We had two weeks of orientation and various trainings at the lovely Hotel Lake Castle. The ‘lake’ was somewhat different to the photograph and reminded me more of sewerage filtering ponds. But apart from this the staff were all very friendly, the rooms spotless, and it was generally a very cushy place to live. Training sessions were held at the hotel and covered things like security (safehouses, hartals, muggings and the like), living in Dhaka (houses with guards and preferred perimeter walls), health (multiple forms of diahorrea, malaria, dengue fever), and transport (curfew after 8pm). Perhaps it was aimed squarely at eliminating the Howard’s ‘relaxed and comfortable’ motif.
The AYAD staff are a dedicated bunch and consisted of Badral the manager and Boby and Raihan running the logistical operations. These consisted of mainly multiple shopping and tour runs using two vans amongst the crazy Dhaka traffic. They handled it with aplomb and I was further impressed to know that Boby had pulled it off previously with 17 AYADs last year (including sari shopping, which he diligently took our group on also).
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