An odd feeling came over me when I left Bangladesh. I was on the plane from Dhaka to KL and I spent several hours just staring out of the window looking at the night sky and then at the lights of Malaysia. I was exhausted, both mentally and physically, after a month there.

I'm being completely honest here, so don't shoot me down just yet, but as soon as I got on that plane, I felt relieved. It was as if a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. My time in Bangladesh clearly had an impact on me psychologically.

From reading my previous posts, it looks like I've done nothing but complain the country. That wasn't my intention, but I can't escape the fact I was unhappy most days, usually because I was ill or else stuck in endless traffic or just getting annoyed at how chaotic everything was.

The experience was completely draining and something I will never forget. It's just such an incredible country. You can't imagine what it's like, even if you read about it.

There are so many people. The population is about 160 million, and the country is only 150,000 square kilometres. The government estimates that there are something like 1.2 million beggars on the streets. That's more than the entire population of Timor-Leste.

The sheer scale of the poverty and desperation is something you cannot hide from. Men, women and children bearing every imaginable deformity, disability and disadvantage beg for money, especially at traffic lights. About 40% of the population live on less than a dollar a day.

For all the chaos and the confusion, there were a few moments I can look back on fondly. Driving from Cox's Bazar to Teknaf in the far south, we came to a river and I could see Myanmar, just a short distance away. My heart jumped, seeing how close the two countries are and starting to understand a little about the plight of the 400,000 stateless Rohingya who are now in Bangladesh.

Visiting the Rohingya camp at Leda was extraordinary because the Rohingya really have got the short end of the stick, and yet at the camp, there were hundreds of children, running around, laughing, playing, holding my hand as I walked around. Leda is home to about 14,000 people and the conditions there are somewhat better than at the other unofficial camp, Kutupalong, but it's still a camp and the people are still stateless after all these years.

Being out in the countryside and surrounded by endless rice paddies was such a refreshing change from being in the city. When I ventured north I visited a small farming community where the people lived in houses they'd made out of mud. There was no regular electricity, but they'd recently been provided with a kind of community centre complete with a solar panel and tiny television, giving them they're only real chance to see the outside world.

I feel like I didn't really get to know the people of Bangladesh. I was always so busy running around from place to place. I spoke to people on the street, said hello now and then and communicated as best I could with sign language, but other than for my stories, I didn't bond with people as much as I would have liked.

Another problem was that I just wasn't eating much. I've noticed that my happiness levels seem directly linked to how well I'm eating. In Penang, I was bouncing off the walls because I was eating so much. Similarly in Bangkok, I cannot get enough of the food. But when I'm in Dili, I rarely get excited about what I'm eating, and so I sometimes experience this strange 'hunger sadness'.

Arriving back in Bangkok on Friday, I felt a sense of peace. The city seemed so quiet, so orderly, so open and so spacious. It was bizarre because people say Bangkok is such a hectic city, but it really isn't.

So, would I recommend other people visit Bangladesh? In short, I would, if only for the experience. It's like nothing else and it really is a trip into the unknown. How many people do you know who have holidayed in Bangladesh? A lot of people go to India, but Bangladesh isn't really on the tourist trail, and that makes sense because it is a difficult place to travel and it isn't geared towards travellers in any way.

I would not, however, recommend spending too much time in Dhaka. The city was just too much for me.

But then what do I really know? Other people, like this journalist, go to Bangladesh and fall in love with the place.