Bangkok: people either love it or hate it. In our old days of travel, we used to hub in and out of Bangkok all the time so we really got to know and love our little area of the city, the legendary Khao San Road, backpacker paradise. Since Air Asia took over the SE Asia travel scene, however, we have been going more to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia as this is Air Asia's hub, but it still just doesn't hold the same appeal as Bangkok. This was the first time we'd been to Bangkok in maybe ten years, and it felt like coming home. We went to stay at Rambuttri Village Inn. Back in the day, this used to be a real treat, with air-conditioning and hot water (which we never used to get) and even a ... read more

Thanks to Indonesia only giving a 30 day visa on arrival, and the fact that it's so difficult to renew, we decided the easiest way to deal with it was to fly out of the country for a couple of nights and then fly right back in to receive another 30 day stamp. The alternative would have been to spend three half days at the immigration office, going through the motions to extend it. Not fun, especially with little kids in tow. The cheapest flight we could find was with Air Asia (of course!) to Kuala Lumpur. It was time to go explore our first big city of the trip! Despite the multiple days of travel, we tried to squeeze in as many fun activities for the kids as possible. Here's our last few days... Day ... read more

In my last blog I described getting off the island of Nusa Lembongan just to be close to medical care if Kyla's fever spiked. Each morning it would be close to normal, lulling us into thinking she was almost better, but by late afternoon it would come back. Tired of playing the waiting game, we told ourselves that we'd take her to a doctor in the morning, whether she had a fever or not. Next morning rolled around and she had no fever. We were torn. It's hard to take a kid to see the doctor when they seem fine, but chances are her fever would reappear in the afternoon again, when it was too late to face battling traffic to get to the hospital. In the end we decided to get a driver for the ... read more

I've talked about flashpacking in previous blogs, meaning that you travel around with a backpack pretending to be a proper backpacker, but you actually sneakily stay in pretty nice places, not roughing it at all. In my heart, I'm a backpacker and not a flashpacker. I really dislike big commercial hotels, instead preferring smaller locally owned places. With little kids in tow, it's sometimes easier to give in to flashpacker-dom, and other times it just happens because of a dumb (and expensive) mistake. I'm going to tell you about two back-to-back flashpacker experiences we had recently. Flashpacking in Tulamben Tulamben is a teeny town on the east coast of Bali that seems to survive mostly on the dive industry. This is mostly thanks to the USAT Liberty, a US cargo ship that was sunk by the ... read more

We decided to start our month in Bali by taking a trip down memory lane. We headed straight to Sanur, the beach town we'd got married in 12 years prior. Our plane landed at about 7pm and by the time we'd cleared immigration, it was way past the kids' bedtime. As the taxi from the airport negotiated the bustling streets in the dark, the kids were excited to see all of the cool statues and temples along the way. We'd forgotten just how frequently you came across them. At each one, Kyla claimed to have built it the night before while we were all sleeping! We checked into our pre-booked hotel and headed out to look for food. Thank goodness the kids had napped on the flight or we'd just be going to bed on left-over ... read more