Safari Park
On 31/10/05 my students (a group of 18 Bangladeshi youngsters) and I (a foreigner) went on a study tour to Dulahazra Safari Park (mentioned in your Star Holiday Eid Special of 30/10/05). However, we were flabbergasted to learn that the entrance fee for Bangladeshi people is only Tk 10, but that foreigners have to pay US Dollars 6 (or Tk 330 according to the person on the ticket counter). With a work experience of 10 years in Bangladesh, visiting many beautiful places in the country and meeting extremely nice people, I have never seen such an outrageous form of "apartheid". Furthermore, when I approached the staff near the gate of the Safari Park to enquire about the unreasonable discrepancy in entrance fee, and tried to convince them (in Bangla!) that we were a large group of Bangladeshi students (!), travelling a long way to visit the Park, the staff behaved extremely rudely and barked in our direction that "yes, foreigners have to pay 6 dollars, take it or leave it". Out of solidarity with each other, we decided to turn back and went to visit the precious Buddhist temples in Ramu (most of them shamefully dilapidated and in ruins, due to lack of fund and interest of the authorities concerned).
As long as the authorities and organisers of tourist attractions in Bangladesh do not understand that tourism is not only a matter of earning (easy) money, but also a matter of service and politeness it will stay a far, far cry before the tourist sector will develop and foreign tourists will visit Bangladesh, without any doubt one of the most beautiful countries in the world!
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