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.