#30 BANGLADESH

Bangladesh was a rough country to visit, and Dhaka is a tough city to love. It's crowded, congested, and dirty, but despite my low expectations, I still came here in 2009 on a visa run from Thailand. One tip I have for future travelers to Dhaka is to avoid walking around by the river at sunset and don't miss the Museum of Independence to better understand the country and see some cool socialist realism art!

On this trip, I was lucky enough to join a group of friends and colleagues from Chiang Mai, collecting oral histories from Burmese refugees for a book called Nowhere to Be Home: Narratives From Survivors of Burma's Military Regime. From Dhaka, we headed south to Cox's Bazaar to meet with Rohingya refugees in the Kutapalong and Leda refugee camps who had fled genocide and violence in Burma's Rakhine (Arakan) State. It was a shocking and unique experience, and even after so many years of working with Burmese refugees, the plight of the Rohingya was especially tragic. For more on this, please check out the book Nowhere to be Home, where men and women from Burma describe the atrocities they endured in their own words.

All photos are courtesy of my friend, Maggie Lemere.