three months in - thoughts from the dad

Our trip has stopped feeling like an extended holiday. So how are we doing?

a day with the elephants

Being with elephants was something our whole family wanted to do on our trip this year, but we had some concerns about where to do that and how to reconcile the sadness we feel for caged animals. Thankfully our friends found us the perfect place to visit. The Elephant Nature Park was founded by a Thai woman with a passion and love for elephants named Sangduen Chailert (Lek). She has been named Asian Hero of the year and her work has been recognized by the Smithsonian and beyond. This beautiful property of over 300 acres was donated by a man from Texas who was so impressed by her work at her former rescue, Elephant Heaven. At ENP elephants are not chained up, are free to roam and no violence is used in their keeping. Most of the elephants are female and are leftover from the now illegal logging industry in Thailand. Some were blind, deformed or victims of beatings, broken bones or landmines. We learned so much on our day at the park - some of it sad and most of it absolutely breathtaking.

sweaty old friends

We have ended up in Chiang Mai at the same time as some of our great friends from home and have plans to explore a few places in northern Thailand together. It is so great to be with people who really love you when you are sweating like a beast. We must be drinking at least 10 litres of water/family/day. It is unbelievable the feeling of constantly being wet with sweat. As we talked today we came up with many terms for all of the areas that we were sweating from and maybe I'll just leave the rest to your imagination.

With our sweaty old friends we checked out the first day of the Thailand International Balloon Festival at a local golf course. The large green space meant the kids could run, and move. We participated in some crafts, watched balloons, used faulty trampolines, ate, danced and I even won a free night in a fancy hotel here, and we have babysitters!

Needless to say we are tired, so please enjoy a few photos from today. By the way if we look cool, we aren't, the sweat is always on.

a visit to the turtle hatchery

Buddy and Girl have seen turtles in the wild in Hawaii and here in Sri Lanka and they love them. So tonight we caught our last tuk tuk to the hatchery to learn more about the work they are doing to protect and preserve the five types of turtles that are native to Sri Lanka, and the kids were so excited. Turtle hatcheries are not without controversy. There is much worldwide debate about them, their practices, quality, purpose (tourism driven) etc. We always feel a little apprehensive about things like this including wildlife parks and zoos, but in the end we decided that we would go.

thoughts on garbage

City garbage tractor cleaning the streets in Galle

Sri Lanka is a truly beautiful and unique country. The people are kind, gentle and laid-back. But like every country in the world they have to deal with garbage.
And I keep wondering what do you do with the rubbish of 20 million people living on an island which is roughly twice the size of the island we live on in Canada? We have a population of only 759,000 on half the space. Everything we buy in Sir Lanka is wrapped in plastic or styrofoam and comes in a plastic bag, and all of that packaging has to go somewhere.

cricket

Cricket is the most popular sport in Sri Lanka. We have seen kids in fields and streets playing it, like football is in many other countries. But we had no idea how to play. Luckily that all ended today when we learned a tiny bit about the game. Our host is originally from the UK, a huge cricket fan and was happy to "school us". First up - how to hold the bat to protect the wicket.

is one the loneliest number?

We knew we would be visiting Sri Lanka in the off season. It was just the timing of our route from Turkey to Thailand. During our time here we have felt like the one family from out of town (we know we aren't, but we haven't seen many travelers). It was pretty lonely when we were faced with torrential rains and storms. It didn't make it a bad experience, it just got us wondering if we were idiots to come in the off season. Thankfully when we ended up in the south the sun appeared and our off seasonness started to pay off.

learning

Living in the mountains for five days created many different learning opportunities for our family. We landed at a rustic guesthouse with a giant covered terrace perched on the side of the mountain. While there we watched all possible weather systems come alive from fog rolling in, lightning striking, pounding rain and power outages. All while hearing about a cyclone off the coast of Sri Lanka, a hurricane in the US and an earthquake and possible tsunami on the westcoast of Canada.
We decided with the changing, cooler weather that this would be a good spot to work on school, and learn other things about the surrounding area.