Armitage Shah Family Travels

  While in the Maldives I learned that it is the world's flattest country. There are 1190 islands in the Maldives  but 20% of them are man made. The Maldives is south of India and only a one hour flight from Sri lanka. The only way to get to the resorts is by boat or seaplane. Our resort was only a 20 min boat ride for the airport.  In the Maldives, going snorkeling is fantastic. There is so much coral and many incredible fish. Some of the fish we saw were clown fish, Chinese trumpetfish and the Moorish idol fish. The water is very clear and there are many small reef sharks. I was amazed by how beautiful the Maldives were and how much fun I had. I hope I can come back soon.

  Many parts of the world including Cambodia have been saturated with landmines. There are still 5 million landmines and other explosives that have not been cleared in Cambodia. During the years of conflict the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese army planted landmines to stop the advancement of the opposing army. Many years later landmines were found in Cambodia. Today children are victims of the leftover landmines. They step on them in fields and often lose limbs, their eyesight or their lives.  Aki Ra is the founder of the landmine museum. As a child, Aki Ra lost his parents to war and was forced to plant landmines for the Khmer Rouge. I was very fortunate to meet him at the museum. He explained to me that now as an adult he clears landmines.  He first uses a metal detector to locate the landmine.  Once he finds them,  Aki Ra has two methods of disarming them.  His first method is to explode them by sending electricity through a 80 foot cable .  His other method is to carefully take out

  Did you know that rats can learn to sniff out landmines in 12 months with the correct training. While in Cambodia we got to learn a lot of history about war and landmines.  My family and I went to a visitor center to discover the removal of landmines using giant african pouched rats. I was a bit skeptical on how rats could sniff out landmines but learnt that the rats are trained to smell TNT.  They are  rewarded from their trainers with food for finding them. They don't set off the mines because they are not heavy  enough. The rats are attached to a 10 meter leash  and can scan the size of a tennis court in 30 minutes. These rats have found over 2000 mines in Cambodia.  We continued our learning that day by going to the war museum. Since Cambodia has been a part of many conflicts there are a lot of weapons and war vehicles still in the country. One soldier from the Cambodian military has collected tanks, guns, landmines, a helicopter and a plane. Many of the tanks came from Russi