why operators should focus on the captive audience. The goal of these initiatives is to create a buzz that will generate new visitor arrivals in the country and eventually drive the tourism market forward. But operators need to convince the captive market first, before it can do any kind of job reaching the outside world.

For all of its downsides, Bangladesh does have extraordinary tourism potential. Opportunities for exploration abound, the countryside is beautiful and Bangladesh’s economy is plodding forward despite some unfathomable hindrances. In order to progress to another level in the worldwide tourism playing field, the country must go about the difficult task of changing its world image, a process that first begins from within.

Mikey Leung is a freelance travel journalist. He is currently researching a new book on Bangladesh (www.joybangla.info) for Bradt Travel Guides, a UK-based alternative guidebook publisher. He is also a former tour leader with Australia-based Intrepid Travel (www.intrepidtravel.com). This article originally published here.