Reality of Adventure

Honestly, the rage is still simmering beneath the surface and even after 2 days, I still can’t quite believe what happened.

A normal day for us. Breakfast, tuk tuk to a beach to spend the day. It’s 11:30am and we’ve already been out to snorkel because, let’s face it, that’s the best bit and why we’re here.

Two (20-odd) girls arrive and as is standard in our modern society, a photoshoot ensues. Clothes on, with cold coconut (that won’t be drunk but serves as a good prop!) hair up, hair down, bikini shots, lean on tree…you know the score.

I thought nothing more of them until later, after they had been snorkelling and called our girls over to chat. Our girls are semi-famous everywhere we go and very confident, so this is quite normal.

They shouted over to us that they had starfish and asked if they were real.

What the actual f***?!

THEY HAD REMOVED THE STARFISH FROM THE SEA!!!

I quickly mentioned that I didn’t ‘think’ they should be out of the water and asked our girls to give them back.

To which, the two girls said they were gifts…I imagine there had also been a photo shoot with the starfish.

Kelly and I are speechless and quickly scramble the girls snorkel and mask so they can at least try to salvage some of this cruelty and we can re-iterate (because they already know at 7 years old) that nothing should be taken from the sea, just memories.

Thus begins our family mission to educate and hopefully change unethical tourism.

How we will do it, we’re not sure yet, but the WHY is terrifyingly clear.