By BERN MORLEY
My husband and I were quite adventurous young travellers. Of course back then we had the luxury of planning amazing trips to suit just the two of us and we weren’t particularly worried if our destination sent us off the beaten track. In fact, whether we were crossing decidedly dangerous oceans in dubious wooden boats, or staying in accommodation that didn’t actually have a flushable toilet, we were never really all that concerned. Because, we weren’t having to think about anything other than getting there, having a kickarse time and then coming home and planning to do some variation of the same, all over again.
But then we had a child. And then a couple of years later, we had another one. And just because we obviously like to be poor and permanently stressed out, we had ANOTHER one. We stopped holidaying like we once did.
This didn’t mean we stopped going on holidays of course, they were just, well, different. And much tamer. Often we’d come home from these holidays and wonder if we should have just put a pool in the backyard and hooked up Foxtel, the kids would pretty much have had the same holiday. And the thing being, our sense of adventure as travellers didn’t disappear JUST because we had children. So why then, did have we only let our children holiday at the “usual destinations’? Laziness basically. This is why Intrepid is so amazing. We are still getting out of our travel comfort zone yet completely safe in the knowledge we are being guided and looked after, 100% of the way.
Here’s the thing. This trip to Vietnam won’t see us staying in 5 star hotels or laying on the beach drinking cocktails. Right now, I’m sitting here typing this on my little balcony watching the light drizzle fall through the night sky. I overlook a chaotic city scene. There is much beeping and mayhem and the roads are teeming with traffic, rich with chatter and pungent with smells that are both glorious and ghastly. Today my children stared in wonder at the foreign scene playing out in front of them. We had to learn how to master the unpoliced traffic (walk slowly across and DON’T stop, they’ll drive around you but aren’t prepared for you to be erratic) The children were literally touched by adoring ladies on the street who found them “beautiful”. The locals helped us at every turn. We gaped in wonder at the family of 5 lodged on a single moped and played pool in an Irish Pub. We tried some Pho in a tiny tiled café and continued on to purchase, after some friendly haggling, a soccer jersey for Jack.
These shared experiences that come from interacting with a completely different culture means that we are creating memories together, once in a lifetime experiences we will never repeat and ones, even as adults, I’m hoping my children will take with them. Over the next couple of weeks we will be sleeping on a Junk (boat), kayaking into and around limestone caves in Halong Bay, visiting a prison, exploring the Imperial Citadel and taking an overnight public train. The kids are having a ball and are asleep most nights by 8pm – happily exhausted.
I know not everything we see and do on this trip will be comfortable or feel particularly good. A lot will make us feel uneasy just as a lot will leave us feeling amazed, awed, grateful and ALIVE. The key word here being – FEEL, we will all be touched in some way.
Thanks to Intrepid Travel, I’ve learnt that just because our family has grown, it doesn’t mean our travelling sense of adventure has to be outgrown.
Your sense of adventure doesn’t disappear just because you have kids, so why should your family holiday destinations be limited to the ‘usual suspects’? On an Intrepid Family Adventure you and your kids will encounter plenty of real life experiences along the way – anything from riding a tuk-tuk in Bangkok, playing football with the Maasai in Kenya or sailing down the Nile in a felucca. Whatever it is, learning and exploring in the real world opens eyes and minds in a way the virtual world never can.
This post is sponsored by Intrepid Travel. Comments on this post are just for this post. If you want to talk about the IDEA of sponsored posts or the choice of advertisers please click here. We will be reading all those comments too for feedback.
Where’s the most exotic place you have been to?
Top Comments
I've been to lots of exotic destinations, mostly pre-kids. however, we just got back from 7 weeks travel in Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore with a 2 year old and a baby. It is definitely still possible to travel with a family. We absolutely loved it, and found it no harder to being at home. If anything it was easier - no cooking, cleaning etc. Can't wait to go again and I will never use the kids as an excuse again :)
Good for you, we started to drag our kids around the world once the youngest could understand the importance of doing what he was told in airports and in the street and why hiding really wasn't all that funny (5-6) and they've been all through SE Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
You don't need an organised tour though, particularly in the age of the internet. They tend to be much pricier than doing it yourself (although in some cases can be astonishingly good value) and DIY means you can stay in apartments rather than hotels (my number 1 tip for travel with kids) and develop your own schedule rather than a tour company's - kids slow you down and will often hit the wall half way through the day, meaning you need to stay longer, plan to see less and have the ability to cut things shorts and head back to the accommodation for the rest of the day.
That's the age I'm planning on starting - I should be working and earning enough to afford to take us away to cool places (Vietnam's been top of my list of want to go to for yonks), she'll be old enough to remember going to said cool places.