Travel with Me; Thailand with My Travel Monkey

This week I caught up with Ting from the fantastic travel mummy blog My Travel Monkey I love that there are so many mummy travel bloggers out there sharing their stories and showing that we can all still travel with children and instill in them a love to travel to.

Ting (and her blog) has exactly the same attitude that we have towards travel with children and her blog is full of fantastic holiday tips both home and abroad – though she is yet to come review Dubai!  As well as all of this Ting runs a fabulous linky every Monday called “Monday Escapes” where you look back at all your happy travel memories.  I recommend you go and look, link up any posts you have and you may just spot Life with Baby Kicks over there.

Without further ado here is Ting and Monkey telling us all about their wonderful time in Thailand, makes me even more excited for our holiday to Phuket in August…

Where are you taking us to today?

Hua Hin in Thailand, a Royal beach resort about three hours from Bangkok.

What sort of trip was it, adventure, beach, relax, sightseeing?

It was definitely a relaxing holiday with some sightseeing thrown in. We hadn’t had been on a proper beach holiday for several years as we are always hampered by the weather. Our friends think we’re jinxed! Last Spring we went to Tenerife and it rained the whole time, and the year before that we went to Portugal. Guess what? The same thing happened! (oh yes we are this jinxed as well but now we live in the heat though we love the rain!) Which is why we chose to go further afield this time – so we were guaranteed sunshine!

Plus, I would loosely use the term ‘relaxing’. After all, having a manic three-year old boy with you isn’t conducive to sunbathing and reading my book all day… However, I would like to stress we had a wonderful time.

My husband and I haven’t been back to Thailand for over 15 years, so it was also a special trip for us both – to revisit a country where we basically formed the first steps of our relationship. I spend nearly 3 months travelling Thailand, so it meant something to us to be able to bring our son with us.

Tell me all about it; where you stayed, food you ate, how the little person took it all!

We decided to stay in the resort of Hua Hin because we didn’t fancy getting another connecting flight after being on the plane for 12 hours already. And we made the right decision – purely because it’s an area of Thailand we haven’t explored.

We stayed for a fortnight and opted for two different hotels. The first, the Rest Detail, was a small boutique hotel and we were lucky enough to spend most of it in a Pool Village villa where we had swim-up sundecks. Meanwhile, the second hotel, The Centara Grand Beach Resort, is a colonial hotel steeped in history as it first opened in 1923.

Both hotels were very different to one another, but they both welcome families and catered for young children in several ways. Also, the Thai people were so friendly and welcoming, Monkey was made to feel very special.

We had so much food choice. Of course, we tried to eat as much fresh seafood as possible from giant BBQ prawns to fresh fish and crab. The best we ate was at Hua HIn’s night market where they cook on the side of the street. My kind of eating – cheap and delicious.

Hua Hin has a plethora of restaurants from Thai to pizzerias, we never went hungry and often found it difficult to actually make a decision!

Monkey enjoyed it all so much – I think the main thing was he had our undivided attention for two weeks, and we got to do so many things from swimming and eating ice-cream everyday!

What is your favourite memory from this trip?

There are so many – but the one thing that springs to mind is Monkey’s first ride on a tuk tuk. His eyes just lit up and he loved it. It was so lovely to see the pure excitement in his face and wind blowing in his hair from such a simple experience but one I didn’t have until I was in my early 20s!

What did you learn about travelling with babies/toddlers/children from this experience?

As I mentioned before, children are hugely adaptable. More so than we give them credit for. Within a couple of days Monkey was over the jet lag, and begun to get used to the heat; as well as our new routine – having a nap in the afternoon, so he could stay up late with mummy and daddy in the evening. I was so worried he would be difficult on the long flight, as well, but he my fears were unfounded as he acted like a little trooper and just got on with it.

What is your top tip for travelling with little people?

Prepare for all eventualities. Plus make sure you bring a good first aid kit and favourite toys and games. It’s important they feel they are surrounded by some of their home comforts.

Thanks Ting, if you want to see more of Ting then head over to My Travel Monkey, you can also catch updates on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and that all elusive Google+.

As always if you want to take part in my “Travel with me…” series please get in touch with me by email on lifewithbabykicks@gmail.com don’t be shy I’d love to hear from you.