3 Best Family Beaches With Playgrounds in Southern California

As a family with kids under 10yrs old, our idea of the perfect beach has soft clean sand and gentle waves.   What is even better though is if there is a playground for the kids AT the beach too.  Oh--and clean washroom facilities nearby would round out our wish list!  On a recent trip to Southern California, we got our wish not one, not two but three times!  Set your GPS with these locations on your next trip to SoCal!

Does Cruising With Kids Makes Sense?

Cruising.  Everyone seems to be doing it these days.  But what about our back-packer-budget-independent travel style?  And with kids in tow?  For a while now, we've wondered, Would a cruise work for us?

How To Move Your Pet Overseas: The Ultimate Guide

Are you an expat or traveler who wants to take your pet with you overseas?  We are!  

 Moving overseas is  complicated.  Moving a family of 4 even more so.  Now add in moving the family pet.   And did I mention that the move is from Melbourne, Australia to Vancouver, Canada?  Yup, that’s over 13,000km, and a 16+hr flight for us, and now our dog. 

Bangkok With Kids: 5 Fun Things To Do On A Budget

Bangkok is an amazing, vibrant city that blends first- world cosmopolitan perks like air-conditioned shopping centres with the ancient cultures of Asia featuring centuries-old temples and monuments.  But what’s there to do with the kids and on a budget?? 

The answer is:  more than you think!

Here are our Top 5 Favourite Affordable Things To Do With Kids in Bangkok:

How You Too Can Afford To Take Your Family On Holiday

To many people, going on holiday with their kids seems like an impossibility and don’t even mention going overseas.  Why?

Cost.

The fact that we’ve managed to go on holiday with our kids, overseas, twice in the past 10 months may cause some people to conclude that we are rich.  This is simply NOT TRUE.

So what’s our secret?

Our Mini-Getaway To Tasmania

Thanks to a long weekend and to an airfare sale, we recently found ourselves in Launceston, Tasmania.  It was a whirlwind trip consisting of 3 days and 2 nights, but nevertheless a nice break from the day to day of work, school and home life.  And the best part of the trip, according to the girls, will likely make you laugh.  But more on that later.

Best Family Beaches in Asia

For those who know us well, we’re a family of beach bums!  We absolutely love being at the beach:  the kids love to play in the sand and frolic in the water and mom and dad love to laze in the sun, go for a swim and maybe even read a book. As such, we consider ourselves somewhat of ‘connoisseurs’ when it comes to picking to perfect beach. 

So what do we consider a perfect family beach?

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.  

7 Must-Visit Playgrounds in Southeast Asia

A rare sight sometimes in SEA

Aside from the typical list of things to see in Asia, if you are traveling (or thinking about traveling) with children under 10 years of age, chances are at some point you’ll be desperate for a great outdoor playground.  This was a major theme during our travels with our 2 pre-schoolers in tow as we travelled through 9 countries in SEA last year.   Visits to ancient temples, breath-taking beaches, bustling markets, UNESCO World Heritage Sites, not to mention the countless hours spent on buses, trains, and planes were no match for the pleasure that swings and monkey bars could offer our kids!   But sadly the notion of play is not as readily indulged in developing countries where poverty and survival are the over-riding themes for children and their families.  While fun, well-maintained purpose-built outdoor play spaces were rare luxuries, we did come across a few gems that we’d highly recommend for a visit if you happen to find yourselves in the area—the kiddies would be happy!

3 Best Things About Going Home

Appropriately, today marks the start of the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese zodiac.  Some of the predictions for this lunar year are 'for great deeds, innovative ideas and big projects...that it will bring excitment...and give happiness and success to good honest people'.

Sounds like the perfect start for us when we get back!


So in the spirit of looking forward, here is our list of our '3 Best Things About Going Home': 

Five Things We'll Miss About Our Year Of Travel

Our year of traveling together as a family is rapidly coming to an end and although in many ways we are looking forward to going home, we can’t help but be a bit wistful about leaving behind certain aspects of the past year.

 

What will we miss?

It's Time To Go Home

This time last year, we were busy packing up the house and counting down the days until we would begin our adventure.  As of today, we’ve officially been on the road, living as vagabonds, nomads, for 357 days.  Wow—that sounds so long.  And now we have another count down—for the number of the days we have left until we return home. 

So the question of the day is: How do we feel?

Dear Santa, For This Christmas We Wish...

Christmas is a time of mixed feelings for us. When we were kids, Jim and I remembered it being an exciting and magical holiday, mostly likely due to the gifts from Santa and from our parents. But giving was fun too, and as kids that usually meant making something for our parents at school. As adults, it became a time to buy that special gift to show our loved ones how much they mean to us. But above all, Christmas meant visiting with family and friends.

But maybe it’s the times we live in, or simply ‘getting older’ but somewhere along the line, it seems that the magic has given way to pure and frenzied consumerism, especially in Western Christian societies. It now seems only about ‘what to get whom’, and how much we are going to spend on gifts and the size of the present. Instead of ‘warm and fuzzy’ get togethers, social events are instead often tense and attended with feelings of obligation. As you can tell, we’ve become quite jaded by Christmas—some might even say ‘scrouge-like'!

After 10 Months of Living With Less

We’ve been almost 10 months now, living on the road, being 'location independent'.  Until now, we’ve not been in one place for longer than 11 nights.  And still, all we have are our 2 backpacks and 4 day bags.  This is the travelling lifestyle—having to ‘live with less’ in order to ‘get more’.    

November Full Moon on Koh Phangan

Full-Moon, 10.11.11

There are 3 islands in the southern Gulf of Thailand:  Koh Samui, Koh Tao and Koh Phangan.  Of these, Koh Samui is probably the more popular one, is the largest of the 3 and even has its own domestic airport.  Koh Tao is a scuba diver’s haven and is a popular place in SEA to get certified –in fact, we completed our Advanced Diver there 10yrs ago.  As for Koh Phangan, well, it has a certain reputation which would not make it an obvious choice for most families visiting Thailand.  But of course, we are not most families.

The New Face of Khao Lak

We’re back in Thailand! After a couple of nights in Kuala Lumpur, we arrived in Phuket without a clue as to where we were going.  Eventually we boarded a bus bound for Khao Lak beach, which is approximately 2hrs north of Phuket, on the west coast of Thailand on the Andaman Ocean.  Khao Lak bore the brunt of the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004, with an official death toll of well over 4,000 lives.  In reality, it has been estimated closer to 10,000 due to a high number of illegal Burmese migrant workers in the area at the time who cannot accurately be accounted for.  Khao Lak was and is a popular location for those who are into scuba diving and for those who are looking for a quieter alternative to Phuket. Jim and I visited Khao Lak briefly in 2003 as we did some diving from here and now on our return visit, it is unrecognisable to us but in a good way-- well, sort of.

Looking south on Highway 4 through La On Village, Khao Lak

That's A Wrap: India

Wow—so that’s it, we’ve just survived 3 months backpacking around South India with our 2 pre-schoolers, and relatively unscathed.  Before coming here, some people voiced their concerns about travelling to India with young children--one person even went so far as to say that India, as a destination, is only interesting for adults and that choosing to come here with children is selfish. 

Family Friendly Mysore

What makes a destination ‘tourist friendly’ usually comes down to the historic, cultural, religious and/or natural sights it has to offer.  The city of Mysore, 3hrs south of Bangalore in southern Karnataka state satisfies all of the above.  Yet in the 5 days that we spent there, we only saw a handful of its must-see attractions.  Instead, we were too busy having fun with the many ‘family-friendly’ activities that we discovered!

Mysore Palace, the 'must-see' attraction!

An Oldie But A Goodie--Trivandum Zoo

When we read that Thiruvananthapuram (aka Trivandum) had one of the most impressive zoos in India, we made sure to include a stop in this capital city of the state of Kerala.  And the best part was that it was even on our way!  We haven’t been to a zoo since DusitZoo in Bangkok (Thailand) and the girls were so excited.   Surprisingly it turned out to be one of the best experiences of its kind that we’ve had.