Bangladesh is full of surprises. The way Lonely Planet talks about the country we were pretty scared as there isn't any tourism here, the transport is unsafe and it said you would be stared at like never before. We travelled through the country on Wednesday by bus to get to Dhaka. The views out of the window were pretty much always the same, flat green fields. It was beautiful. Bangladesh has one of the highest population densities in the world but I don't know where they are all hiding as we didn't see any big towns and Dhaka (the capital) seems the same as any other place we've been in terms of crowding. The people have been so lovely, whenever we've been looking at a map or talking to a rickshaw driver someone who speaks perfect English will appear by magic and help us out. They normally then give us a business card in case we have any problems. The hospitality is amazing. We went to a Chinese restaurant which was a bit pricey so only ordered a main each and some water, but they said they would like to give us free drinks and starters! One of my favourite things is that plastic bags are banned and so are certain types of fuel. The front cover of the newspaper yesterday was about the government putting loads of money into halting global warming and another article was about solar panels being installed in factories.

Today we went to the cricket (Bangladesh vs South Africa). Matt was wearing his England shirt again and people would chant 'England! England!' at him. I had Bangladesh flags on my cheeks and people would say to me 'Bangladesh' when they saw me. At the game in India I had about 50 people take photos of me on their mobiles without asking, sometimes right in my face and sometimes sneakily. I also had quite a few people turned around staring at me for ages instead of watching the game. It got so tiring by the end of it but the people around me were nice and they would tell people to go away or to ask me for a photo. Bangladesh was completely different. People asked for photos, people danced with us when they got wickets, no one stared. We were still a big attraction but it was so welcoming, people smiled and said hello. The other great thing was that everyone was covered in Bangladesh gear. Each person had a shirt, hat, wrist bands, face paint, flags, banners. It was great. The only thing that makes me feel slightly ill is that we bought our tickets from a tout for 20 quid each. Not much you might think, but they should have cost 2 pounds!!!

We didn't manage to sort our re-entry to India, but the story is almost as long as the hours we have spent in Indian Embassies so I won't bore you with it. So we have had to buy new flights home and now get back Tuesday night.

We are now going to go and eat a big bar of English Dairy Milk we just bought in a corner shop. Bangladesh rocks!

xx