Well.. Its friday! And that means trip day! Matt, sue and i all set off with wije in the van on the quest for ella! We set off at 8am and with stops for tea and a roti, we arrived here for 4pm. I also saw the first elephant of the trip!!! It was walking along the road with some guy. The trip actually went quite fast, probably because i was DJ for most of it haha 😉 we went through basically every type of sri lankan scenery possible haha.. Bustling towns, completely green fields upon fields, and the last part was just massive hills… And i mean bloody huge ass hills! Although it takes a long time to travel through the country at least you get to see a lot more of it!
We arrived at our hotel and it is bloody fantastic. Wije booked it for us and omg it is the nicest thing ive ever seen. Its basically built into the face of a mountain and matt and i are sharing a room.. The room is huge. And the view is amazing. I dont know how wije got us this hotel!!! But i aint complaining! Sure beats the shop i lived in for a weekend in mirissa! 😹
We changed into our swimming shorts and went about minutes down the road to a waterfall!! It was beautiful, although there were SO many monkeys!!! I managed to climb into a part where you could see the lagoon bit at the bottom but i was too afraid of drowning to jump in haha 😫 i just had visions of me cascading down this rock! No thanks, maybe the next waterfall will be a bit more gentle!
We got back, relaxed and had a HOT SHOWER! The first hot shower ive had in a month!!! I feel so much cleaner now!!!!
We are now upstairs, enjoying a G&T and loving life.

With love from sri lanka, Jack ✌️

Today was a pretty good day! We woke up to more baby turtles!! Olive ridleys again 😸 they’re just so CUTE! We collected them all and we just ran the hatchery again 🐢 i took another tour who gave me a tip AGAIN! This time 1000 rupees! Donated it again though, i really should start keeping them! Hahaha yeah so the rest of the morning it was really quiet so i sunbathed on the beach and took a few dips in the ocean which was just so nice 🙌
Then we went to teaching! It was really fun today (except all the kids were looking for vann haha).. I took the boys and matt took the girls. It became very clear i cant handle children at all haha all the boys were so unruly so next week i shall try to be more strict! They are just so happy and want to have fun! After learning compound words we played whats the time mr wolf outside and then we went home ☺️ as we arrived though wije got me to do a bloody tour as soon as i stepped through the door! Haha!!
After changing into my pj’s we released most of the new hatchlings and some of the older green turtles which was really cool to watch!
So now tea time and bed time ready for the weekend!

Hello! This morning we got up as usual and fed the turtles after breakfast. We didnt have much tuna so we just fed the smaller ones – tomorrow the big ‘uns will get their share. It was another sri lankan holiday today, they have more holidays than workdays!!! Therefore the hatchery was filled with locals all day.. However i did do two tours to european couples and on the latter tour i got tipped 500 rupees!!! (Like £2.50) so i told them to put it in the donations box because im a nice person ☺ #besttourguideever other than that i have just been playing card games and sitting around! Just a normal day in the hatchery. So yeah we ate, and ate, and ate… I am putting so much weight on.. I can actually see myself growing outwards… This is not good, my face is just getting more round by the day! Ha😹 i think its all the bloody rice! Or the sugar they put in everything! Its too good to resist! So yeah when i come back to the uk, i will be black and obese hahahahaha

With love from sri lanka, Jack ✌️

Well today we cleaned the tanks. We started after breakfast and as ive learned tank cleaning is a massive job! We had a group of about 7 people come to ‘help’ but they were more interested in cleaning the turtles than the tanks so we just carried on regardless.. That took us until lunch and after a quick swim in the ocean we ate and returned back to the hatchery. We usually teach but its a national holiday so we didnt have to – instead the hatchery was FULL of locals all day! Also, completely out of the blue a tortoise just appeared on the beach!? It just came out of the ocean hahaha i think there is a lagoon somewhere near and he got lost… A land, fresh water, tortoise coming out the sea is not normal so that was a sight!!
Then we came in, ate and now im just entertaining myself on what travels i shall do next.. Thinking south america 😏

With love from sri lanka, Jack ✌️

Today had ups and downs… I woke up at 6:45am ready to set off on a trip to the immigration office at 7:30am. No time for breakfast, i met sue in the house as we both needed to go.. Then dudley rocks up in his (friends) new BMW and tells us were going in that?!?! BRILLIANT! So we travelled in style up to colombo!
We spent literally 5hours in immigration. It was just so boring. Thank god sue was there though because i would have no idea what to do hahaha yeah and at least we wernt on our own with no one to talk to!
After all that, and a MASSIVE penalty because im spending 3 days over 3 months 😫😫😫
So yeah we headed back home after that and i am SO HUNGRY. not had anything to eat all day.. So yeah just gunna have tea and go bed!

With love from sri lanka, Jack ✌️

Dammit missed a day again! Sorry about this guys! Today we had a day off so we woke up very leisurely and tried to decide what to do, my original plan was to go to ambalangoda and just walk around.. Try to get some bice photos etc. but then sue and matt suggested going to galle for the day which sounded a lot better haha! So we set off – after burying 160 olive ridley eggs in the hatchery and fighting off chinese tourists who wouldnt bloody stop touching the turtles!!!
We got to galle and sue showed us round, i didnt go in the fort last time so it was new for me and matt.. Its so nice. Its literally like a kind of french/italian style village with long streets dotted with restaurants, boutique shops, spa’s and all that! It was good just to sit down in pedlar’s street and eat, pasta carbonara obviously. Also the milkshakes there are amazing. So yeah we visited deco on 44 – sue knows everyone there, that hotel is so nice.. Like proper nice. We then visited a museum with loads of old stuff in it haha it was pretty cool to see all of that as well
The whole place was just be-a-u-tiful. I really liked it and there was surprisingly low amount of tourists?! So yeah we headed back on an air conditioned bus and had tea and i headed straight to bed! Ready for a very exciting day tomorrow!! (Sarcasm)

With love from sri lanka, Jack ✌️

4 week anniversary! Wow cant believe it! Its flown by!!! Well this morning, me sue matt and jenny all set off to meet vann in hikkaduwa and we went snorkelling – bar sue who was busy exploring the towns restaurants. We got to Wije’s shop – who i used last time and he wasn’t there so his wife put me on the phone to him and i managed to get him down from 14000 to 10000 for four people.. Perks of knowing the locals haha. We didnt see much out in the corals but when we came back to the shallower parts, we saw a bloody HUGE turtle. Like massive. Tried to take a chunk out my hand haha! That was good but it was a bit touristy and lots of people were round it when we found it so we left.. We then went to get lunch and i had carbonara again! Im in love, new fave food. Had to say bye to vann as well 😫 another goodbye!
Then we came back and i tried to nap because my stomach still is giving me grief but it didnt work so we had tea and now i will hopefully get some sleep!
With love from sri lanka, Jack ✌️

Well this weekend i think i shall be having a quiet one, today we worked the hatchery up until lunchtime and then we were supposed to be off work but ended up taking 90 kids round the hatchery! How that happened i have no idea haha but it was really good, the kids were well behaved and very interested! We had tea and ive got a random stomach ache, think its the 8 cups of tea i had today 🙈 so yeah just a normal day, sorry for the short blog but im just gonna try to rest my belly 😷
With love from sri lanka, Jack ✌️

My name is now mychang… Dudley (the owner) always calls me mychang and apparently it means brother or good friend ☺️ we woke up and fed the turtles today.. Again! After that 2 HUGE buses FULL of CHILDREN appeared at the hatchery! We split them up into groups of 26 and i took my group to the babies first.. The kids were pretty interested but i had to keep telling them not to touch the turtles! Yeah that was fun, but they must have been only 6 years old so they had no attention span haha.
After that we chilled out to get ready for teaching and then we set off to the school ☺️
We started off by teaching them about turtles and sue drew the most beautiful drawing of a turtle to annotate 🐢 haha 😉 and then we taught them a poem and we went outside! They love to play, like LOVE to play. i think i have become the punching bag for most of them as all they do is cling to me and chase me. It is very fun playing games with them haha! After that we came home and released another 20 baby turtles! It suddenly started tipping it down haha so we all had tea and went to bed! Nice 👌
With love from sri lanka, Jack ✌️

Today we fed the turtles and went teaching the the afternoon.. I liked teaching the kids today it was fun ☺️ other than than i took a nap and have eaten 2 mounds of rice and just played a massive of trivial pursuit – best game EVER. me and jenny won. so im ready for bed haha apologies for the short blog but im so tired! I shall leave you with a nice photo of a train track i took today
With love from sri lanka, jack ✌️