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
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
This morning, 4 months into our trip, my husband is having emergency hernia repair surgery on Ko Samui. I’ve always said medical care is great in Thailand, but I wasn’t expecting to test it out! My fit, healthy, Iron Man husband was absolutely fine on Saturday afternoon. He was playing around with the kids. We got a taxi … Read more
I’ve posted before about how much I love India, but Goa was my first love. I went on a cheap package holiday for the first time in 1998 and returned several times before we got into the swing of independent long-term travel. Why visit Goa rather than some other part of India? Is it worth … Read more
Four months ago this week I wrote about the things I’d miss as we left Port Douglas to explore the world. Just the three of us, Chef caught up with us later. I haven’t missed home at all, we’re having a brilliant adventure, but things haven’t gone quite as expected. Our unplanned travel style has come … Read more
Travel makes you wise, we all know that, and wisdom makes you sexier and cooler, but on a totally shallow level, travel also makes you thinner, or it can. It works for me. You may have noticed that we love our food here at World Travel Family, it’s a big part of travel for us. … Read more
Did I tell you about the time we accidentally took a Doctor Who toy through customs? It was back in 2011 when we were touring the UK from Australia. It was just the boys and I, Chef was stuck in work. We’re big Doctor Who fans in this family, visiting the Doctor Who Experience in … Read more
Years ago, in Vietnam, when we were on our first RTW, I had a go at driving the moped we’d hired. I got my twisting, pulling and pushing mixed up and mounted the pavement extremely inelegantly, scattering the picnicking Vietnamese family who were quietly enjoying their lunch. I hadn’t been near a moped since because … Read more
In our first year on the road we weren’t just about family budget travel, we were rocking extreme budget travel. Our budget for Asia on on our first year of full-time family travel was crazy-low, it hovered between $40 and $50 per day. That’s not much for a family of four and it’s certainly a … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
