I’m being completely honest here, so don’t shoot me down just yet, but as soon as I got on that plane, I felt relieved. It was as if a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. My time in Bangladesh clearly had an impact on me psychologically.

From reading my previous posts, it looks like I’ve done nothing but complain the country. That wasn’t my intention, but I can’t escape the fact I was unhappy most days, usually because I was ill or else stuck in endless traffic or just getting annoyed at how chaotic everything was.

The experience was completely draining and something I will never forget. It’s just such an incredible country. You can’t imagine what it’s like, even if you read about it.

There are so many people. The population is about 160 million, and the country is only 150,000 square kilometres. The government estimates that there are something like 1.2 million beggars on the streets. That’s more than the entire population of Timor-Leste.

The sheer scale of the poverty and desperation is something you cannot hide from. Men, women and children bearing every imaginable deformity, disability and disadvantage beg for money, especially at traffic lights. About 40% of the population live on less than a dollar a day.

For all the chaos and the confusion, there were a few moments I can look back on fondly. Driving from Cox’s Bazar to Teknaf in the far south, we came to a river and I could see Myanmar, just a short distance away. My heart jumped, seeing how close the two countries are and starting to understand a little about the plight of the 400,000 stateless Rohingya who are now in Bangladesh.

Visiting the Rohingya camp at Leda was extraordinary because the Rohingya really have got the short end of the stick, and yet at the camp, there were hundreds of children, running around, laughing, playing, holding my hand as I walked around. Leda is home to about 14,000 people and the conditions there are somewhat better than at the other unofficial camp, Kutupalong, but it’s still a camp and the people are still stateless after all these years.

Being out in the countryside and surrounded by endless rice paddies was such a refreshing change from being in the city. When I ventured north I visited a small farming community where the people lived in houses they’d made out of mud. There was no regular electricity, but they’d recently been provided with a kind of community centre complete with a solar panel and tiny television, giving them they’re only real chance to see the outside world.

I feel like I didn't really get to know the people of Bangladesh. I was always so busy running around from place to place. I spoke to people on the street, said hello now and then and communicated as best I could with sign language, but other than for my stories, I didn’t bond with people as much as I would have liked.

Another problem was that I just wasn’t eating much. I’ve noticed that my happiness levels seem directly linked to how well I’m eating. In Penang, I was bouncing off the walls because I was eating so much. Similarly in Bangkok, I cannot get enough of the food. But when I’m in Dili, I rarely get excited about what I’m eating, and so I sometimes experience this strange “hunger sadness”.

Arriving back in Bangkok on Friday, I felt a sense of peace. The city seemed so quiet, so orderly, so open and so spacious. It was bizarre because people say Bangkok is such a hectic city, but it really isn’t.

So, would I recommend other people visit Bangladesh? In short, I would, if only for the experience. It’s like nothing else and it really is a trip into the unknown. How many people do you know who have holidayed in Bangladesh? A lot of people go to India, but Bangladesh isn’t really on the tourist trail, and that makes sense because it is a difficult place to travel and it isn’t geared towards travellers in any way.

I would not, however, recommend spending too much time in Dhaka. The city was just too much for me.

But then what do I really know? Other people, like this journalist, go to Bangladesh and fall in love with the place.

And one more for you:

I fully appreciate that I’m an oddball here. I’m tall, pale, blonde-haired and green-eyed. I accept that walking around by myself, be it in Dhaka, the capital, or elsewhere, I draw attention to myself just by being there. But the stares are something else.

I’ve been here on my own for about four weeks, so my feelings are no doubt compounded by the fact that I’m on a solo mission. Even though I’m here to work, I’m essentially doing it as an independent. I’ve had to travel around a lot, use public transport and walk from place to place. Everywhere I go, I’m gawped at.

At first I shrugged it off. I’d experienced it in other countries, although to a much lesser extent. Here, people literally stop whatever they are doing to stare at me. They stop dead in their tracks. They stop working. They stop eating. Their eyes follow me. Even here in Dhaka, the urban centre of the country, I’m a freak.

I can feel the eyes on me and when I look back at people, with their mouths ajar, they carry on staring. Initially I’d say hello, give people a nod or just smile, but after a while, it became exhausting. As it is now, I just end up getting into mini staring contests that I invariably end up winning after about 10 seconds.

It’s been making me go a little crazy. I walk around talking to all the people who stare at me, muttering things to them. “Yes, hello, have a good look. I’m here all week. Hi there.” I walk around saying things like that. I must look demented to these people.

I try not to get annoyed by people staring at me, but when it’s hot and I’m sweating and running around trying to make appointments, I sometimes lose my temper and get a little agitated. Occasionally I’ll make a gesture as if to say, “What?!” I hate myself for getting angry because I know I’m the one who is the guest here, but I can’t help it.

Sometimes I just want to scream. I can’t even go to the shop without experiencing this. It’s that feeling when you walk into a restaurant and everyone turns to look at you. Only they don’t stop looking.

People crowd around me to watch as I do menial tasks in public, like writing on a notepad or making a call or eating an apple. There is no sense of intrusion. When I stop a CNG (like a tuk-tuk), people will lean in to listen to what I’m asking the driver, and I always get a small crowd when I’m haggling the fare.

Now and then, people will come and talk me, or at least ask, “Your country?” This I don’t mind. It involves some kind of interaction. It’s refreshing. But mostly, people just talk with their eyes.

It’s perhaps my general personality which is the problem here. I don’t know how other people who have visited Bangladesh feel about this kind of thing. It isn’t that people are unfriendly; they’re curious, you know, and they see nothing wrong with following me around.

Again, when I’m in a good mood, early in the morning, I take it all in my stride, but as the day wears on and I have to rush from interview to interview, it all starts to grate. It’s also the fact that there are just so many people in this country. It is the most densely populated country on earth and there ate crowds everywhere.

The novelty of the crowds and the traffic wore thin after a few days. Plus the fact that I keep getting sick has really clouded my enjoyment of my time in Bangladesh. But, it has been a hell of an experience.

I’d been feeling better for a few days, but then Sunday, August 15, happened. I woke up and I just hurt. Everything hurt. I was in serious pain and could barely move. Every time I stood up I blacked out. Then the fever hit me, and my goodness, I’d never had a fever like it.

It was unfortunate that I’d watched Terminator Salvation the night before because in my delirious state, I became convinced I was a robot. You know what it’s like when you have a fever — weird thoughts go through your mind. This took it to a whole new level.

Despite being a robot, I was still throwing up and of course had diarrhea and in general felt like I’d been hit by a train. Was this food poisoning again? Twice in two weeks? I really don’t know. I hadn’t been eating out, not that I can remember anyway.

This lasted a few days. I then had to go on a field trip, still feeling groggy, but recovering. On the trip, we stayed at what I considered to be quite a swanky hotel for Bangladesh. I hadn’t eaten for a few days so I ordered a club sandwich on room service. I was ready to eat.

I managed about three-quarters of the sandwich before my stomach started feeling odd again. I convinced myself that it was impossible to be poisoned by a sandwich and went to sleep. Needless to say, I woke up back at square one the next morning. The joy.

We returned to Dhaka and I got back into bed for a couple of days. At this point I made a vow to stick to a diet of Lay’s crisps and Coca-Cola. I went on another trip, first to Chitagong and then to Cox’s Bazar, where I crashed at an NGO house. I was feeling all right and had dinner at the house. They wouldn’t poison me, surely.

The next morning, I got out of bed and promptly threw up weird yellow gook. I was beginning to think there was nothing I could eat without getting sick.

Suffice to say, I am hungry and missing the food in Thailand.

A few more photos here if you're keen.

It appears that I have food poisoning. I blame the weird pastries I bought from a local bakery. They tasted strange, but I was extremely hungry.

The sickness has died down now and I feel the bad stuff is out of my body, but I'm still a little fuzzy.

The day began well enough, with a breakfast of tortillas and bananas, but as soon as I stepped out of the door, things started to fall apart.

I had an 8.30 am meeting at organization #1. I waited for about half an hour before I found an empty CNG (like a green, cage-like tuk-tuk) to take me across town, through the endless, buzzing traffic. We broke down about 20 minutes into the journey, so there I was, at the side of the road, already running late, waiting as the CNG driver got out, armed with a screwdriver, and proceeded to bang something for a few minutes.

We got going again and made it a bit farther across town. The driver then decided he’d had enough and told me to get out. I had no idea where we were. I was supposed to have been taken to Gulshan, road 117. I clearly wasn’t there. “What the fuck is this shit?” I yelled.

I pleaded with the driver to take me to road 117, but it wasn’t happening, so I walked off without paying, which prompted the man to follow me in his CNG, shouting. The fare we’d agreed was 120 taka, so I fumbled about in my pocket and produced 60 taka. More shouting, so I gave him 100 and then made a swift getaway.

Where the hell am I? I thought to myself.

I asked around and people pointed me in the vague direction of road 117. After about an hour of walking, I finally found it and found organization #1. My contact there had already gone out, so I had to interview another staffer. My contact said he would be back about 1.30 pm so I promised to return for lunch.

I then left, walked for half an hour to find the main road, and caught another CNG to organization #2, where I did another interview before heading back to organization #1 for lunch, although my contact was late getting back from court.

Disappointed, I headed out in search of organization #3. I walked for about an hour again, unable to find a CNG that would take me to road 35 for anything less than 200 taka. As it turned out, road 35 was a lot closer than I had thought, and I reached it after walking round in circles for a while.

Sitting down for an interview at organization #3 I couldn’t find my notepad and realized I’d left it at organization #1 when I’d gone there for lunch. Despite realizing this, I emptied the contents of my bag, including two small bananas, onto the table in front of me, much to the confusion of the staffers, who were kind enough to give me a replacement pad.

Another interview done and I was feeling the burn. My inner thighs were particularly sore as it had become apparent that my jeans were not geared up for long walks in the blazing sun. I went to a kiosk and bought a bottle of 7-Up and a pack of cigarettes. An old lady with a baby came and started prodding me. I tried every possible gesture I could think of to convey that I wasn’t going to give her any money. Nothing worked.

By this point I was extremely tired so I sat down on the sidewalk with the woman in front of me. She chattered away and I chattered back about how I was having a really long day and needed a nap.

I got up and walked up the street; the old lady followed, talking all the while. I picked up my pace, but it was no good. Street children saw the commotion and joined in the fun. Another old woman appeared from nowhere. Before I knew what was going on, I was being chased by enough people to fill a small football stadium.

A few locals noticed what was going on and I think told the rabble of beggars to stop hassling me. I jumped into another CNG and went to organization #4. I arrived on time and was surprised to see the building was on fire and people were being evacuated from a third-storey window. Alarmed, I asked what was going on and discovered it was merely a drill.

Another hour later and I had one more interview under my belt. I went back out onto the street and noticed the entire road was flooded. It hadn’t rained, but apparently something had happened at a nearby building site. I waded through the newly formed river and walked to the main road.

I waited for a CNG. And waited. A few folks greeted me or shouted “Hello!” A man in a neat shirt told me I would be better off waiting on the other side of the road. I followed his advice, but it was to no avail. An hour passed. There were lots of CNGs, but it was rush hour — about 5 pm so — and everyone was heading home.

An old lady hobbled over with the aid of a walking stick and started begging for money. “I just want to get home,” I told her, knowing she didn’t understand. Before home, though, I had to get back to organization #1 and pick up my notepad, which I would have been lost without.

A couple of young male students came and told the old lady to move on. They led me down the road to a place where, they assured me, I could find a CNG. Half an hour later and I was in the familiar green cage. I made it back to organization #1 and then had to walk another 20 minutes to find a CNG to take me home.

On the way home, three young women armed with a baby surrounded my CNG and badgered me for what felt like an eternity. Hawkers selling books and maps and popcorn joined in the fun. The traffic was horrendous and the journey back took about two hours.

At home, I discovered that my inner thighs were actually bleeding. It had been a hell of a day, although I didn’t feel that anything particularly memorable had happened. What I did come to understand was that being a journalist in Dhaka is brick hard. Once my month in Bangladesh is through, I will likely need to take a few days to unwind.

I’ve had a bit more time to get my head around being in Dhaka after diving into the city with no real certainty what to expect.

I’ll admit, the first night I was here, I sat in my hotel room frowning, thinking to myself, What the hell am I doing here?

Travelling alone isn’t such a big deal. I do it regularly. Heck, I left England five years ago and flew to Bangkok on my own. But here, in Dhaka, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. The city is, after all, a sprawling mass of men and motorized vehicles.

The hotel I first parked up at was dire, but that didn’t particularly bother me. I’ve stayed in some really manky places and “roughing it”, as it were, is part and parcel of being a poor freelance journalist.

Even so, I met a chap from World Vision who passed me on to a chap from another NGO and they’ve put me up in a little pad that is a great spot for me to work and sleep in. I have to pay for it, of course, but being somewhere with a desk and chairs and such things will be conducive to getting some work done. So, accommodation wise, everything is fine and dandy, and they’ve lent me a USB modem so I can get online and catch up with the world.

When I first arrived, I wondered, How will I get around this crazy city? I didn’t want to pay a driver, although I have “borrowed” my friend’s driver a couple of times. Public buses looked nightmarish at best. Taxis seemed few and far between. I’d almost certainly have died if I’d hired a motorbike.

The answer for me, as for countless others, came in the form of the CNGs, which is the catchy name for little green cages on three wheels that run on compressed natural gas. These things are hilarious. They can turn on a dime and they’re always bumping into other vehicles and people.

The CNG is Dhaka’s tuk-tuk, albeit a more eco-friendly version. Today I had to get out and do some interviews, so I made use of the CNGs. It was simple enough. I’d flag one down, barter a fare and then the driver would unlock the cage for me to get in. Whiz, whoom, wham and I was there. Of course, as a foreigner, I paid a little more than the locals, but such is life.

Speaking of foreigners — there aren’t any. At least not that I’ve seen. I literally haven’t seen another Western person since I left the airport. I’m told the tourists mostly head straight for Cox’s Bazar. Dhaka clearly doesn’t appeal to tourists in the same way as, say, Bangkok or KL.

Walking down the street, I’m usually mobbed by street children, amputees, people with one eye, old ladies with tried faces. The locals regard me with curiosity. I always give them a nod or a quick lift of the eyebrows. Sometimes they smile, sometimes they look on, baffled.

It would be easy to assume that people here are unfriendly. They’re not, though — they just don’t see many foreigners — and, like in Dili, the unease, if that’s what you’d call it, is easily broken with a smile. In most cases, anyway.

As I said, the city is chaos, day and night. There is rubbish everywhere, but every now and then you chance upon an interesting-looking building, some feat of modern-day architecture, and it hits home that this is a city of contrasts.

Cars that look as if they’ve been through a season of destruction derbies bumble from A to Z beside brand new Mercs. Businessmen with shiny shoes walk past the impoverished as they crawl along the sidewalks, begging for money, for food.

Poverty smacks you in the face in Dhaka. You simply cannot avoid it, no matter how many times you try and avert your eyes. It’s heartbreaking, sobering, dismaying. Whatever it is to me or to you or to anyone else, Bangladesh is a country in need, with a rocketing population that continues to migrate towards urban centres that are strained beyond belief.

Dhaka is classed as a mega-city and the rickshaw capital of the world. Dhaka is home to seven million people. And yet a third of these people live in slums. And the city is, apparently, the world’s second worst in which to live, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, placing higher than just Harare, capital of Zimbabwe.

The city is chaos. There are people everywhere, seemingly just hanging around; on the tops of buildings, on the sidewalk, in the street, at the feet of the monuments — everywhere.

Buildings appear to have been erected at random, in all directions, and there are more structures being built all over the city.

The roads are in a frenzied state, with all manner of cars, rickshaws, trucks, bikes and buses competing for what little space the drivers can see. Cars continually beep their horns, apparently having been taught to do so.

Billboards advertising everything from bank services to soft drinks are scattered throughout the city.

At night, hundreds of people line the sidewalks, sleeping side by side in a confused mass of bodies.

My cellphone managed to last through the night and then gave itself up in the morning, apparently after being slept on by mistake.

Dhaka is a strange place. My friends who live here — two locals — last night told me that 10 years ago, Dhaka was a great city, “But then we ruined it.”

People seem generally confused by my presence. They don’t get many foreigners here. Immigration asked a lot of questions and insisted I disclose my exact intended whereabouts. The manager of the hotel where I’m staying wrote down all my details, copied my passport and took my photo to satisfy the police.

So I’m here, now without a phone, trying to figure out a way to tackle to the city and get through the dozen or so interviews I’ve tentatively scheduled. Of course, I can’t do this without a phone, but my friend’s driver will be picking me up soon and so we’ll work on my predicament.

This is my home for a month, a place to explore. How it will all pan out, I don’t know, but I feel this is one of those life experiences you come across now and then. I’m happy to be here, to see the urban mess with my own eyes.

My journey started at 7 am Sunday morning. Two flights and 12 hours later and I was in Dhaka. Two hours of traffic later and I was at my hotel room. One peculiar soup, some fried chicken and a hamburger later and I’d had dinner. I was understandably tired and slept through until about 11 am.

And now, approaching midday, I need to get my bearings. Wish me luck.

I don't really have a reason for going to Bangladesh, but an opportunity came up and I decided it would be fun and also a good way to add another string to my bow, journalism wise. All in all, I can't wait. I have absolutely no idea how it's going to go, but suffice to say, it will go somewhere, somehow.

Do you see anybody dancing?