Where To Find New Friends

One of our favourite aspects about travel is the people that we meet, be it a local or fellow tourists like us.  And sometimes friendships can be formed quite quickly and intensely.  We’ve met many people who we are lucky to call friends from previous travels, with these friendships surviving distance and in most cases language barriers too.  And now with email, Skype, Facebook and Twitter, it’s easier to keep in touch.

Yet as the XIV Dalai Lama put it, “We have been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbour.”

Is There A Perfect Age For Children To Travel? Part 2

So what’s a good age that the children should be for travel with family? We’ve been traveling overseas with our kids since they were 3months old, mostly to see their extended family in Canada.  Babies can be easy travellers, especially if they are breastfed and if they can sleep anywhere.  You also save on their airfares.  When they were toddlers, we found travel to be a bit more challenging, especially if they still required 2 naps a day.  It made it hard to see and do everything that we wanted to in a day.  Finding the right food for them, and their emerging mobility (to 'stroller' or not?) were further considerations we had to constantly grapple with.

Last January while most 5-yr olds in Australia were getting ready to start school for the first time, we were taking ours for a 12-month long family trip to Southeast Asia.  We felt that this was really an ideal time for her to do such a trip, without having to worry about missing school or having to home-school.   Also we liked the idea of a delayed start to build up her resilience and emotional maturity.  So was it a good age for her to travel??

Is There A Perfect Age For Children To Travel? Part 1

“What’s the right age to take kids on extended family travel?”   

“What age is too young to travel to developing countries?” 

These are probably the most common questions most parents grapple with as they dream of a nomadic lifestyle, or at the very least, a few months’ trip away with the family.  With more than one child, you also have to find the right time for all the children involved.  I don't know if there is a perfect age, but this is what we found.