Gold Coast

The Trip

We are currently on a road trip up to the Gold Coast, South Queensland. We have just arrived to the peak of our road trip  and we bought 7 Day tickets to Australia's largest theme park, Dreamworld. This ticket lets us also enter the a joining water park, WhiteWater World and the tallest building in the Gold Coast, Skypoint. This was an experience I will never forget so I decided to make a blog post about it. 

Dreamworld

Excitement wandered around as we traversed through the car park and tickets sales before the world of dreams. 

Some of you may recognise the Giant Drop, if not here are some facts. You slowly rise up an 120metre tower before free falling from the top with only a small harness to keep you safe. 

Mum thought this was the worst! The wiggles tea cup ride. 

This was heaven for Leaf!

We also met some movie stars!

The loop the loop was one of my favourites. 

This is called the flow rider. It is a cross between surfing, snowboarding and body boarding. Here Banjo has fallen of his board. 

This is me taking of from the side. 

Banjos just surfing  around. 

I'm trying out a few of my tricks. 

Burj Khalifa

BURJ KHALIFA:

The view from our roof top pool/terrace. 

There we a few things that were extremely good and just one was extremely bad. The bad one was that  Becks (david Beckham) was opening a Adidas store and we missed him by a  day !!!

Some of the absolute great stuff that happend were these things. Firstly we walked out of the lift in the Dubai mall and we got randomly handed 8 'At The Top' tickets which allow you to go to the top of the Burj Khalifa.  We were thrilled and that meant it saved us an absolute fortune. The second stroke of luck was that Leaf was screaming. I bet you are puzzled right now  why we were so happy??...but we got fast tracked through the slow moving line of people and straight to the top. We would have been waiting for over an hour so that was great. 

At the 124th floor (448 m up) you can see the illuminated city of Dubai. The view was outstanding from the highest outdoor observation deck in the world. 

Look at my selfie with the Burj Khalifa. We are best friends now. 

Finally, I will try to keep you updated with our time in Dubai. Sorry I didn't have time to finish my Sri Lanka post I might be able to do a late post about Sri Lanka. I will tell every one about what we did when we get back. I will be home soon. Bye!

Meeting new Friends in Mirrisa

When we were in Mirrisa on the South Coast of Sri Lanka we met a family of 5 from Israel. We first met the family two days earlier up in the hills of Ella. The boys names were Itamar, Amitai and Assaf. Ages 13, 10 and 7. They enjoyed most things we did like football and their favourite sport was basketball. We also were able to enjoy Itamars 13'th birthday which is a really special birthday in Israel. 

Our family was amazed a how good English they spoke. It was very easy to communicate with them. I think that my school should learn how to speak Spanish fluently like they can speak English because like English, Spanish is one of the worlds most spoken languages. It is spoken in Spain and the whole of South America. 

They lived in Tel Aviv and we talked about 

Sport, school, travel and life. They have now headed to the Maldives for a week and we are going to stay in touch by email. In fact we have already had an email from them. 

I really enjoyed playing and chatting to people from another country , especially another similar family. 

Just A Little Something I Did

This just a little thing a did in my spare time. Can you guess which footballer this is? Answer in a comment pls!

Our First Two Stops in Sri Lanka

 We were just about to plonk ourselves down in the airport of Edinburgh but then we recognised three built guys with the same t-shirts on. Then I noticed the badge. Then after a while I worked put that they were part of the Scottish Rugby team. So we asked of we could have a pic. It we be great if some one could tell me who these guys are in a comment, seeing as I have not much interest in rugby. That would be great!

Our First Stops in Negombo and Kandy:

Our Emirates flight touchdown in Negombo the peak heat of the day we waited 20 minutes in the waiting area until finally a driver arrived to take us to Negombo (1/2 an hour drive) to stay at our luxury resort called the Suriya Resort (by the way this resort was 5 whole stars). But sadly we were only staying one night. These are some pics of what the hotel looked like. 

This is us boiling with heat when we had just arrived. 

At 9 o'clock in the morning we were picked in a mini bus and taken to the famous Pinawala Elephant Orphanage. This is a big place for tourist because in normal life we don't see baby elephants being fed or see them just roaming around on the paths that we use, crazy! One of the highlights of Pinawala was that I got to feed a massive elephant twice. I fed it once putting it in his mouth and the other time by putting it in his trunk. 

This is them having their bath time in the river. 

This is the pretty parm tree alley in the Kandy Botanical Gardens. 

This is us and our driver Sunyl all squeezed into 1 tuk-tuk. 

We also went to a traditional fire dance. They did stuff like walk on hot coal, lick fire and rub fire on their arms. 

This is the picture of them walking on coal. 

The cleaner that came to our room everyday. He made three animals out of rolled up towel. He made an elephant, dog and a monkey. 

This is the sacred temple of the tooth. One of the most sacred Buddha temples ever. It is said that Buddhas tooth was once stored here. Now it's just a replica tooth. 

This is a picture of what the tooth is stored in. 

Look at the delicious greasy breakfast food. 

This is just a wild monkey roaming the streets of Kandy. 

We also went to a tea factory. Tea is Sri Lankas biggest industry. It is really interesting how they make three different teas with just one tea leaf. 

These are some Tamil people picking some tea leaves. 

Next we are heading high into the hills by train and then onto the coast....more to follow!

THE FINAL STOP! (Innerleithen)

  A sudden mishap stops us flying! 

  We were having an absoulutley wonderful time in the town of Falkirk. Until Banjo went to the toilet that is. There were some extremely heavy doors, there is your first clue. I bet all you mums can guess what happens next. That's right he trapped his finger in the hinged of the door and was rushed straight to the nearest hospital. It turns out the 70% of the top of his finger was chopped of. 

Thankfully banjo is ok now. 

However, since and before that incident we have done some amazing things with our Grandma and Grandad in Scotland.

This is us absoulutley frozen just about to cross the border to Scotland. As you can see we are not quite dressed for the weather. 

This is one of the first things we went to. It is called the Kelpies and it represents two massive horses heads. The object itself is actually made of little parts of different shaped pieces of metal. 

This is the Falkirk Wheel. This is the only one in the world. It's job is to lift boats by water replacement up to the top of a canal system so barges can cruse to Edinburgh from there. 

One of the priveledges of Banjo going to hospital was that we got to stay for another week. And in that week we saw  Her Majesty the Queen on her way to open the new borders railway line. But the extremely special thing about it was that that day she became the longest reigning monarch in British history. Which is extremely special. 

We also had a day in the amazing Edinburgh Zoo. And we saw the most rare thing to see at a zoo anywhere. We saw one of the only two Pandas in Britan and one of only four in Europe. But the big treat was we saw it get out of bed and walk around for a bit! Unfortunately the other Panda in Edinburgh Zoo was hiding somewhere private. 

We also saw the cutest little penguin parade ever. They just traversed around a little track with everyone starring at them. This tradition has been going on for over 50 years. 

As you can see we also saw the Australian swamp wallaby - ha ha!

We have had an amazing time in the UK and it looks like we will be on our way to Sri Lanka very soon. I will try to keep the blog updated regularly. 

Scarbrough

Our Time In Scarborough:

We had absolutely wonderful time in the sea side town of Scarborough with the full side of mums family.  These are some of the things we did. 

This looks like a bit of a gambling place, right? Well it's not, it's called the 2p slots. It is a bit hard to explain what you do exactly but I will have a go. The first step is to change a pound into all 2ps. Then you put those 2ps into slots and you gradually get more money and recieve prizes such as toys. It is really good fun! Funnily you never leave with any money left! 

This is my cousin Leo and I playing the 2p slots and inserting coins.

In order from left to right is: Cousin Izza, Auntie Mandy, Ellen's  boyfriend James, Cousin Ellen, Cousin Leo, Me, Mum, Banjo, Leaf and Cousin Niamh. The only people not in the photo are my Uncle Simon, Uncle Tim, Dad (taking the photo) and Auntie Julie. 

On the sea front of Scarborough there is an Army Adventure Park. Which includes Airsoft shooting, Tank Driving, Rock Climbing, Lazer Tag and a Zombie Apocalypse. 

This is me shooting a real Airsoft Gun in a shooting range. 

One of the great things I did with my cousins in Scarborough was going to the biggest open air theatre in the whole of Europe. Some big artist have been here like, Jessie J, Olly Murs and Little Mix are coming. We went to see a band called Scouting for Girls. It was an absolutely amazing concert! This is us eating at a restraunt called Pizza Exxpress. We had some delicious pizza. 

This is us in our seats watching the warm up bands. 

This is us listening to the second last song. 

Banjo and I went on on a rope climbing adventure place were you were strapped to a bar and you walk along a very high climbing frame. 

We also went to dad's old school, Scarborough College. It was really interesting what their school did and what it does now. They have really cool excursions  to places like Barcelona, Madrid, Rome and other cities in Europe. 

We found dad's name on a board in the school . He was tennis captain in 1989.