One week of life in Colombia has proven my initial pre-conception that no amount of preparation would brace me for the lived experience of la vida en Colombia. Two weeks ago, while still in Canada, I was asked about a thousand times: “are you excited to be moving to Colombia?” And, while I said “yes of course”, the reality was that I was in fact indifferent, or even apprehensive, with many unanswered questions and still having little knowledge about the country itself aside from its checkered past, now glorified by Narcos.

How quickly things can change. Exactly seven days in, I could see myself having a long future in Colombia!

Our trip home has been short and sweet, we have been back for just a little bit less than a year now, but it is time to move on. The majority of our time has been spent in Alberta, and it was nice to kick off the summer here one last time, and help ring in the celebration for Canada's sesquicentennial anniversary, or the 150th anniversary of freedom from our colonial oppressors, or if you are aboriginal: the 150th anniversary of a change in title of your official oppressors. In general I think most though chose to focus on the positive realities that 150 years of nationhood bring, and it was a particularly festive mood here in Cold Lake. A time for food friends, parties, and family. (except for Clara, she was not allowed to participate because she is a Kiwi :) 

Just kidding! We let her hang out with Nana and Papa Mark where she caught her first fish whilst camping out near Moose Lake. This allowed us to focus on packing up the condo and getting all of our stuff sorted before moving out finally.

Our first days of homelessness were spent at Steph's mom's place. And we took in the Canada Day Parade, and pancake breakfast first thing in the morning. Did a few a Canada day activities at the beack and then returned for a concerrt by 90-00's Can-Rock icon, Bif Naked, who is now a breast cancer survivor/motivational speaker as well as being a rock star. The highlight here was taking Brynn and Aurora to their first ever rock concert, though Brynn spent most of the time trying to recover body heat after playing with her friends IN the lake with her clothes on. This culminated in her passing out during the fireworks show and having to be carried ( like a baby because she was passed out) for 2km by her dad. 

We are now the eve of our departure to Toronto, followed closely behind by four days by departure to Halifax for a farewell to our East Coast family.

In December of 2012, the Hartlen family became homeless for the first time. It began an amazing three and a half year journey almost literally around the world, but mostly centred in New Zealand and South East Asia. We found a permanent-temporary home in Christchurch New Zealand in March of 2013, and in July of 2016, we were temporarily homeless again, eventually finding home again in September of that year. On June 29th of 2017, we will once again be homeless as we slowly make our way to Colombia to find a new permanent-temporary home.

In many ways returning to Canada has at times seemed like a big mistake. We loved our Kiwi family in Christchurch, the weather was good the country was beautiful, and most importantly we were happy. I think the longer we continue this flighty existence happiness is going to be of increasing importance. Coming home has been bitter-sweet. (I will preface these comments by stating that they are not necessarily shared by our entire family but are what I feel) We have been able to catch up with family, we have landed on our feet as far as employment is concerned, and the girls are happy at school and in their various activities. We did not miss the cold, though it was nice to see Clara and Brynn have their first meaningful experience with winter. But, life continues to move on. Nearly four years away from somewhere is a long time, and in that time things change, people change. For me some of my closest friends have moved, and we did not return to those who hadn’t as we are living 300km north of where we used to live. Our home here also has been a temporary one, and this much we have known from the start, so I will readily admit that I did not put much effort into making new connections. This coupled with my general disdain for the town I currently call home, has certainly not helped. Not to far in the back of my mind too, is the probable reality that down in New Zealand, life is continuing and changing no doubt, and were we to go back even as soon as tomorrow, it would likely not be the same. But this is our own - my own, doing.

So, this year has been tough for a variety of reasons, but it has been good to reacquaint with family and I know that my girls are appreciative of it, and our family I think is too. I am a thinker, and a dweller though, so I am always wondering, do the ends justify the means? I think ultimately yes, because the friends we have made  along the way I would not trade for anything, and the experiences much the same: including those people we have not yet met, and those experiences not yet had. I can’t help but feel nostalgic and weepy when I think of how good things have been for us at various times over the last four years, and I know deep down, though the relationships and circumstances have changed, the most important people in our lives will always be there, right?

So, on to new challenges, and the continued exploration of the world by the homeless Hartlens. We head back across this massive country by car because we are suckers for punishment, but also because we have a Kiwi and Bug who have not seen their country, and a ‘Wa who does not remember, despite the fact that she tells us she does, as well as my scattered family along the way. Then, to Medellin Colombia for Spanish adventures in our sixth continent! I hope it will be as eventful as our Kiwi adventures! Buenos noches!

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2016 was a pretty epic year for us! We said goodbye to life and friends in New Zealand (easily the hardest decision we have made in a while!) and discovered that re-establishing oneself in another country, even if it is your home country, is not as straight forward as one might think.

I have created a short video to capture some of the highlights of the year, I hope you like it! And to all, a healthy and happy 2017!!

I often feel like I am not doing anything worthwhile with my life. I feel most of my pursuits are self-indulgent, and at the end of it all while I will have some nice images passing before my eyes as I head to the great beyond, what sort of legacy will I leave? The more I travel the more I am increasingly at odds with the wicked ways of the world. There is so much beauty, but there is also so much misery, and much of it is only visible if it is directly threatening Western interests. I don't ignore it, but even here I just talk about it and actually do precious little.
 
The Holocaust was a terrible thing. It is also a well-known, and well documented universal suffering. The motto that has encapsulated that time since is Never Again. I wonder though how much heed has been paid to those words. I wonder how long this event will be used as justification for further unspeakable cruelties. I wonder if because the vast majority of people who suffered these atrocities were white that this is part of the reason it is still so well documented, and the victims so martyrized. I think at least in part the answer has to be yes. I do not mean to devalue the suffering of so many millions of people, it should be remembered and the people should be remembered. It should be taught in schools, and what happened and how it happened should be common knowledge. But what about the rest? If the Holocaust was to teach the world Never Again, why is it still happening? Why is the world still largely ignorant to the plight of people who have suffered in areas not directly in the scope of Western interests? The world is now watching with rapt attention to Trump vs. Clinton, though really whoever wins will have very little impact on the day to day affairs of the average citizen of the world. We are drawn too with morbid fascination to terror in Syria, and the threat of ISIS worldwide. Racial inequality in the US is front and centre as the #blacklivesmatter takes centre stage. This is just what the media chooses to tell us, and we get bombarded over and over again with the same stories, and what difference does it make? Has anything changed? What else is going on that is worthy of our attention? Whose plight is being ignored? Why did we not care about Rwanda? Sudan? Why do we support nations like Israel and Saudi Arabia, while denouncing Iran, Venezuela, Cuba? What difference is there between them all really?

I want to share two stories to which I was vaguely aware of, but now have a stronger understanding of. I am realising already that this post is misguided and rambly, and hopefully by the time I am done it will have some sort of semblance. It goes back to the Never Again theme which I tried to establish. Since the Holocaust, at least as many, probably more people have died in a genocidal fashion and the world remains largely ignorant of this fact. The reason being is that these atrocities have taken place in areas that either do not serve Western economic interest, or their politics are wrong and therefore the people affected do not matter to western governments.

The second story is related to human trafficking. A problem that receives very little media attention, but is every bit as horrendous as the plight of refugees in the Middle East, or African Americans in the United States. As the father of three daughters, this is particularly troublesome to me.

I am presently visiting Cambodia. I was aware that there was a genocide here, and that it was recent, but I knew little else. Not the cause nor the scope. Now knowing both I am shocked and disturbed, not only by what happened, but the reaction of the world. Politic is a cruel mistress. In the late 1970’s The Khmer Rouge came to power led by Pol Pot, the communist dictator. In three years the Cambodian population of 8 million was reduced to 5. More than 1 in four Cambodians were murdered during this time, and the world was silent. The world perhaps did not really know it was happening. But when the Communist Vietnamese government became aware, they intervened and established a government in Cambodia that the West refused to recognise. Therefore Pol Pot and his henchmen were granted amnesty. The West had lost the ideological war in SE Asia, and no amount of human suffering could counteract incorrect non-capitalist governance. Here was a genocide that defied the lessons of the Holocaust, and it was not the first nor the last such instance.
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On this trip to Cambodia I visited the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh (anyone who comes here should). I have also visited Dachau previously. The sights and stories of the former far outstrip anything I witnessed at the latter. 3 million people were not worked to breaking point and then gassed. They were tortured, and then hacked down with machetes, bamboo, garden instruments, rope, rocks – whatever was available. If you were young enough to be held in one hand, you were bashed into trees. If one member of your family was guilty of an alleged crime you were guilty by association.

The second story is related to human trafficking. During our stay in Cambodia we were very fortunate to stay in two places that did much to advance the lives of people affected by human trafficking, especially Daughters of Cambodia in Phnom Penh. The people employed by this organisation are all victims of human trafficking. They are given jobs by the hotel, and create charming handiwork that is for sale in the gift shop. Staying here was perhaps the best decision we made on our trip. We learned through our stay here that 1 in 40 girls in Cambodia are trafficked at some stage in their lives. Knowing this, and knowing that the girls serving us breakfast, making our rooms up, and answering our questions, were all victims put a very immediate human face to suffering in a way that no gas chamber, or holocaust museum ever could. This was a response to history still being made. I was faced with a crisis as well regarding my three girls. Nothing I could say would make them able to comprehend what these women had been through, how could they understand if I could not? I opted to tell Aurora and Brynn only that these women who were helping us had had some very unfortunate things happen to them in their lives, and that their jobs here were helping them to do that. Aurora said that was very sad, and that she would draw them a picture because they had been very nice to us. And to think, one day this innocent mind will one day be destroyed by the truth of what has happened here.

I apologise for the nature of this post, but I wanted to tell some of this story because I feel it is an important one. It is not a happy one, but if you were to travel to Cambodia one day I want to assure you that there is still happiness here despite everything that has happened. You should come, it is a beautiful country one of my favourites, but you should not come naïve to the history. If you have made it this far I promise in the next post, I will speak of the more traditional tourist fare and family experiences we had in Cambodia’s north.

I am enjoying my break from social media. I am not ignoring it completely, I still find time to enrage my friends, and friends of friends with my political views on the news of the day: from BREXIT, to gun control. However, while actually meeting locals in a comparatively impoverished culture wildly different to anything I have grown up knowing, it is becoming all the more clear to me that breaks from the mass media, and social media parrots are a remedy all should experience far more frequently than any of us no doubt do.

So our new Balinese besties Kadek and family went out of their way to make us feel welcome. Despite the fact that they were gearing up for one of the biggest days on the Hindu calendar (Saraswati Day) they insisted that we come to their family home just around the corner from Weaving Astiti where we were staying. They prepared a traditional Balinese breakfast of sorts while the women prepared offerings for the ceremony. I will not pretend to know how any of it is supposed to go, but everyday all around Bali you will find little banana leaf offerings of food to the various gods and goddesses, for various different purposes (check your righteous western ideals of sustainability and waste at the door here). We were then photographed and generally fawned over for about an hour; these people were truly gracious and beyond excited that we took time out of our day to visit their home. We were made to promise that were we to ever return to Bali, we must stay with them at the family home.  We attempted to give a bit more money to our driver, Kadek, who was the son of Astiti where we stayed, a bit more money for his efforts in driving us around, but he vehemently refused, and then insisted that he be allowed to drive us around for the remainder of our time in Bali for the agreed upon rate, equivalent to about $40/day. This was no small task. We are a family of five with an irritable two year old. Balinese traffic makes Edmonton, or Auckland rush-hour look like a walk in the park. So my point, despite all of the anger and frustration in the world, here are some people, absolute strangers before a couple days ago, prepared to drop everything and put language, religion, race and all else aside to welcome us into their family and their society. All at a time of cultural significance. I wonder, would I do the same at home if a random family from Indonesia, or elsewhere came to my home? During Easter, or Christmas, or Thanksgiving? I would like to say yes, but the reality is probably opposite. I realise that Bali is far from the political hotbed of hate and racism as other places are, but it is nice to know that genuine un-motivated kindness and love still exist out there despite what Facebook and the mass media would have you believe.

Our time is nearly done now in Bali, soon we will be off to a brief stopover in Singapore before carrying on to Malaysia. From Ubud (the tourist mecca of Bali) we saw most of the key temples, my favourite being Ulun Danu Bratan(the temple on the lake) and the drive through proper Balinese country-side to see the rice fields was a nice insight into the local agrarian economy. A bit more nerve wracking was the Fire and Ice show, which culminated with a fire demon of some description kicking the smouldering embers of a meter high fire at the audience, which included a front row Brynn. She escaped burns, but the lady beside her was not so lucky. I guess we will think twice before sitting in the front row next time. (in the distant future I will post a YouTube video to show you just how intense this experience actually was, I don’t think my words here do it justice!)

One of our favourite experiences has been blindly stumbling into Saraswata festivities. This was certainly not planned, we are ignorant to these sorts of things. I had not even been aware Bali was a Hindu island until recently. But the music and chanting, and people parading around in their fancy white ceremonial dress as they made their way to temple with offerings perched precariously on their heads was, certainly a treat.
Other highlights so far include the monkey forest, where both Stephanie and I had monkeys jump on to us in search of food/high priced electronics for them to take back to their monkey black-market, and waking up to monkeys outside our hotel room door that the girls can then play/run-away from. #whatarethingsyoucantdobackhome

Tomorrow, we bid farewell to Bali and prepare to open up our wallets and haemorrhage money as we say hello to Singapore, but not before one more trip with Kadek, and a trip to Tanah Lot.

I had hoped to attach pictures to this post, and i will but wifi is painfully slow (I know first world problems) If you are a loyal follower, there will be pictures here eventually. For now just words, words, words!

Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world. Do not however go to Bali and expect to see anything Muslim related. Bali is a Hindu sanctuary, and I would assume, having never been anywhere else in Indonesia, quite different.

We are experiencing Bali in the southern hemisphere winter, so it is comparatively cool, on 27C today, and not nearly as muggy as I had thought it would be. We are only a couple of days in, well I am anyway; the girls have been here for a week and a half already. Travel here is not without challenges, there is the language barrier (we are not in what you would call the touristic part of the island) there is the heat, long drop toilets + westerners not accustomed to aiming at such devices, general cleanliness of everything you touch, children who touch everything, and, compounding everything, the biggest challenge of all: Clara. Clara, who “no yikes the beach”. Clara, who “no yikes nanas!” Clara, who will not stand for others sitting in her seat, but at the same time will not sit in her seat. Clara, who at the tender age of two years and five months, will be the barometer by which this trip is measured.

Despite all of this, we have had amazing weather, and what we have seen, has not disappointed. We are operating from a weaving company run by a Balinese family, it has been a real insight into Balinese life and the family that we are staying with (via Airbn’b) is very welcoming and excited to have guests for the first time in a long time.

Our driver, which costs about $40 a day has driven us all up and down the central east side of the island, from the small Gelgel village we are staying in, to Pura Ulun Danu Batur – a beautiful Hindu Temple overlooking the Batur volcano, the water purification temple at Pura Tirtha Empul – where we observed many having immersive holy water experiences (Stephanie had been one of these last year, but we were not prepared for such adventures today.) Aurora and I then toured the impressive, and expansive grounds at Gunung Kawi before finishing our day with street food in Klungkung. Today we are being invited round to the son of the owners of the weaving business (and our driver from yesterday) to meet his family, apparently we made an impression.
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Soon we will be off to the tourist Mecca of Ubud, and adventures in the Monkey forest among other things.