I didn’t stay long. Like most travelers, I made my way to Cox’s Bazar, a bustling town on that same long stretch of beach as Inani. The trip from Dhaka was a harrowing 10 hours in a ramshackle former school bus. This was not a peaceful journey: Bangladeshi drivers are not known for staying in their lanes.
And much of it, refreshingly, is free of tourists. Indeed, the country’s tourist board has adopted the slogan “Visit Bangladesh Before Tourists Come.”
With 147 million people occupying roughly the same area as Iowa, Bangladesh is among the most densely populated nations on earth. It’s also a Muslim nation.. As such, every experience is informed by Islam, from the morning prayers broadcast from tall citadels to the near absence of liquor stores and anything resembling Western night life.
But this impoverished, overpopulated and beleaguered country is quietly drawing tourists. While many if not most of Bangladesh’s visitors come from India, more Westerners are discovering this undeveloped stretch along the eastern edge of the Bay of Bengal as a less traveled and cheaper alternative to Bali and Thailand.
For Westerners trying to blend in, hitting the beach Bangladeshi-style means leaving the bikini at home. Beachgoers dress is if they were going to work. Men are clad in slacks and dress shirts — some even wear ties. Their wives, without exception, wear traditional saris. Even the children are dressed modestly in long pants and button-downs. And no one swims as much as they wade in the warm water, their pant legs and saris hiked up to their knees.
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