These past 7 weeks have certainly been a crash course in learning to travel as a family. It has been awesome and we have found that it isn’t much different to travelling without kids. That is something we were very used to doing so the learning curve was not that big.

Thankfully, most of the judgments we made beforehand (like what to take, how long we could manage to travel for, etc) were pretty much 100% correct. These are some things we have learned along the way…

20 things we have learned about family travel!

S and Z enjoy a beach picnic in Boracay

1.  That travelling with kids, even very young kids like ours, is awesome!!  We will not use the kids as a reason not to travel again.

2.  Flying with kids is not something to be feared.  This was the aspect that most worried me before leaving, and it all went surprisingly smoothly.  Of course, I also flew to Asia with a 17 month old in the past and that was very hard, but flights do end and the resulting trip was worth it!

3.  Good quality, appropriate accommodation is the key to enjoying wherever we are.

We found the most important factors (in order) was the size of our room (preferably an apartment, but as long as the room is big enough for our bags and a bit of crawl, it is fine), cleanliness, proximity of hotel to food, transport etc, facilities of hotel (eg pool, playground etc).  With such young kids, we do spend a lot of time in our room, so the quality is more important than it used to be.

We probably spent half the time in apartment like rooms, and this is highly recommended.

4.  We experience more night wake ups staying in the same room as the kids, and they are a bit harder to get to sleep.  However, I surprisingly did not mind sharing a room with both of them.  They generally did not wake up each other.

5.  If I can do all this with the two kids, I should have more confidence about getting out with them more by myself at home!!

Other tourists wanting to pose with S in Taipei

6.  Asians, in general, are very kid friendly.  It is lovely how much everyone loves our kids 🙂  Even people like teenage guys try to make them laugh.  Can you imagine that back home?

7.  Conversely, though, all the attention can sometimes be a bit much.  I probably need to think of a good strategy of how to politely get people to back off when it is upsetting the kids.   I imagine it will be a long time for this attention to fade, as S’s red hair does not look like it is going anywhere.

8.  The stroller is a necessary evil while they are this young.  I am definitely glad that we took a good quality stroller.  The carrier is awesome but not the best choice for every situation when you have a 2 year old that weighs 20kg. Have you noticed how people who recommend only taking a carrier have small kids?!

9.  The ipad is the best thing ever for family travel.  It would keep S amused for long periods of time on transport and was truly a life saver for our mental state.

10.  A two year old can love travel as much as we do.  I have started telling her that we are going home in a couple of days, and she keeps saying she doesn’t want to and wants more holidays.  Why wouldn’t she feel this way.  She’s had the time of her life!

The night market in Chinatown, KL

11. Concentrate on the good things that travel is doing for your kids, rather than the small negatives.  This was very very easy with S as the good easily outweighed the bad.  It was a bit harder for our baby, as I felt bad about things like him not having as good a diet as I would choose for him at home.

12. The kids getting upset and making lots of noise in immigration lines can be a good thing!  This can be a good way to get to the front of the line 🙂

13. The pace we have travelled has been fine, and I wouldn’t change it.  However, if we were not finishing up now, I’d probably want to take it slow for awhile, like spend a couple of weeks in an apartment somewhere.

14.  After private transfer, we found flying the easiest way to travel.  Airports can be far easier to navigate than crazy bus stations.  This is why we did a lot of flights, and I can imagine we may keep having this as our preferred way to travel for a couple of years yet.

15.  It helps a lot to be well prepared and organised.  We always had maps on us, knew where we were going, had back up food, back up toys and a plan of how we would get around.

Playing in the pool right out the front of our room in Phuket

16.  I have found it hard to balance rewards for good behaviour for S vs rewards as a distraction when she is exhibiting really bad behaviour.  I don’t believe in rewarding bad behaviour (obviously), and I would never do it at home.  However, sometimes it is very difficult to put up with her behaviour at certain times, and I just have to stop it however I can.

Also, sometimes strangers hand her a lolly or something when she is upset.  I think it would be worth thinking beforehand of some strategies for dealing with dishing out rewards and punishments consistently when out, although I am not sure there is a perfect solution to this.

17.  Cots were provided in most places we stayed.  However, they weren’t the safest looking cots.  Z is only just starting to try to pull himself up.  If your kid is standing up, then I wouldn’t recommend relying on hotel cots. It’s much better to take your own travel crib.

18. Travelling to very kid friendly places is definitely easier than places where kids are not as accepted.  For example, S’s behaviour was definitely worse in Taiwan, where we felt that her basically behaving like a toddler was less accepted, so we tried to keep tighter control of her (which obviously back fired).

19.  Travel is still very important to me, and I want to go back to always having a trip booked/planned even if it’s for the far off future.  I can’t wait until J’s work situation is finalised, so we can book the next one!

20.  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I think having realistic expectations of what you can achieve when travelling is the most important part. 

We had a great time as we never tried to do too much and didn’t expect to do all the activities that we would have done pre-kids.  With the right attitude, this can be a good thing.  Water parks do tend to be more fun that museums!! 

Would we pack differently?

You can see our packing list here.

I do wish I had taken more nappies for S though.  Finding Asian nappies that fit her was a pain!! It’s lucky I had a cover from one of my cloth nappies to help hold them on.  I also wish I had taken more nappy sacks, as I never saw them over here and they were priceless for helping contain nappy smells!

Enjoying the beach at Boracay on Z’s first birthday