1/11/2019 - Sri Lanka Day 12
深入斯里蘭卡的熱帶雨林🌳🇱🇰🌳
We arranged another local tour today to the Sri Lanka Rainforest and waterfall. It requires a little bit of hiking so we decided to wear our sneakers but when the tuktuk/tour leader saw us, he said we should wear flipflops, so we changed to flipflops. After half an hour of tuktuk travel time, we arrived at a rural area and the leader led us into the wood and between bushes, then I know why we need flipflops cos we need to walk into the creeks and brooks to the other side. After several crossing of water, we finally reached the waterfall. I am so happy that it was not too difficult. NOT! The most adventurous thing is that we are to climb up the rocks to the waterfall with flipflops and crocs?! 😨 I don’t know how I did it... but it was accomplished!
I don’t know if I will be doing it again. In a country lacking of basic safety knowledge, their car have no safety belt and people ride on motorcycles some with no helmet, the turtle conservation coordinator work with open ended electric cables above open water, I wasn’t told that this trip requires climbing of rocks. Going with people without knowing your physical limitation, they will not care whether you are capable either. Trying to catch up with the team rather not my goal but to take care of the step right in front of me is crucial. I admired at the youth of the teenager and the 24 years young girl, they are swift in walk, climbing and so ready to swim in the hilltop pond in their bikini. My thought is... no way I will submerge my body in that water, even with clothes on, who in the world know what will be in it? And it turns out there are tiny little fishes to do the fish massage again and I saw water mosquitoes sliding on the water surface. Another lady from The Netherlands in our group, who is maturer than I am, she is taking her 1st on-herself-journey to explore the world, as she is so contained the first half of her lives with family and kids. She does like a happy little girl goes on her first picnic trip. I really like talking with her and listen to her stories and life wisdom. And she dies gave the same feeling how she could have accomplished this rain forest hike. 🎊
Life is full of responsibility and the older we get the more are in our backpack, young people travel light, they have high adaptation to the environment and accommodate easily. Learning to grasp the flexibility between the two is another wisdom. I am so impressed with the Tonja, the Dutch lady, she learned that one of the three sisters helping staff here do not possess a Sri Lankan gem which her two sisters does, as this stone represent good life, luck and health in their culture. When we were at the mine which produce the unique Sri Lankan Blue MoonStones💎, she bought her a stone to complete her life. What a good deed Tonja is doing. It is such a blessing to bless people with small gesture when this is just a minor cost to us, it means the whole world to a Sri Lankan. Bless her heart.
有時候環境很不熟適，路徑也崎嶇，人人都只按著自己的步伐前進，孤身一人、沒有人在左右扶持，能把自己目前的一步站穩，學習少挑剔別人也不挑剔自己、按耐𥚃面的投訴，走到盡處就看見美麗的風景。神的創造使人心胸寬廣，自然也容得下別人的短處，更願意滿足別人的缺。人生的智慧，我們要走過多少個坎兒才懂？🧐
We spent the entire yesterday and today afternoon giving the turtles a bath. Lifting these humongous creatures really need lots of strength, for the smaller size one we were able to lift them out of the tank alone or cooperating with two, however Mal (the turtle center coordinator) will help us lift them out. We thoroughly realized the Chinese saying “老鼠拉龜”, you have no where to grab a hand on. 🐭🐢The turtles need to be bathed once every 1-2 weeks, mainly to scrub the moss off their shell. As most of their shell are damaged by fishing net and a turtle was injured by an insane guy using a wood chopping tool on a turtle shell intend to eat and drinking its blood thinking that will help with longevity. Another one having trouble to eat because a fishing hook got stuck in his throat. Good news is, one of the turtle is mostly recovered the front flap issue caused by fishing net and should be ready to send back to the ocean next month. ☺️ Just by looking at the damaged shell already make me feel bad inside, touching it and feeling the crack with my fingers make me angry. Poor animal, so beautiful and does no harm to human were seriously hurt because of our stupidity.😡 We are using very primitive tools to bathe the turtles, a piece of coconut shell, sand and water, using these natural ingredients, so organic and local by just what is available. We continue to clean the tanks which require lots of labor, we all worked very hard to have the walls and floors of all tanks scrubbed and sand drain out. The turtle project is about to complete, we will conclude the project by cleaning the beach and autographing the wall for memory. Working at the turtle conservation center is hard labor, lifting, scrubbing, digging, cleaning, soaking in salty water everyday, including my own sweats. I am very impressed by Mal for he is working non-stop during the year (no vacation, just off the weekend)to keep these turtles living with dignity and preserving them by keeping their offsprings strategically reproduce.
這裡沒有五星酒店、沒有冷氣、沒有米子蓮餐飲，每天要自行到屋外冷巷的溝渠旁用最快的速度洗衣服（因為很多蚊子和昆蟲和巨型蜥蜴），洗澡沒有熱水，一星期只有一餐用葷，沒有Wifi (但明顯我有data SIM card)，可是這裡的美是粗獷、不修飾的原始魔力，花草樹木沒有限制地在地面上怒長，禽鳥、走獸無拘束地翱翔，或許是最貼近上帝創造時的模樣。天、地、海、錦繡山河、一切最原始的創造，總帶給人安慰、教人謙卑，也讓人縱使看一萬次也永看不厭。願這片土地永續不被污染。
After a long day travel from Kandy to Ambalangoda, I slept straight 12 hour in the simplest accommodation with just a ceiling fan with 5 of us in one room. It is stuffy and hot, luckily the huge fan in the common area helped us cool down a lot while we gather. Ambalangoda, city next to the ocean, lots of tourists come to surf at this untouched turquoise piece of water, the Indian Ocean.
The program manager gave us a brief orientation including safety and the purpose of the turtle conservation center. A 20 minute city tour for us to know the surroundings, where is the ATM, supermarket, ice-cream store and Internet cafe. There are two turtle conservation sites, just 5 minute walk from our accommodation and our house us just a few meters from the ocean. The Disabled Turtle Home and the Turtle Conservation Center. Then After lunch, we started working!
Our schedule everyday is different. We will start working at 9:30am at the turtle disabled home, consist of feeding and cleaning the tanks. Today is Monday, we cut up 355 sardines, preparing them to feed the 26 disabled turtle and babies. In the Disabled Turtle Center, they only kept turtles that are handicapped. Most of them lost their front limbs, one of them lost 3, I can’t stop my tears, poor animals, lost the ability to live but luckily got save by some fisherman and send them to this place. A few other turtles always floating on top of water, as they can’t dive as they lost their limbs and they have swallowed too much plastic, this turtle hardly survive and under the great care of the turtle center manager. My heart drowned to see them swim without limbs. We are feeding them and putting the sardines right at a distance so they don’t need to dive or swim to get it. If they are in the wild, they will be starved to death. These turtle are beautiful and smart animals, for those that can dive, if they didn’t catch the sardines and got sink to the bottom of the tank, all we need to do is point to the sardines in the water, they will be able to dive down and eat it, most of those that can’t dive, we helped them to dive down by pushing them into the water and they are smart enough to pick up the food.
First time safari visitor, we got to see a few elephants... walking right in front of our eyes, kicking it’s leg on the sand and his little buddy friend - a buddy, always accompanying him. 
