Articles Tagged with travel with kids

Slow Travel

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YIN_2254 (2)I have always been an enthusiastic traveller. Well, who isn’t?

But travelling in the recent years has started to become something different from that in my 20s. I no longer always want to see everything, although I am still curious about many things. I no longer regret not being able to make to a specific destination or see a particular thing, although I still long to seeing the world beyond my immediate surroundings. I no longer wish to just pass by, although I am conscious that I will always just be an observer no matter how much I try.

I guess I come to a stage when I appreciate slow travel.

It certainly comes handy when it comes to travelling with a toddler. Well, you don’t really have a choice not to travel slowly anyway. It got amplified during our warm-up trip in Auckland/New Zealand last week with Nina who just turned 22 months.

One day we spent more than 3 hours in the Auckland Art Gallery, a lovely gallery, but really one hour or so would have been plenty if Nina didn’t have so much fun.

The thing about a public space such as gallery and museum is that, when you visit these places with a toddler, you discover entirely different things. Instead of spending 10 minutes appreciating the details of some art works, you would end up learning where the fire alarm buttons are because Nina would go straight towards them and tried to press them to see what would happen. I saved the building from being evacuated for three times that day. Nina enjoyed the arrows and lines on the floor more than the paintings on the wall. She also liked the spaciousness of the exhibition hall, as she could run around and play ‘hide and seek’ game. Luckily we were there in a week day so there weren’t many people, so I didn’t feel too bad as the few other visitor seemed to enjoy watching her enjoying herself. When I mentioned this to a staff, she smiled and said ‘oh don’t worry about it. Look, she’s having fun’, and she started to play the game with Nina. Kiwis are some of the coolest people on the planet.

That afternoon at least four gallery staff entertained Nina – one went as far as to showing Nina how to swipe her staff card to open the fire equipment cabinet while we wandered around the room to appreciate the Maori portraits and history arts of New Zealand (which by the way is quite fascinating). She eventually had to tell the intercom that no action was needed. None of the gallery staff showed the slightest sign of being annoyed or disapproval. Next time when I am in Auckland and need a bit of time off, I would definitely go there again.

They say travelling with children opens the door to make connections with people more easily – this was certainly a testimonial of it in Auckland. If it wasn’t for Nina, I wouldn’t necessarily get to have the conversation with the gardener in the breath-taking Mulbrick winery of the Waiheki island (25 minutes ferry ride from Auckland city) to learn about the edible plants and tell her something about Shanghai where she wants to visit. Nina and I were invited to taste whatever growing in her garden. ‘There is no chemical whatsoever in my garden’ she proudly told me. I had never been invited like this before. So thank you Nina.

I happen to have just watched a TED talk on ‘working memories’ and it says that one can handle just about four things at a time, and beyond that we forget really fast. So I guess by slowing down to concentrate, the memories may last longer. Granted, we didn’t get to as many places as we would have gone to pre-Nina in that week. But we saw much more things in the places we did go to with Nina. Even with our hosts, we got to spend much more time wandering around their magnificent garden, enjoying the blossoming flowers, picking up flowers and arranging them in the vase. Or just spend time walking on the stones bare-footed to feel how it felt. Nina also got the honour of eating almost all of the home-grown strawberries that week!

Travelling with a toddler is a like a slow motion movie. Gone are the days when you could fit in 5 different things in a day, and finished it by taking a long distance bus. I loved those days, but I came to really appreciate to slow down, and enjoy the days going by living a bit of local life. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that make the biggest impact to the memory.

I certainly look forward to more slow travels in the next 9 months.

P.S: to follow our RTW experience: Trilingual Family blog, or join Trilingual Family facebook group.

Where Is Nina?

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2013 11 19 Nina under bedI was woken up by a controlled scream from Nicolas ‘where is Nina!!??’

It was 6am in the first morning when we woke up in the cosy bedroom our host friends made us in an absolutely lovely spot north of Auckland overlooking the Pacific Ocean. They even prepared a child’s bed next to our double bed. It’s Nina’s first time sleeping in anything but a cot. We were pleasantly surprised that she fell asleep without any issue – a big relief knowing in the next 9 months we would have to encounter all kinds of bed configuration as they come. The last time I checked on her at 1am, she was sound asleep like a, well, baby, although in a somewhat awkward position – legs into our bed, head in the middle of her bed. Well I didn’t expect anything else but this. Whole night was uneventful, to my delight.

But she was nowhere to be found at 6am!!!! At that brief moment I thought she just woke up and walked out of the room. But the door was shut and she couldn’t reach the door handle yet. There wasn’t a lot of room left in the bedroom with our stuff lying around everywhere. Around her bed we deliberately put our suitcase so to avoid her falling but she wasn’t on any of these things. We even looked inside the suitcase – could she fall into the suitcase and manage to zip it up? No she didn’t.

Then we pushed aside the dangling bed sheet and looked under the bed. There she was!!! Suddenly I was in panic, hearing myself asking Nicolas ‘elle est toujours vivante ?? (is she still alive?)’? I tried to sound calm. Did we manage to kill our daughter on the first night of our test trip, already?

Then I heard her breathing. Ahhhhh the nicest sound on the planet at that moment.

But how on earth did she manage to get herself under the bed and make herself comfortable there? There was just about 20cm of a gap where she could possibly get through because all other sides were blocked by either our bed, the wall, our suitcase, or other stuff. She had to fall off the bed at the exact spot next to the 20cm opening, wiggle herself into that opening through the thick daggling bed sheet, pull the bed sheet back to its place, and continue her sleep. She managed all these without waking her parents up who slept just next to her. Marvellous manoeuvre skills if you ask me.

After confirming she was still breathing, I couldn’t stop laughing at the sight of her, totally in peace with the newly found spot to spend the night.

I decided tonight she is going to sleep on the mattress directly on the floor. I almost look forward to finding out how else she could possibly surprise her parents, again.

P.S: to follow our RTW experience: Trilingual Family blog, or join Trilingual Family facebook group.

So Where Are You Going?

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ItineraryThe inevitable question when you announce that you are going to travel around the world: so where are you going?

Even I was impatient to know the answer!

Alas, we are a small small family in the big big world. After much agonizing over trimming down the destinations (I thought 9 months is plenty of time!), we locked down the following:

– France (and perhaps a bit of side trips in neighboring countries) for 1.5 months. It’s the first stop (arrival Dec 18th) of our trip. This is a bit longer than our initial thoughts but it was due to a passport/visa issue that we have to stay put before we (I to be specific) can go any further. In any case, there is no lacking in things to do, places to go, and family/friends to catch up with in France.

– South America for 3.5 months. It will include Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Peru for now, but we do have flexibility on how/where we want to go as long as we make our way from Buenos Aires (or bs. as. as the locals call it) to Lima/Peru in 3.5 mths time in mid May. It’s definitely shorter than I initially wanted, but then we have to give a bit of time away to France and Costa Rica.

– Costa Rica for 1 month. Scuba diving is top on the list here. Anyone who has dived there is invited to leave comments here on where to go!

– North America for almost 2 months. It includes NYC, Toronto, Quebec, Colorado etc.

– Tahiti for 1 month: again, scuba diving!

– then home, sweet home in Sydney.

Now a bit of background information on why we chose to go where we are going.

France is a given because we already planned many months ago to spend Christmas in France with Nicolas’ family. So in order not to further disappoint (and shock) the family than we already do, we bite our lips to stick to this plan even if it means some significant fare difference (we bought round-the-world tickets and got our original France return tickets refunded). So this is our first RTW stop (with a 5-hour layover in Tokyo – who can enlighten me what to do in the early morning of 7am in that airport with a toddler?).

Latin America is a no brainer for me. I have always wanted to spend more time in Spanish-speaking countries. Ever since we went to Ecuador 9 years ago in 2004 I felt in love with this continent. We returned the following year to Cuba and Dominican Republic and once again my desire to be able to speak Spanish picked up more momentum. If you ask me, in my wildest dream I would love to live there for a few years. But for now, I can settle for travelling for a few months. Time to refresh my Spanish.

Then why these specific four countries (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru)? Argentina is high on my list of Latin America. Do you have such places that you don’t know exactly why but you feel like you are meant to be? Well, Argentina is one of these places for me. Uruguay made its way into our itinerary because 2 friends highly recommended it, and also the short distance from Buenos Aires – a quick ferry ride indeed – makes it an easy choice to make. Chile is next door neighbor again and a logical sort of pathway if we travel northward (well, from Argentina it’s quite difficult to travel southward really without going to the Antarctic) to Peru. And don’t be shocked that I have absolutely no idea what to do/where to go in Chile apart from their wine, but that could be a nice start … We’ll figure it out I’m sure. Peru? Is Macchu Piccu a good enough reason in itself? And the rumor has it that the site might be closed down in a few years’ time due to the concern over the well-being of this magnificent wonder, so one just has to go while it lasts.

Then Costa Rica. It’s a result of a 2-hour lunch with 2 friends. We were looking for somewhere warm in America to scuba dive but couldn’t decide where (had to let go of Galapagos unfortunately due to RTW flight constraints), then Costa Rica came into the picture, and sounds like a great choice.

U.S. … now I have to confess that I never thought of travelling extensively in US, except the Big Apple! But one thing that made US very special for me is that we have lots of friends living there. But, damn, they all live far apart and US is damn big! So we had to choose, again. We settled on Colorado, besides NYC, where a dear friend lives (and would accommodate us, hooray, and finally I get to meet her son!) – the great outdoors there is a big draw card. I’m sure we’ll do a bit of side trips here and there between NY and Colorado. It might be the sort of country where we rent a car and do a bit of road trip … like what they do in the movies, maybe? Or I forgot Miami … well it’s not the typical type of place we would have gone, but do you know that if you fly from Peru to Miami (or anywhere in US for that matter) and stay there for over 6 days, and then you can enter Costa Rica without having to get a Yellow Fever vaccination? Welcome to the travel vaccine wonder land.

Canada – Nicolas mentioned Quebec early on because, of course, they speak French there! But we put a question mark next to it on our initial planning map … well, we cannot go to all French-speaking places on the planet, right… ah, then timing sometimes means everything. Just as we were planning the trip, some friends (a lovely family we met through mothers’ group in Sydney) were planning to move back to Canada (to Toronto to be precise) and we got an open invite to their (future) place!  The idea of meeting up someone from Sydney in Toronto in a year’s time sounds really quite appealing. So here we come, Canada (well, eastern Canada only perhaps).

Tahiti is a long story … we tossed back and forth between Tahiti, Hawaii, Tokyo, Shanghai, and many combination in the between to make our last stop before coming back to Sydney. Finally we settled on Tahiti – scuba diving, again. And this is the type of place where you probably would go just once in a life time, and as it’s sitting beautifully on the way back from US to Sydney, we thought it’s perhaps worthwhile pay a little extra to get this ‘one-in-a-life-time’ destination off the list.

Then other obvious questions would arise such as why not Africa (confidence issue I guess), why not Brazil (visa issue foremost, but also time issue. BUT never say never …), why  not Europe (don’t want to be there in winter longer than necessary), why not Asia (well it’s ‘close’ to Australia and both of us have done quite a bit), etc etc. Let’s just say, 9 months is not as long as you thought. It’s a pity that my home country (China) didn’t end up being part of the itinerary, but we shall make it up post-RTW.

Oh, let’s not forget New Zealand!! It deserves a special mention although it’s not marked on the map. It’s our pre-RTW warm-up trip, aka test trip. We are lucky to be able to spend 8 days at friends’ parents place (M, T, D, thank you!!) and we intend to simulate all that we are going to do for a RTW trip – we are bringing the exact luggage/gear with us, planning our days as if we already started the big wild trip, taking the public transportation to the airport, living like locals (we will most likely), spending day and night with Nina in a new environment. We shall see how this trip will turn out to be against our expectation. And perhaps then come back home to adjust some of our plans for the big trip. And of course, we do intend to enjoy New Zealand as well – finally! After 5 years in Sydney it’s almost a shame to say that it’s going to be my first trip there.

It’s amazing how ‘simple’ our flight itinerary looks like on the map – just a few lines and that’s it. Maybe it’s because there is no detail to it yet. It’s like many things, once you see it from distance, everything looks much simpler. Even if I love the colors, texture, smell and the memories that go with all the details, sometimes it helps to make things look simpler.

P.S: to follow our RTW experience: Trilingual Family blog, or Trilingual Family facebook group.

Trilingual Family Going Wild

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YIN_6143It’s nerve-wracking enough even just to say it loudly: our trilingual family is going on a round-the-world trip for 9 months!

I am positive that we’ve shocked our families, especially mothers, and many friends successfully in the last month or so after we made the decision.

In a way, I have shocked myself as well. Ever since Nina was born I thought the travel-far-and-further days are behind me, for good. No one in my immediate entourage has ever travelled with a young child for that long. Once you have a child, you are supposed to settle, aren’t you? And with 20 days of annual leave per year and 2 families to visit in China and France, and a mortgage to pay in the insanely priced Sydney, how on earth would we be able to find time and money to travel longer than a few weeks, ever again?

Then the door opened itself.

The company I had been working for 7 years announced some job cuts in September, and that included mine. Suddenly I found myself no longer needing to attend to work. In return a cheque was being sent my way.

I could of course choose to find another job, and let the cheque disappear in the mortgage. That would have been a logical choice.

Or I could choose otherwise.

After all, I have chosen to leave the comfort of home country behind and moved three continents already. I have chosen to change career path completely a few times  because my heart told me to try out new things even at the expense of climbing the corporate ladder faster. I have chosen to spend my resources and energy from young age on travelling to almost 30 countries and learning new cultures/languages and meeting new people. I have chosen the bumpy yet colorful road of marrying someone from a different culture for the last 7+ years. I have chosen to bring up a trilingual child.

So why cannot we choose to take 9 months out, and travel with our 22-month-old daughter around the world?

I have my fair share of worries, to be sure. Are we putting Nina at risk by taking her to the unknown territories at such a young age? Is she going to be overwhelmed/traumatized by the constant changes? Are we able to financially support travelling for 9 months with no income and no promise of immediate income upon return? Are we physically up to looking after a toddler at her terrible two while on the road? Is it a career suicide? Are we going to disappoint our families (while they thought that we finally ‘settled’)?

After almost a month of tossing all these questions around, we made the decision.

Instead of allowing all these worries – all valid ones by the way – talk us out of the idea, we decided that we would never know the real answers for sure. Unless we try it.

Nina could be totally immersed in all these fascinating places we are going to (I will reveal our itinerary plan in another post :)). She might learn to be more flexible and adaptable. She may even pick up some Spanish along the way (hopefully I will, too) – a Quadra-lingual family?! We could travel on budget (such as renting an apartment for a month which typically costs much less than hotels and allows us to cook most of time to save on restaurant bills) so that our money stretches a bit longer. We would rent out our home to support the mortgage. We would slow down the pace and do less ‘touristy’ things – so that we have plenty of time to wind down from running after Nina, and also get to experience how locals live. We cross our fingers that one of us will find a job fairly quickly upon return even if it means that we need to alter our expectation slightly. I might even test out an idea or two of generating some income while on the road, no matter how small amount that is. And last but certainly not the least, we count on our families to come to terms with our decision.

Above all, shouldn’t we celebrate life, when we still can, by living to its full on our own terms?

Once a decision is made, the rest is just logistics.

Another major decision was made (I will come to it in a separate post – yes it is THAT important). The dates are set. The round-the-world tickets were booked. Travel doctor was visited. Nina stopped going to daycare. Friends living anywhere near our planned destinations are contacted (some generously offered to accommodate us which I am so grateful and looking forward to seeing some of them after so many years). A 8-day test trip to New Zealand starts next Monday.

The Trilingual Family RTW is becoming a reality.

P.S: to follow our RTW experience: Trilingual Family blog, or join Trilingual Family facebook group.