Travel blogs tend to be quite rosy, and we've had a very wonderful time on our trip. Reading this blog and looking at the photos would incite most people into thinking that it's been 'all good' everywhere we've been. In fact, the world can be a miserable place, and this post is an attempt to moderate our effusiveness.
Thailand is a tropical paradise to be sure, but not everything there is pristine. Nearly every beach we walked on was tarnished by rubbish, lots of rubbish. Obviously swept onto the beaches by the tides, and mostly consisting of plastic, this trash was unfortunately ubiquitous. Some of it came from the poor waste systems in place there, but we're sure that a lot is swept in from other countries and waste simply dumped in the oceans. A lot of it was very small and had clearly been in the sea for a while. This just another example of the curse of plastic on our natural environment and damn ugly too.
Big cities can be desperate and sad places. Vancouver had more homeless people than is to be expected in a city of that size, it was really tragic. At the least Canada has 'container deposit legislation' meaning that there is a dollar value placed on used cans and bottles, and these can be collected and redeemed. The bums were doing a roaring trade, the same can be said of Ottawa in some places. This is not a solution to the problem in any way, and doesn't replace housing, job support and other welfare. Paris is a 'romantic' city for most. But travel anywhere and you will see desperate and poor people, and the graffiti is rife and to be seen to be believed. Don't go there if you want to be uplifted about the human condition. Although New York was better than we expected in terms of visible poverty ('was there an Olympic event coming up there?' we thought) there was a fair bit of begging on the metro and one situation where an old woman was laughed at by some commuters and then was asking everyone for help in the most pitiable manner possible.
Canada is rife with large vehicles. For those in Australia, our 4 wheel drives don't even compare with the monstrosities they have over here. With all the concern with air pollution, congestion and greenhouse pollution, it seems like they are going in the wrong direction here. And that is not saying anything about the exploitation of tar sands in Alberta which is an environmental disaster. [Note: we drove a 3 tonne motorhome over 13,000 km so our consciences are hardly clear on this point].
When we were at the Calgary Stampede we wandered into the agricultural tents, as you do. After a few minutes we couldn't stand it and left. It was farm propaganda at it's worst. They even had an adult pig displayed in it's typical enclosure, i.e. trapped in metal bars with no room to move - and people were standing around admiring the situation! We could go on for a long time about animal exploitation (Canadians love their BBQs and industrial animal farming as much as Australians) but we won't.
Last night we went out to the ice hockey to watch the local team - The Senators. It was a great game, very fast and almost excessively violent. A fistfight is an obligatory part of every match, and it is actually part of the game to try and crunch your opponent up against the plexi-glass walls of the rink. It was a lot of fun, although they ended up losing 3-2.
The noise of the skates slicing along the ice is great, as well as the sound of the puck being belted around. They have 6 players on the field at once including the goalie, but each team consists of about 25 guys. So they are constantly swapping on and off! Our friend Sandra got us the tickets to this match - so thanks Sandra! 
