Shots From My Album

Feeling pretty bushed after a long day that started with watching Bush's State of the Union Address on Al Jazeera . . . but I want to keep in touch, so here are a few pictures from my Bangladesh photo album.
The "pink palace," Ahsan Manzil, rated a must-see for tourists to Dhaka (all three hundred of them). Price of a ticket to the garden and the building: two taka (equivalent of about three and a half cents). Worth more than that.

Gulshan Circle, upscale Dhaka's version of Times Square, at dusk.
Drive west of Dhaka and within an hour you find yourself amid vast fields of rice and yellow-flowered mustard seed, vegetable farms, and man-made fish ponds.
Three of the cutest engineers I ever met--young diplomates employed by a Grameen Shakti (Energy) center. Their job is to train local village women to maintain solar power systems, which both opens up income opportunities for the women and helps makes cheap, renewable energy available to rural Bangladesh. When I asked them to pose, they put on extremely solemn expressions until I made a funny face and induced a laugh.