I arrived in Dhaka in the middle of April, armed with lots of optimism, romantic memories of unforgettable trips to India and expectations of much of the same in Bangladesh.

Settling in was remarkably easy. I had the good fortune to find accommodation quickly, and within a few days was the proud inhabitant of a spacious apartment, surrounded by greenery, with tennis courts and swimming pool just a jump away from the verandah.

The focus then shifted to shopping. The first few weekends were spent discovering the markets, handicraft stores, cane shops and so on.

I was both amazed and disappointed at the goods available in Dhaka. In my mind, I had expected something like India, with the richness of choice, colours, fabrics, designs and so was a little deluded.

However, I was pleasantly surprised that I could buy just about any kind of food in the shops, including many of the Western ‘goodies’.

When I arrived at my last posting of North Korea, commonly known as the "Hermit Kingdom" in 1999, there were only three shops where foreigners could buy food and other goods. And most of the time they were empty. When stocked, the shelves would be lined with cans and packets of foodstuffs with expiry dates ranging across most of the last decade.

In wintertime, with temperatures as low as -20 degrees Celsius in the capital city, and practically no food imports, in an effort to stay healthy, we all took multi-vitamins. Every six weeks or so, there would be a rest and recuperation trip to China which was spent buying and packing food, especially frozen meat and fish, cheese, fresh fruit and vegetables which could be frozen, and cans of tuna which had not expired, to take back to Pyongyang. In an effort to stay healthy, much time was dedicated to acquiring and storing food.

Living conditions for us privileged people were also much less comfortable than Bangladesh. We were allocated a government apartment in the international compound, which inevitably had orange linoleum floors, faded wallpaper and huge, cold rooms.

The compound was located very close to the local coal factory, which guaranteed a sooty layer of grime in the house, and also in our lungs, at all times. Although our buildings were heated, the systems were so old and run on electricity, which failed regularly, that it was impossible to heat the house. The natural habitat for most of us during the cold winter months was the bedroom, tucked under a warm quilt.

But perhaps the starkest contrast between North Korea and Bangladesh is that of the environment, human and otherwise. Within the confines of Pyongyang, the international residents (all 200 of us) free to move around the wide, tree-lined avenues, almost devoid of traffic. There were plenty of clear, uncrowded open spaces to walk, to breathe.

With military guards every 20 metres or so, it was literally the safest, and inevitably most controlled, place to be, even late at night. No air pollution, no noise pollution: actually very little life at all. If you could sum up North Korea in one word, perhaps monotonous would be the most apt. When trying to describe the hardship there, many of us coined the term ‘sensory deprivation’.

People dress identically, they move only with a purpose, and the only mass gatherings to be seen are when the population is mobilized for some special reason. Contact with foreigners is forbidden, forcing us to live an isolated life restricted to the very small international community there. This had its advantages, as it fostered a very close-knit community amongst the expatriates.

In contrast, Bangladesh is the extreme opposite, an ‘overcharge of the senses’. There are too many colours, too many people, too much movement and no space. I have forgotten what it feels like to be in isolation, and indeed would not know where to go in Dhaka to be alone! It is sometimes impossible to breathe, and of course the pollution does not help. Life here is definitely more comfortable, in material terms, and yet I miss the human contact, the closeness of the international community in Pyongyang. In that sense, Dhaka is a much more ‘normal’ place, just another big and busy city, where people get on with their individual lives.