You have plenty of options for getting from Bangkok to Koh Samui in the far southwest of Thailand. Modern Thailand is an incredibly easy country to travel around, thanks to its long-established tourism industry, you’ll certainly be able to find a way of getting to Koh Samui from Bangkok that suits you. Once you reach …
I could tell you how we got from Laos to Bangkok easily on the fabulous sleeper train and how we’re now safely installed in a hotel in Bangkok, but that would be LIES! And I’m not going to lie to you, so here’s all the icky, grumpy, boring bits of real life family travel from …
The Monster of Concrete is a nickname given to a large concrete monument in Vientiane, Laos. It is correctly known as the Patuxay or Victory Gate of Vientiane and stands on one of the main traffic intersections in the city. It is a popular tourist attraction in Laos and visitors can climb up within the …
COPE Vientiane is a non-profit organisation in Laos which provides prosthetic limbs, mobility assistance and rehabilitation for Lao people who can’t afford it. We took a look at their visitor centre in Vientiane, Laos’s capital, this morning. It was one of those incredible places that had me rushing home to get a post written and …
We’ve been backpacking with kids, full-time for well over 6 years so we can share the best tips with you. For us it’s the vacation that never ended and we’re that rare thing, a family travel blog that actually travels full-time. Here we share our best tips for backpacking with kids – based on real …
This is for anyone out there, like me, who is stressing about travel vaccinations. The crazy cost of them in Australia and wondering what it’s like to get them in Malaysia or Kuala Lumpur specifically. If that’s not you, don’t worry, you can go and read something else like our guide to Kuala Lumpur with …
Beautiful Vang Vieng, Laos is known for tubing and a crazy backpacker party scene. Not many people would associate it with family travel and it hasn’t always had the best reputation. We’ve spent four weeks in Vang Vieng now with our kids and we all love it here, despite the rain. I can give you …
Australia with kids. What does it have to offer? Is it worth the mammoth flight to take your kids to Australia from the US, UK, or Europe for a family holiday? If you’re already in Australia, where are the best places to take kids? What should you see in Australia and what are the practicalities …
I keep quoting this figure of $41/day as our budget, that’s actually a lie, our budget for Laos is working out at a lot more than that, everything considered. We’re cheating rather too much on cake, beer and coffee, but Laos is indisputably cheap, cheaper than Thailand, and low accommodation costs are a big part …
Gorgeous little Luang Prabang in Laos is quite the tourist hot spot these days yet still retains its sleepy Laos charm. The Luang Prabang Night Market is one of the best of its kind in the world and delights tourists with its crafts, trinkets and street food, but every day you’ll see market activity on …
If you boarded your bus, took your assigned seat and looked up to see this over your head, would you be worried? You’d be right to be. We had the seats with the built-in internal rain shower. Every time we climbed a hill (and there were many), at a particular angle, water from the air-conditioning system gave …
Laos Food, What You Will Find Food in Laos is incredibly diverse, you will be able to find a dish from just about any culinary tradition in the world being served to backpackers and tourists. If you’re looking for authentic Laos food, you may have a harder time because you’re more likely to find a …
We’ve been in Luang Prabang, Laos, for almost a week now. It’s been a strange few days and we weren’t enjoying Luang Prabang as much as we’d hoped the second time around. It’s changed a lot. Luang Prabang is all about wealthy fly-in tourists these days. They’ve built an international airport here since we came last …
This is an old post, I wrote it when we’d been on the road just months, I wanted to touch base with followers and let them know that we were finding time to do some “school” as we travelled around the world. We travelled like this for over 6 years. I wanted to share that …
We’ve been in Vang Vieng, Laos for 5 nights now and we’re loving it. It’s raining, a lot, but it hasn’t spoiled our experience of this little town. There has been flooding, the Nam Song river was over its banks yesterday morning, I had to wade through the river to buy my morning coffee, all …
Getting to Laos from Thailand. This post is about the journey from Kanchanaburi Thailand, to Bangkok, to Nong Khai on to Laos, Vientiane, and on to Vang Vieng. We had to get out of Thailand, we loved Kanchanaburi and were very happy just chilling there, but our visa was running out and we needed to …
We’ve been in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, sitting here on the River Kwai for a week now. What have we been doing? A Kanchanaburi blog from this sleepy riverside town in Thailand. Well, nothing, really. Sleeping on a raft, eating, reading, using computers and just watching the world go by. We did managed a little bit of …
Travel bloggers will hate me for posting this, but I’m known for my honesty, maybe for being rather pedantic at times. Reading too many travel blogs can give you entirely the wrong impression. This post came about after trusting information from smaller travel blogs and finding that their rosy picture was less than factual. Lonely …
Your options for getting from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi include train, bus, taxi and minibus. There is no airport in Kanchanaburi, you can’t fly. Read on for more information on getting to Kanchanaburi, video of what the train is like, information on how to book train or bus tickets plus day tours, hotels in Kanchanaburi and things …
Wat Arun, The Temple of The Dawn or Wat Arun Ratchawararam Ratchawaramahawihan stands on the west bank of the Chao Phraya River at Thonburi in Central Bangkok. It is almost immediately opposite the Grand Palace and Wat Pho. A small shuttle ferry will take you to Wat Arun’s doorstep via Tha Thien Market Pier. The temple …
There are many and varied places to eat out in Batu Ferringhi, from Mc Donalds to The Hard Rock Hotel and everything in between. You’ll also find numerous region specific speciality restaurants including Thai and Lebanese. It’s a lovely spot and well worth a stay. We spent 10 days in Batu Ferringhi on a fairly …
I’ve mentioned Dusit zoo before as a great place to take children in Bangkok, we went for a return visit yesterday. There are many cool things to do in Bangkok with kids and Dusit Zoo is not one we particularly recommend or not recommend. There is a zoo in Bangkok, it is called Dusit Zoo. This …
Kek Lok Si Temple is the largest Buddhist temple in this region of Malaysia, and is one of the best places to visit on Penang Island. I think it’s possibly the prettiest Malaysian temple I’ve ever visited, each section of Kek Lok Si has its own charming style and the temple, and its compound, were …
It’s great to be in Bangkok again! I fell in love with Bangkok as a solo traveller back in 1999 and now I visit with my children, they love Bangkok too. This post is about our first few days in Bangkok at the start of our nomadic family travel adventure. This was year one of …
I thought this photo of huge spiders came out pretty well, so I’m making it photo of the week. This was part of Penang Butterfly Farm, it’s a nice little place, you can wander around among the glorious tropical butterflies, hold giant millipedes ( we had another drama there, Facebook page followers would know all about that …
Can you stay in a hostel with kids? Yes, you can, many hostels today have private family rooms but a few “party” hostels still only take guests over 18 years old. Is it cheap to stay in a hostel with kids? No it’s not, a hotel or guest house is often cheaper with kids. This …
Fort Cornwallis is a historic fort and tourist attraction on Penang Island, part of the state of Penang, in Malaysia. The fort is on the outskirts of the state capitol George Town, and makes an interesting place to visit on the island of Penang. Your visit won’t take long, and there is an admission fee …
Malaysia is in the middle of an environmental catastrophe. If you read my last post, things we didn’t like about Kuala Lumpur, you’ll remember me mentioning the air pollution. I didn’t realise what was going on back then. Vast quantities of smoke from fires on Sumatra are blowing across the straits of Malacca engulfing Singapore …
Kuala Lumpur isn’t perfect. We’ve had a great time, seen some cool and interesting things, enjoyed excellent cheap and free public transport, eaten some fantastic Indian food and stayed in top-notch accommodation, but all cities have their drawbacks. Kuala Lumpur has some not-so-nice bits, too. This post is about the negatives of Kuala Lumpur that …
Scary, isn’t it? The idea of spending so much time alone with your kids in a strange country. Truth is, I love it, life is nicer, generally. OK, so we’ve only been on the road for two weeks, we’re new at this, but we haven’t been treating this time as a holiday, we’ve started as …
I love India and I love Indian food, South Indian in particular, it’s light, fresh and usually vegetarian. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia can be a food heaven if you enjoy Indian food. It’s also pretty easy to find Indian food in most big cities in Malaysia. In this post we’ll look at traditional Indian food and places …
Yesterday we checked out modern Kuala Lumpur, today we stepped back in time. Chinatown is on our doorstep, just a short walk up the road, which is good. The heat, the traffic, the uneven pavements and the exhaust fumes don’t make walking much fun for the kids but there are free buses that can take …
Boy it’s hot in Kuala Lumpur! But somehow it’s quite a pleasant hot, the sun isn’t beating down on us as it does in a Queensland summer, the sky is mostly overcast here and it’s very easy to get around the city using shady covered walkways. This post is about visiting a Kuala Lumpur roller …
This post is from our first day of travel, our first day as a nomadic family, not quite digital nomads yet, our travel blog wasn’t making enough money for us to call ourselves that. These early months of travel were funded by savings. We’d saved for a year, planned for a year, and now we …
This is my last week in Port Douglas, Queensland. Regular readers will know we are British expats and have been living in paradise here for almost six years. They will also know that it hasn’t always been paradise for me. I suffered badly with culture shock and found it hard to adjust. But goodbye Port Douglas, hello new adventure. …
We are a family planning to set out on a travel adventure. Our aim is to travel indefinitely or for several years with the kids. We plan to become a digital nomad family and make a living through travel blogging. We are one week before our departure date. This post covers travel planning, saving, and …
The boys and I are starting our family adventure in Malaysia early with a bit of single parent travel, we’re travelling without Dad, he’ll join us once he’s got the house, car and cat dealt with. We’ve changed the dates on our Air Asia flights, brought them forward, and payed the difference in price between the two …
Are there tigers in Africa? No, of course not, not wild ones, but that’s me holding a baby tiger in South Africa. We came across these adorable cubs at a private Nature Park, not too far from Johannesburg. I had to pay my money and give them a cuddle, who wouldn’t? It was only afterwards that I started …
Let’s just clear something up here. I’m not a blogger, it’s not something I ever set out to be, it’s just sort of happening. This site is a blog, but I see it more as a website. I’m not a journalist, a writer, a web designer, a marketing specialist, or an SEO expert. I am …
The Doctor Who Experience in Both London and Cardiff sadly closed down some time ago. We hope it comes back but it’s not looking likely. We thought you’d like to see our photos from the Doctor Who Experience, it was an incredible thing to visit and be a part of, for my then, very small …
Experiences of visiting Wales and Big Pit Mining Museum, as an adult and with kids. My kids were pretty small the first time we toured the UK and we had a wonderful time, taking them to Wales, my birth country, in particular. We enjoyed it so much that we returned recently, to take them again …
We are a family planning to travel the world. We are three months from our departure date. The first post in this series, about the planning process, saving, starting a travel blog to make an income, was this one, travel planning 6 months before departure. Planning Family Travel, 3 Months Before Departure Nine months of …
