We spent last weekend in Chittagong – Bangladesh’s second city! And while it rained the entire time we still did what we could to make the most of this mini-vacation.
Me, in the monsoon:
We visited the port, or the beach, or something. Anyways, there were lots of fishing boats:
We also visited the golf club, and the actual beach, but as you can see, it was raining.
A main goal of our trip was to visit the ship breaking yards. In a sense, it was much as you might think – they do, in fact, break ships (go here for more info). Still, it was amazing to see how huge the ships are, and how packed the beaches are – the ships were all piled up on top of each other, and they were enormous bulk carriers and such in different stages of being disassembled. We couldn’t really walk around on the beach, because it is an actual work site; they’re working in all different places simultaneously and the whole beach is quite crowded with big pieces of various ships. They were working away when we were there, pulling a huge piece off of one ship and welding apart (?) other pieces that were already further up on the beach.
The whole highway out of Chittagong is full of shops selling parts and pieces from the boats, and all the supplies the ships are carrying when they come in. They are, after all, working ships when they sail into the beach, and when they finish, they are nothing but scrap metal. So the shops have everything from the life rafts to the silverware and toilet paper that has been scavenged off the ships. It made for interesting browsing, but we didn’t buy anything in the end.
Hi Andrew,
I wonder if you can help me. I need a photograph of a Sanpan boat. 40 yeras ago I and some friends bought a sanpan fishing boat at Chittagong and tried to sail it to Singapore. but we got ship wrecked on the Nicobar islands in the Indian Ocean.
I am now writing up my memories and a photo would be very useful.
Thanks in anticipation.
Roy