We were lucky enough to be able to visit the brand new Legoland Water Park Malaysia near Johor Baru just a couple of weeks after it opened. We spent the previous day at Legoland Malaysia (review here) and loved it , time for round 2, a day of splashy, wet family fun in the tropical heat of southern … Read more
Yesterday we flew by the Welney Wetland Centre in Norfolk. We were just killing time really, waiting for our great British roast dinner at my best friend’s house on a freezing January afternoon.We were so impressed with what we found at the Eco-friendly Welney Centre that it deserves a big plug.Welney had one of the … Read more
Barry Island Wales is part of my childhood. I grew up just a few miles away and we regularly visited for beach strolls, fish and chips and Pleasure Park fun. Watching Gavin and Stacey sitting on Barry Island Beach from miles away in Australia made me homesick, so we’re back, to share Barry Island with … Read more
UPDATE: On our last visit to Sri Lanka this hotel had changed hands, the kind owners had gone and the prices had gone up massively. We’re sorry, but until we can get back to Sri Lanka, we can’t currently recommend a cheap place to stay for families. Very sorry about that. All at World Travel … Read more
What is a hopper? Hoppers are a type of pancake or noodle served commonly in Sri Lanka. String hoppers resemble a nest of noodles, plain hoppers look like bowl-shaped pancake because of the shape of the hopper pans. This posts goes into the different types of hopper you can enjoy in Sri Lanka or make … Read more
Sri Lanka is a favourite travel destination of ours. We got married there and we’ve taken our kids there. This Sri Lanka travel blog to help you plan your holiday or travel in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka works for single, couple and family travellers with interests ranging from culinary to wildlife, culture, surfing and adventure … Read more
This post covers Doctor Who filming locations in, and near, Cardiff Wales, Doctor Who tours for this year, walks, and attractions. It also has photos from the Doctor Who Experience which was based in Cardiff. If you love Doctor Who, you’ll love this post. I was lucky enough to be in Cardiff for Christmas 2013, … Read more
For once I’m going to tell you about the accommodation we used in Ella, Sri Lanka, and then tell you to stay somewhere else. I won’t give you the name, that wouldn’t be fair. We stayed for 3 nights, the location was good, the price was good, the breakfast (not included) was divine and the young … Read more
Fellow family travel blogger Erin asked the question on her Facebook page, “How many countries have you been to?” Erin Bender (Holmes) So I counted, something I haven’t done for years. It’s not a competition, I’m not in any rush to tick off more countries. We’re busy re-visiting places we’ve been many times before. They … Read more
Have you ever considered taking your kids to the UK for a vacation or holiday? We think it’s a great idea, the UK has lots to offer, particularly for children. Let me do what I can to convince you and talk a bit about the UK with kids, the practicalities, and where to go. The … Read more
One of the reactions we received on announcing our decision to sell everything, quit work and travel indefinitely was: “You’re throwing it all away.” Were we? Were we really throwing away a great job, an enviable lifestyle and a dream home in a location that is considered paradise in Australia? Some people just couldn’t understand why we … Read more
Where to stay in Mirissa? Finding good, (cheap or luxury) Mirissa accommodation for families is generally easy, there is plenty of it and most places are really pleasant. We absolutely love Mirissa and we’ve visited multiple times. It’s our go-to beach destination in Sri Lanka for quieter stays and our kids’ favourite beach. We stayed … Read more
It’s much harder these days to find budget (cheap) accommodation in Sri Lanka than it was. Standards have gone up and with them prices. Sri Lanka fills up with package holidaymakers so accommodation tends to favour those tourists, but there are still bargains to be found. Guest houses, hostels, and hotels (even resorts and villas) … Read more
Cheap Family Accommodation Negombo Sri Lanka. Mazz Homestay Negombo I found Mazz Homestay through one of the hostel booking websites. They have a 4 bed room, described as a 4 bed mixed dorm, which does just fine as a family room. A taxi from the airport to Mazz homestay cost us around $12. We should … Read more
Hikkaduwa is full of great value hotels and guest houses at all price points and this post covers where to stay in Hikkaduwa for all kinds of travellers. The beach-side town of Hikkaduwa is much bigger these days and there is a reason for that, it’s a lovely spot. Options for staying in Hikkaduwa include … Read more
Regular readers will know that we touched down in the UK yesterday after 6 months in steamy Asia and 6 years of tropical living in Port Douglas, Queensland. It’s December, it’s cold. What on earth were we thinking! Most people visit the UK in summer. It gives visitors a fighting chance of not getting soaked … Read more
Monkeys are everywhere here in Sri Lanka. I’m sitting outside our room watching them right now. You may not see them at first, but they’re there, leaping through the trees. On the coast and in the hill country. The Garrison Cemetery in Kandy has its own monkey trap. A police officer has to hide behind … Read more
Pina Colada cocktails are one of my favourite drinks and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Rum, coconut, and pineapple are a marriage made in heaven. It has been said that a pina colada is a girls’ drink but I really don’t care, half the world can’t be wrong as they demand pina colada mix, … Read more
Admission prices to the big attractions in Sri Lanka are steep. It’s something that you need to factor in to the cost of your holiday, particularly for families. They’re wonderful, I’ve been to them all previously, but on our last trip, on a tight budget, they just weren’t affordable. ( Sorry Sri Lanka, we love … Read more
If you’ve been following our Facebook page over the last month, you’ll have seen me alternately complaining and raving about food in Sri Lanka. Food is a big part of our travel experience, we like to try as many new foods as we can and, hopefully, enjoy them. (For non-regular readers, my husband is an … Read more
I think Ella in the hill country of Sri Lanka is one of my favourite towns so far. It’s full of tourists, backpacker type tourist mostly. There are endless guest houses asking too much money, but it’s really refreshing to be up in the hills. It’s cool, if not cold, great walking weather. That is … Read more
If you know Sri Lanka you’ll know all about Adam’s Peak but you may not have heard of Little Adam’s Peak ( aka Mini Adam’s Peak or Small Adam’s Peak) in Ella. The full size Adams Peak is a 2,243m mountain in the centre of Sri Lanka. It’s famous as a pilgrimage site and as a really … Read more
From now on, when people ask me where to stay in Sri Lanka, I’ll tell them Mirissa Beach. I think I’ve found my Paradise, my happy place. This beautiful island as a whole brings me enormous joy, but the little beach village of Mirissa is, I think, as near to perfect as I’ll ever find. After … Read more
In general, I believe that anything is possible, that’s mostly what’s got us where we are today. But if you’d asked me, even 3 weeks ago, if I ever thought I’d see a blue whale, the biggest creature that has ever existed on our fragile planet, the answer would have been a resounding “No!”. I … Read more
As I just said on my Facebook page, words cannot express how much we love Sri Lanka. Seriously! It’s like stepping into comfy slippers. So good to be back. The four of us have been sick with terrrible Malaysian flu for over a week now. Really ill, high fevers, sweats, shakes, chills, headaches and an awful lot … Read more
Kuala Lumpur is a wonderful city, in one moment ultra slick and modern, the next ancient, traditional and cultured. Its a city everybody should experience at least once, and a city that many of us these days visit because of the great connections Air Asia offer. Prices seem low at the moment, they’re lower than … Read more
Legoland Malaysia is outside Johor Bahru in Malaysia. It is just north of Singapore, in the far south of Malaysia south of Kuala Lumpur. We visited this Legoland park with our kids, then 7 and 9 years old, making a special trip south from Kuala Lumpur and Melacca, just to visit Legoland Malaysia and the Legoland … Read more
By popular demand, here are our experiences of hotels near Legoland Malaysia Johor Bahru. We had a really good time at Legoland Malaysia and at the Legoland Water Park, right next door. You will certainly need an absolute minimum of two full days in the parks here, a 3 night hotel stay. You could easily … Read more
This post is about how to get to Legoland Malaysia from Malacca, the bus journey, where to stay near Legoland and more. It’s also about our experiences of travelling in Malaysia. I’ve been really struggling with travel in Malaysia lately. After the first couple of days in Malacca, loving the ancient buildings and churches, I … Read more
Keeping the children happy in Malacca isn’t hard at all. Malacca with kids is a great destination with plenty for them to see and do. The town is bright, colourful and filled with interesting sights, tastes and smells. There are forts and canons to climb on, great museums and great shops, plus indoor and outdoor … Read more
Malacca doesn’t seem to be much of a backpacker town, most of the tourists we see are local and/or considerably richer than us, which isn’t hard. Maybe all the backpackers are in other districts rather than the Old Town. Finding cheap accommodation (for a family of 4 in particular) in Malacca has been tricky. We … Read more
Malacca is a strange place. Arriving on the bus from Kuala Lumpur, on motorways that could easily have been in Surrey, I felt as if we’d left Asia. It was all a bit too Western. We got off the bus at Malacca Sentral, not to be greeted by touts, but by helpful people pointing us in the direction … Read more
We were on Ko Phangan for 6 weeks, looking back, it was a blissful, perfect time, other than my husband’s health problems. It’s a lovely island, but if my husband hadn’t had surgery we would have moved on earlier as it was just slightly over our budget. We used Haad Salad Villas Ko Phangan and highly recommend … Read more
During our first year of full time travel ( our family gap year, if you like) we were on a tight budget. We kept to around $50 per day in South East Asia and the whole year came in at $100 per day. During that year we took two cruises. Both were trans Atlantic repositioning … Read more
One of our readers wrote: I’d love to simply hear more about your day-to-day lives. What do your kids do all day? How does one spend six weeks in a remote place….I honestly have no idea. Don’t you (and the kids) run out of things to do? I just can’t fathom how you pass each day! Six … Read more
Chef and I have always enjoyed budget travel. We’ve always wanted to get maximum travel for our dollar and to us, fancy hotels aren’t (usually) part of that. We make exceptions for the odd splurge but usually we travel to see the world and to learn from our experiences. We need somewhere to sleep and … Read more
We have absolutely loved staying on Haad Salad, Ko Phangan for the last 6 weeks. It’s a beautiful beach paradise with calm, clear waters that my children can safely swim in and kayak on. We found good, cheap family accommodation and enjoyed good Thai food and rainbow sunsets . But there are a few dangers … Read more
Cheap family accommodation is one of my favourite internet search terms, I use it a lot. Family travel in Laos isn’t the easiest, there are a lot of long bus rides and narrow mountain roads, but it brings huge rewards. We were in Laos for 6 weeks during the wet season (July-Sept), our second visit. … Read more
Finding budget family accommodation is always the hardest part of family travel at the backpacker end of the market. This post is about that and how to find cheap family accommodation for travel around the world. I’m having a bad day. We have 3 countries coming up in the next two months, we’ll be moving … Read more
5 years of travel, 2 years of homeschooling before that and we’ve never really had what you might call a schedule. It’s going great, so I’d argue that you don’t need one, but that’s to come. When I first started homeschooling, with a 7 year old and a 5 year old, I thought we would … Read more
How do you start an adventure? I started mine with my first ever blog post on my free wordpress.com site. I took it down when I started a self-hosted blog with my own domain name. (Read how to do that here, I know a lot more about the business of blogging these days, but the … Read more
If you read my last post about Chef’s hospitalisation, you’ll know that I wasn’t feeling too good. I’d even asked at the pharmacy for Xanax, I felt that bad. I was experiencing palpitations, shortness of breath ( probably through anxiety), headaches, hot flushes and a few other things that I didn’t mention. All these symptoms … Read more