Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a country of about 150 million people, in an area the size of England and Wales. It is one of the poorest countries in the world, but has tremendously resilient people, having survived repeated floods, cyclones, droughts, colonial invasions and war.

Life outside the gates of CRP (Centre for Rehabilitation of the Paralysed) in Savar or Dhaka is quite chaotic, but thoroughly enthralling...never a dull moment... including a cheeky young fellow pointing out Si's "shiny head". The electricity cables are a good demonstration of the chaos...

Little wonder that there are daily black (and brown) outs.

Activities as two 30+ year olds

Extreme mountain-biking fashion. It seems these bodies on these bikes don't agree with single track.

Beaten by a 3 year old at a wheel-barrow race.

Geocaching with Si's mum, Jill.

Birthday celebration No.2 - Bristol, England

Preparations for the second set of birthday celebrations were quite strenuous for some...

Then we stepped up the pace a little with a surprise activity

After which we headed out to sample the Bristol night life

finishing up at the YHA

Birthday celebration No.1 - Caldicot, Wales

We arrived in Wales on October 4th and commenced 2 weeks of quality family time, fine food and rest from the rigours of travel and work. During this time there was also a significant birthday celebration!

Breakfast and presents for a 30 year old

Playtime for a 30 year old

Birthday Cake 1 was enjoyed at the YHA where Sean and Agnieszka work. Oli, our nephew played with the cake decorations while the cutting was being done. Candles were avoided due to smoke detectors.
Dinner celebrations included surprise guest, Andy who put in the mammoth effort of driving from the Wirral (a 3 hour trip each way) for dinner before flying to China the next day!

Andy, Jill (Si's Mum) and Si

And Birthday cake No. 2:

Sauna

We went to Kuopio largely just to visit the worlds biggest smoke sauna. The sauna is in an old log cabin on the edge of a lake and is only operated once a week (twice in summer), due to the lengthy process involved in preparing the sauna.

An enormous fire is laid in a brick enclosure 24 hours before the sauna opens and rocks are placed on the fire. Before opening time the roof is opened to let the smoke out and some water is thrown on the rocks to begin the steaming. During the session it appears that only the more elderly and experienced patrons are trusted to throw further water on to keep the humidity seriously high.

Finns are also very keen to point out that sauna is not pronounced Saw-na but more like Sow-nah. We found this out when the bus driver taking us to the Sow-na initially scowled at us and then lightened up when we corrected our pronunciation. When we were getting off the bus he suggested that we should have at least 2 dips in the lake followed by 5 beers. Well, we managed 2 dips in the lake and 1 beer. Amusingly the changing rooms contained a beer pump that you could buy tokens for and pour your own. Si would've taken a photo but was a little concerned about pulling the camera out when surrounded by a bunch of naked men.

The culture of the sauna is very relaxed and when Si asked a local how long do people stay in for, and how many times do they go in and out, the reponse was simply "if you are too hot go outside, when you are too cold come back in, there are no rules, listen to your body".

Following the sauna we went for a slap-up buffet meal and were entertained by an accordion player and fiddler, and the singing and dancing locals who got right into it all.

Lapland

Like two rather excitable children (well, one very excitable child and another moderately excited one) we set off to meet Santa Claus. Unfortunately Santa has decided to charge a minimum of €20 to buy the official meet-and-greet photo, and has banned other cameras in his grotto. Therefore we got the next best thing; Si hopped into a small window display while Sarah kept watch and took the snap. It was very tempting to purchase the video the elves recorded of Santa making Sarah do a little dance, but we decided against shelling out €50 (especially as there are probably already many video clips in existence of Sarah doing a little jig).


The Northern Lights were not bright enough to capture on our little camera but were quite spectacular. They are not very colourful this time of year (mostly pale yellow) but were quite bright on a couple of nights; on one occasion forming a huge arc across the sky and then developing a circle with finger like projections radiating out from the middle and dancing across the sky.

Due to the poor quality of regular coffee, and high price of good coffee, we "resorted" to filling our faces with lots of chocolate milk, and were especially amused by this particular brand...


The infrastructure on the hiking paths was really high quality here. It is probably more of a matter of life and death to have good facilities in remote areas due to the winter weather, but they were available for use all year round. Each hut or lean-to had either a wood burning stove or stone fireplace, a big pile of wood, and robust shelter. The huts also had gas stoves with full fuel bottles.


And just in case you were starting to get concerned about the lack of silliness on our trip, here is the obligatory photo of Sarah doing something random on a break in the bus journey to Inari....