Tuesday Night in Launceston

Barry and I went out the other night, not really out as it was Tuesday and being Launceston there was not much going on. Anyway, it was fun. Here are some photos.

A nice Boags...


And Barry and his good friend Stuart...

Very silly goings on I can assure you.
P.S. Barry has since had a hair cut....

The Sister

Well I got organised this morning and managed to bring my flash disk to my fave place in the world, the Launceston Online Access Center (hahahaha). Here are some photos of Zadok's youngest sister (my sister inlaw... weird), Isabelle. She is 17 months old now.
With Jack,


And being especially cute in the bath,


I have noticed that there are some people (ahem... Lauren and Bec...) who must be avoiding exam study as they keep posting stupid comments.... Back to work my friends...

Back in Tssie

So here I am back in Tasmania. Great to see everyone, of course, missing Zadok, of course, feeling rather chilly, of course. I have got some photos to post but I wasn't very smart today and didn't bring them in an uploadable format. Will do so soon.

One more Sleep, and one not Sleep

Last post from Dubai, for the time being, anyway. Heading back to Tasmania, Australia to spend the rest of my summer holidays in the winter. Leaving tomorrow at 10am Dubai time. Fly into Launceston early Saturday morning. See Ya!

Elephants (part 4)

Ok here are the last photos I am going to post from Sri Lanka. The same day we were in Kandy we stopped on the way at two different places where they keep elephants. The first was called The Mellenium Elephant Foundation (I think) where they had a few working elephants and we were able to ride one!


Then we headed to the Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage, which is quite a fanous elephant refuge. They had about 60 eephants, some which are now breeding (we saw an elephant that was 4 weeks old!).


We were so close to these elephants as they walked down to bathe, not more than 1 or 2 meters. They started to run and the guys we were with pulled us back into the reataurant!

These are working elephants that live with the herd, they collect branches etc to feed the others.


That's it for Sri Lanka, I have more pics so if you are interested I will show you some time.

Not the Elephants (part 3)

Our favourite part of the trip was our day trip to Kandy, which is located in Central Sri Lanka. This trip included all our elephant encounters and a number of other activities. Kandy is just 120km from the coast, and yet it took 3 hours to drive there, and on the way back it took 3.5.

This is a view of Kandy from the restaurant where we had lunch. It was quite beautiful up there.


We walked through The Temple of the Tooth, a quite famous buddhist temple in the middle of Kandy, where apparently a tooth that belonged to Buddha is held. Visitors are not allowed to view the tooth.

Sri Lanka 'part 2'

When in Sri Lanka, it is fairly normal for tourists to hire a car and driver to go around and see the sights. It is very cheap and due to the insaneness on the roads and lack of clear road signs it is a good idea I think. We took three road trips, one to Colombo, the capital (which was not very nice....) one to Kandy, which is in central Sri Lanka and one where our destination was to be Galle, down south, but unfortunately Zadok was ill with some sort of bug and we never quite made it there. On the way (before we turned around and headed back to the hotel) we stopped at a Turtle farm, where they hatch eggs and give the baby turtles a chance to mature a little bit before they are set back into the wild.

These little ones are just a few days old, very cute.


This one is a year old. Most of the turtles are released when they are just babies but I guess they keep a few so they can operate as a tourist venture.


The area that the Turtle farm is in was hit by the Tsunami and the guy said that they lost all their turtles, but in the weeks that followed people brought ones they found to him. He also explained how people used to eat the eggs or use them to fish, but now they bring them to him and he buys the eggs from them for 5 rupees each (about 13 eggs would equal $1 I think)


Next installment is the Elephant one... Stay tuned!

Sri Lanka 'part 1'

Hi Everyone! We are back in Dubai, safe and sound. I have quite a few photos but I will just post a few, you can see the rest when I come back to Tas on SATURDAY!

This is The Mount Lavinia Hotel where we stayed. It is located about 12km south of Colombo (thank goodness, not the nicest city). It is an old colonial mansion. We had amazing views of the sea, the beach and of Colombo.


There are two beaches near the hotel, one is private and the other is open to the public. We were walking along the public one and this man ran over to show us his snake. There were lots of people everywhere doing anything they could for money. We got the feeling it was worse than usual because a lot of tourists are still staying away after the Tsunami.


We ate nearly every meal at our hotel (except when we were touring) and drank quite a few cocktails. It was really cheap. I imagine if you wanted to you could travel through Sri Lanka spending very little money.


More to come....