Designing your own tablecloth (or material for any use) is another fun thing to do in Dhaka.
You pick out the block pattern from giant pattern books, choose the cloth (dyed or untreated), choose the colors and pattern. You can even have your own blocks designed if you want something specific put on the cloth. If you don’t want block printed designs, you can get a spray painted design.
An eight foot long tablecloth costs around 3,000 Taka ($33). Get it while you’re here!
Bangladesh is known for its garment industry. There are large factories like Beximco (producer of clothes for H&M, Zara, etc.) but there are also small shops like these one or two man shops… it only takes one tailor to open up the field.
Dinner in Dhaka usually does not cost 5,000 Taka ($60) but there are a few places that will set you back thousands…
Wasabi at Bellagio, House 4C, Rd 71, Gulshan Avenue, is one of them. The Bellagio building houses Wasabi, a sushi restaurant with a liquor license, on the ground floor. If you sit in the bar, you can sit under a fountain of water as it gushes over the curved glass ceiling. Upstairs is a French restaurant called Le Souffle. That’s where the food gets pricy. The chef is imported from France via Bangkok (much like the style of cooking and the ingredients) and the food is good if you want fancy French portions. Bread and desserts are well done there. It is also the place with the red fancy toilet that I mentioned in another posting. The third floor of Bellagio is destined to be another fancy restaurant. All in all, the Bellagio restaurants are the kind that expats like… so much so that I had three (count ’em) events there in one week.
Toilet, washroom, water closet, bathroom, restroom, ladies, gents… and so on. Here is one of the polite, modest, and courteous signs that I’ve seen so far.
One of the splendid things about life in Bangladesh is having clothes tailor-made.
You can select every detail of the clothing and they can make it for you (or better yet, give the tailor a sample to copy). Or if you want to be on the cusp of fashion, you can shop from a fashion designer.
Buy the cloth. Let them tell you how much you’ll need. Take the cloth home and wash it to allow for shrinking. Buy decorations, edging, trim which is called “ribbon” here.
Take to your favorite tailor and have them sew it for it. If you take a sample of something you would like copied or a print out from the computer, the tailors will have an easier time of copying your design. Some can turn it around in a week. Others take four. Keep trying out different tailors or stick to one that you like. It costs (for an expat/foreigner) about 600 Taka ($8) for the tailoring. The cost of the cloth depends on what you buy. For a business style shirt (like at Banana Republic or Ann Taylor) of high grade cotton from India, it would cost around 800 Taka ($10) for the material itself.
So, economically speaking, you can buy cheaper clothes (even here) ready made. But it’s much more fun to design the clothes yourself!
In another posting, I will show more of what expats are wearing here in Dhaka.
The tale is one told many times over. Once upon a time, his family owned the whole neighborhood. Then, due to a Shakespearean turn of luck or plain greed, his family lost everything but the tiny phouska business.
The shop is located in a typical Dhaka locale. Off a main road, down another smaller street (alley is how some would describe it), and then left onto yet an even smaller street.
Phouska are the traditional golf ball sized fried shells filled with chick pea (garbanzo) and spices appetizer/snack served at weddings and street corners. The way to eat them is to make an indent into the chick pea filling, pour the tamarind and chili sauce into the hole you’ve made, and use your hand to pop the phouska into your mouth.
The phouska seller was so pleased that my colleague had come back to his shop (he had had him cater to his wedding), that he didn’t want him to pay for our food. But, fortunately, my colleague paid for it (20 Taka/25 cents per plate).
Drinks were bought at another store while we waited. We ate quickly and ate a second round quickly as the mosquitoes were swarming around our ankles making us all do the tappy dance with our feet while we ate.
We will be back (with bug sprayed feet).
The night in Dhaka arrives around 6 pm. It is pitch dark on some streets (the potholes and dogs are only some of the obstacles). In Baridhara, the rickshaws are required to have a light on their rickshaw at night. Currently, they use open flame kerosene lanterns attached underneath the seat of the rickshaw…
I wish that they would be retrofitted with pedal power LED lights… maybe there is an organization out there with this plan? Also, since rickshaws are extremely decorated, it would be nice to have reflective material used as part of the decoration. Just a thought.
From the bump and whizz of a car, it has been hard to get a good photo of the famous national assembly building designed by Louis Kahn. Here is my best shot so far. I will take a closer look at some point.
Bangladesh is full of contrasts.
The “wash rooms” range from a bucket or oil drum of water — to those with plumbing and seated toilets. And then there is more — In one of the fancy new restaurants, there is a fully-mirrored toilet with two flat screen televisions embedded into the walls over the sink…
Another reason I’m enjoying Dhaka is because I get to see things that make for great stories (and blog postings). Getting a tour of a fashion house was an unexpected surprise!
I had my Holud saree made by Sharmin, a fashion designer who has her own house of fashion, Kahon, Story of Stitch. I met Sharmin at a bazaar. She made my saree solely based on my verbal instructions. She finished it in time, emailed me that it was ready for pickup… but I could not get to her shop in time… because it was so important that I get my saree on time, she delivered it to my house! She even brought one of her tailors with her in case last minute adjustments needed to be made. What service!
Then she offered that I should come visit her “shop” in Tejgaon, the industrial park. (she has since moved her store upmarket:Â Dhanmondi-27, House-41, 3rd floor. Opposite the Dhaka bank. Her shop is in a building set back a bit from the main road) My friend offered to take me there. We handed the phone to the driver who listened to the complex directions and then we set off. Tejgaon is an area that can only really be visited on a Friday when the traffic is lighter (think Sunday in the US). We got to the area via a major road and then started down a road only big enough for rickshaws. Then we turned down a warren of streets and stopped at a gate. We had arrived.
We saw no sign but once we got the guard to open the gate, then we were led past the guards’ room (a flat bed tucked in under the stairs), we entered the fashion house. We were greeted warmly by Sharmin and her family. We were lead into the salesroom past the hallway with four or five rooms filled with the hum of workers. Sewing machines lined the hallway ready for a surge during wedding season. Almost everything is made in Sharmin’s shop. She designs the applique pieces and stamps for block prints before designing the fashions (via computer) which are then cut and sewn by her team of tailors.
We chose many clothes and Sharmin took the time for us (demanding) customers even though she was also in the middle of delivering to the stalls are the International Trade Fair. She sells some clothes under her own brand, Kahon, while much of her clothing is sold (and marked up!) by other shops in Dhaka. We were excited to buy from the source and get some of the fashions even before the style was launched (very exciting for one fashionista moment). Many thanks to Sharmin and her husband for being so friendly.
Once I’ve taken some photos, I’ll post more on clothes and fashion in Dhaka.