The best… and the rest

 

So, just over a week back in Blighty now… and already it’s feeling like the trip was something that happened to some other family a long time ago… The UK has greeted us with grey skies and temperatures a solid 30 degrees lower than we’d grown used to. Oh, and presented us with colds too. Still, at least we were back in time for the solar eclipse (what solar eclipse?). We really did miss friends and family, though, and catching up with them, and a little bit of domestic normality has actually been wonderful.

This week has involved a lot of cleaning, sorting and organising, inevitably. It will take some time to rationalise the 6000+ photos we took (Don’t worry – no-one will be subject to more than 1000 in one sitting…), but we have already had a go at metaphorically boxing up our memories in the lists below.

Best towns and cities

* LA, USA    

* Christchurch, NZ    

* Queenstown, NZ    

* Oamaru, NZ    

* Sydney, Australia     

* Broken Hill, Australia     

* Adelaide, Australia    

* Kuching, Malaysia    

* Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia 

* Chiang Mai, Thailand    

* Luang Prabang, Laos     

* Hoi An, Vietnam     

* Hanoi, Vietnam     

Best towns that are anagrams of each other

* Hanoi          * Hoi An

Best accommodation

* Campervanning New Zealand! 

* Hot Water Beach (rental house), Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand

* Brides Chalet (rental house), Margaret River, Australia

* Good Times Resort, Kanchanaburi, Thailand

* Lanta Residence, Ko Lanta, Thailand

* Chatrium, Bangkok, Thailand   

* Suntisook Resort, Ko Yao Noi, Thailand

* Four Seasons (not the luxury chain!), Hue, Vietnam

(The last two were two of the cheapest places we stayed, but with undoubtedly the best, most personal service.)

Amazing (often unexpectedly) places

* Kuang Si Falls, Laos – extremely tough climb, rewarded by amazing views at the top

* The White Temple, Chiang Rai – insane Buddhist wedding cake fantasy

* The Getty Centre, Los Angeles – just beautifully done, a building amazing to walk around even without the art

* Ancient Bristlecone Pine forest, California – 4000-year-old trees

* Auckland Art Gallery – we were jet lagged, and had low expectations

* The Waterworks, New Zealand – bizarre collection of water-related games and exhibits, kept us amused for hours

* Oamaru & the Steam Punk Museum, New Zealand – not an obvious sightseeing destination, but we loved it (and it was also the place where we found Kattee mk2!)

* The Moeraki Boulders, and Castle Hill Rocks, New Zealand – beautifully bizarre freaks of nature

 

* Busselton Jetty, Australia – the 2km pier that keeps on giving

* Conspicuous Beach, Australia – those amazing sand dunes

* The Treetop Walk, Australia – as good as Bill Bryson said it was

* Flee 60, Penang – bonkers escape room fun

* 7 Levels waterfall, Langkawi – cooling off was never so necessary!

* Mu Lanta National Park, Ko Lanta, Thailand – along with the roller coaster bike ride to get there

* COPE Centre, Vientiane, Laos – life affirming and impressive

* An Bang Beach, Hoi An, Vietnam – serious contender for best beach of entire holiday

* Night Market, Luang Prabang, Laos – best market of the trip (and believe me, we went to a few!)

.  * The Citadel, Hue – a mini Forbidden City

* The Ho Chi Minh complex, Hanoi – slightly bonkers but fascinating

* Lumpini Park, Bangkok – a mini version of NY’s Central Park

Best wildlife

* Giant monitor lizard, Ayutthaya, Thailand (close on croc size!)

* Assorted other monitor lizards in Malaysia and Thailand

 

* Orang-utans, Borneo, Malaysia                                  * Long-tailed macaques, Thailand

      

* Tree vipers, Langkawi, Malaysia

* Dugite (snake), Cape Naturaliste, Aus (disappointingly the only deadly creature we saw in the wild in Oz!)

* Wallaby, Broken Hill, Australia                                      * Emus, Outback NSW, Australia

  

  * Yellow-eyed Penguins, nr Dunedin, NZ

 Best trees

* South-west Australia (The majesty of those giant Karris, Jarrahs and Tingles lives with us still…)

  

Bravest food moments

* Jon & Sel eating brains congee (a sort of rice porridge) and Joe and Charlie eating chilli-packed giant snails in Hoi An, Vietnam

  

Where would we love to return to?

Not many places – we’re not really returners, but… we’re already dreaming of going back to…

* New Zealand – in 10 years time. Believe the hype.

* SE Asia, generally… We thought we’d had our fill of pho a week or so ago, but we’re already thinking wistfully about those wonderful landscapes, the warmth of the people, the balmy climate, the fabulous food… Next time: Cambodia, Burma, Indonesia…

…and where would we not?

* Langkawi (Nice enough, but proof to us that we’re really not ‘resort people’; in fact, we would definitely have reduced the length of our ‘island hopping’ leg given our time again)

Comedy/nadir moments

* Almost missing our Milford Sound cruise because the campervan got stuck in mud; it took 3 hefty NZ-ers to help shift it, and we made it with minutes to spare

* Sel’s two -hour leg wax on a Thai Beach, cold wax heated by hairdryer (not very efficient really!)

* Being welcomed at our Hanoi Airport guesthouse by an owner almost incoherently drunk on whisky (‘You are English. You must get me Wayne Rooney shirt – not a copy, only original!’)

* Day 1 of our Laotian Mekong cruise – Sel was extremely annoyed at the lack of family provision in the seating arrangements; if looks could have killed, only half the passengers would have made it to the half way point of Pak Beng

* Charlie throwing chopsticks across a restaurant in Hue, Vietnam, in fit of pique (though perhaps only in retrospect!)

 * Walking into our sub-hostel room at Phil Inn, Singapore; Sel immediately bursting into tears and making us leave to find the nearest bar

 

Magic/zenith moments

* Seeing our lovely friends Jim & Elaine and Lesley & James again (after almost 10 years in both cases!) in California, USA

 

* Joe learning to boogie board at Stinson Beach (notorious for sharks!), California

* Morro Bay, California – morning mist, the untamed Pacific, boys running into the waves

  

   * Universal Studios, LA – not just for the kids!

* Being miraculously located by our Kiwi friend Kyra in a random campsite on the edge of Lake Dunstan in New Zealand

* The entirety of the campervanning experience in NZ… just do it!!

  

* Zip-lining in Chiang Mai, Thailand

    

* Powerboating in Queenstown, NZ

 

* Many wonderful, life-affirming walks – Mount Aspiring, Glenorchy and the volcanic Waimangu Valley in NZ, Sentinel Point in Yosemite, USA, and the short trek in Khao Sok National Park, Thailand (because it far exceeded expectations!)

    

* Charlie’s infatuation with acoustic guitar duo Brittany and Georgia, and sublime pizza, in the Church Bar in Bathurst, Australia

* Day 2 of the Mekong cruise, we bagged a table and all was right with the world

* The awesomely desolate Dubbo to Broken Hill drive through the NSW Outback – the joys of the wide open road

* Unexpectedly finding the most amazing Thai food in a tiny café in Sangkhlaburi, and watching the owner cycling off to pick up beer and groceries for our meal (we were the only customers)

* Driving the astonishing coast road from Hue to Hoi An – rightly dubbed “a deserted ribbon of perfection” by Jeremy Clarkson

* Stargazing in the Outback with Linda from Broken Hill

* Sunday morning spent with Mina learning to cook the Thai way, in Ko Yao Noi

* Scuba diving in Thailand (Jon & Joe)

* Releasing Chinese lanterns into the night sky over the River Kwai with the boys and another Charlie, the lovely owner of Good Times Resort in Kanchanaburi

* Swimming in the Andaman Sea off Ko Sukorn on Christmas Day

* The night train to Ayutthaya, watching Dr Who with the boys and seeing the sun come up

* Supping Singapore Slings in Raffles Hotel, Singapore (a much needed antidote to the Phil Inn catastrophe – see above)

* Dancing around our suite (free upgrade!) in the divine Chatrium hotel in Bangkok

Most annoying moments/things we WON’T miss

* How low the convenience of pedestrians is ranked in parts of SE Asia (Georgetown, Hanoi, etc)

* The ubiquity of litter, and the obliviousness of the locals to it in most of SE Asia

* For Joe: Being (repeatedly) asked if he and Charlie were twins

* For Charlie: Being (repeatedly) photographed by SE Asian tourists/locals because he is “So cute!!!”

* For both boys: Being (repeatedly) hailed with “Hello baby!” (“I’m NOT a baby. I’m 10 years old!”)

* For Sel: trying to buy a bra and being laughed out of a department store in Chiang Mai when they couldn’t find one nearly big enough!

Biggest mistakes

* Assuming that island hopping up the Andaman coast of Thailand would be cheap and easy; it was complicated and expensive

* Not realising that Lunar New Year knocked out half the transport options between Laos and Vietnam, necessitating expensive flights

* Not clocking that we needed a visa for the US (you all know that story by now), nearly scuppering our trip before it had started

* Getting the public bus from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng in Laos – took almost twice as long as advertised and Sel spent most of it being sick

* Sel’s baggy trousers (we said “You can’t touch those” – she didn’t agree!)

Currencies used

* Dollar (US), Dollar (NZ), Dollar (Aus), Dollar (Singapore), Ringgit (Malaysian), Baht (Thai), Kip (Lao), Dong (Vietnamese)

Most ridiculous currency conversion rate

£1 = 32,000 Dong

No of times, in Thailand, we said ‘What do you expect, it’s Thailand?’

We lost count…

Illnesses

(We got off very lightly)

Sel: 1 cold (subsequently passed on to Joe & Jon in USA)

Joe: 1 cold (USA); ear infection (resulting in interesting ear syringing experience in health clinic on Ko Lanta, Thailand); projectile vomiting one night in Hue (Vietnam), recovered by the morning.

Charlie: 1 slightly poorly tummy (Thailand)

Jon: 1 cold (USA); 1 inexplicable temporary blindness/dodgy stomach/weird heat rash (Malaysia) (quickly recovered!)

Things lost

* 1 Catty (replaced with Kattee mk2); 1 hairbrush; 2 T-shirts; 4 teeth (Joe); 1 tooth (Charlie); 16 kg (Sel)

 Things acquired

* Soft toys: 5 (doubling the already high initial toy quotient – Charlie can be very persuasive…)

* Sel’s clothes: also doubled (she packed light for a reason)

* 4 Chinese lanterns, 6 reclining Buddhas, one waving cat, one wooden spatula, one block of wood (source of an ongoing Sel/Jon debate: ‘Why exactly are we lugging this around?’), 5 fridge magnets plus assorted presents

Modes of transport taken

* Flights: 15

* Hire cars: 7 (including one campervan)

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* Boats: many (including 6 ferries, 1 slow boat down the Mekong, 1 power boat and countless longtails)

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* Buses and minivans: 12

* Songthaews and tuktuks: countless (including motorbike tuktuks – bonkers, dangerous but quintessentially SE Asian)

* Taxis: countless

   * Elephants: 1

* Bicycles: 2

 

* Motorbikes: 5 (would have been more if Sel hadn’t fallen off her 5^th bike while travelling at below walking speed and deciding she’d had enough)

  

* Gondola: 1  

The best of times, and sometimes the worst of times too…

  

But we’d do it all again like a shot!

Here’s to planning the next trip…

Back to life…

It’s been exactly 72 hours since we touched back down on British soil… and I can still hardly believe we are back. The British weather, the greyness of everything, the lack of lovely smiley women serving up delicious food on street corners, the sun (where’s that exactly?), I was expecting that. But what I wasn’t expecting to feel was this nagging sense that we shouldn’t be here, that in a day or so time we’ll be packing up and going somewhere else. No idea if this is normal, but being here certainly doesn’t feel like my reality at present.

Our homecoming, the details of which we’d talked through with the boys as a distraction when we were feeling particularly homesick on our trip, was amazing.

 

Stepping off a 14 hour flight, less than 10 hours sleep had between us, we were emotional and far too excited for exhaustion. Despite getting in an hour early, our parents (sadly minus my dad) were there, and whisked us back home to welcome home banners on the door, flowers, gifts (even though I thought we were supposed to be the ones bearing these!), a fully stocked fridge and a full English breakfast.

Later when Jon’s brother and family arrived, plus our friend Philippa (who done an amazing job keeping a close eye on our house and checking our post during our absence), the champagne came out. I remember looking at the clock and feeling slightly puzzled that it was actually still 10.30am.

But it’s nearly 5.30pm and beer o’clock in SE Asia a sad voice said in my head. Then, because we’d decided that our first day back shouldn’t be a day for reality and normality, as soon as everyone left, we headed over to another friend’s house for lunch (roast dinner and a cheese board – something we’d all been craving – thanks Sarah & Xav) and more fizzy stuff. We lasted until 6pm, then suddenly we all crashed, went home and went straight to bed.

Our old friend jet lag has certainly reared its head with a vengeance, probably contributing to my ongoing slightly spaced feeling of unreality… Still, the 5am starts have done wonders for our productivity, even if we continue to be ready for bed by 7pm, and there’s a lot of sort out! Mountains of washing and unpacking, which 3 days later we have still not finished. Another challenge is sorting out a house, which doesn’t feel quite like our home anymore.

We’d rented to a couple and their young daughter for 3 months, and 4 girls for the rest of the time, so it was hardly surprising to feel that nothing was quite where we had left it, and it was a real challenge to try to remember where on earth we put everything we had packed away – it took poor Jon 3 days to locate his slippers, which I am sure we had deliberately put somewhere they would be easy to find!

Then there’s the car to get back on the road, school places to reapply for (a whole other story of complicated red tape in itself), haircuts (and beard trimming!), dental and health check-ups to arrange for everybody, a boiler to get serviced… all extremely exciting, and exactly the kind of tasks we’d gone away for 6 months to escape.

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The boys of course are in their element, they are just delighted to be back – as we knew they would be. They can run amok and make noise without worrying about hotel neighbours – our first afternoon back at our friend Sarah’s, who has two boys the same age, Jon and I were wincing at the sheer amount of volume created by 4 excitable boys, and Sarah reminded us that this was in fact perfectly normal!!!

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Then there’s Sparky… we are all utterly delighted to see our 5^th (or should I say 6^th along with Kattee) member of our family again. Contrary to my fears he did not ignore us, or spend the first few days sulking and giving us the cold-shoulder. He’s clearly been well-looked after, and we’ve quickly been reminded of just what it is about him that melted even Jon’s hardened cat-loathing heart. Although, I had also forgotten about the sitting on my head at 5 in the morning thing that he does!

 

And how are we easing ourselves back in to reality? Well, with daily 5am starts (although Joe slept in until 7am yesterday), we’ve got lots of time on our hands. We’ve done a walk around Forest Hill – one legacy from travelling and exploring is that we are all very used to long ambles around places and the boys being a bit more interested in their environment. We’ve been to see my dad, the toughest part of our homecoming as none of us recognised him and I wanted to run weeping from the ward, but had to hold it together because I could tell the boys were extremely shocked. We’ve shopped – Charlie was dying to walk around our local Sainsbury’s (!?), and cooked – something we all missed, and cleaned and tidied.

So if you see me in the next few days, I’ll be the one grinning and yawning, and with a faintly perplexed expression on my face.

Thank you…

Day 1: 16 September 2014 – LA

…To each and every one of you who has read even just one of our blogs over the last six months; to all of you who have taken the time to comment; to everyone who has shown any interest in what we’ve been up to. Writing this blog has been hugely useful to us in terms of making us really THINK about what we’ve been doing and why and what it all means. Yes, in one sense (well, OK, in most senses) it has been one massive self-indulgence (both the blog and the trip), and we’re under no illusion that it may have been fairly annoying at times to read about the latest place we’ve been or experience we’ve had. Thank you for your patience.

View from our balcony at the Chatrium, Bangkok

Today is our last day in Bangkok. This evening, at 6.30pm, we’ll be boarding a plane to take us to Singapore, and there changing to another to return us home to Heathrow for 6am UK time on Sunday. Our amazing parents (sadly minus Sel’s dad, still in hospital) will be there at Terminal 2 to meet us! Tears will most definitely be shed…

 We are all feeling immoderately excited now about being back with our family and friends. It’s been tough at times, particularly for the boys, to be away from the familiar for so long, but, right now, we’re all choking down the lumps in our throats at the prospect of our adventure being over. So long and complex in the planning, so thrilling and tough and surprising in the execution. This time together, just the four of us, has been a unique experience in all our lives and one that will always live with us.

Day 180: 14 March 2015 – Bangkok

 We’re planning another couple of blogs to round everything off – something on what we’ve learned from the experience, and a summing up of all the most memorable bits, the highs, lows and comedy moments (although this blog may live on once we are back in the UK, in one form or another). Until then, once more… thank you for accompanying us on this odyssey.

 

One more pack until London

For the past few weeks, every time we move to a new place, I have calculated the number of times left that I have to re-pack our bags. That’s not to say I have been desperate to return home, or have been counting the number of days until we arrive at Heathrow; more that I am fed up to the back teeth of getting all our stuff together and cramming it into our rucksacks (over 50 times at last count)!!

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Getting yourself from one place, one country, one continent to another is difficult enough; doing it with a husband and 2 small boys, and all the associated ‘stuff’ in tow is another challenge entirely. The responsibility for our possessions and their transportation around the world has, for this entire trip, fallen solely at my feet. This was, I have to admit, my choice. I decided when we set off that if I wasn’t going to be a control freak about what we were doing and where we were going (and, believe me, it’s been good for my psyche to not be), then I needed somewhere to channel my slightly obsessive, some might say neurotic, tendency to want to control situations. Looking after our worldly goods for 6 months seemed a good place to focus my energy, because, let’s face it, Jon wasn’t that keen and left to the boys it just wouldn’t have happened. It did pay off – we have only lost a hairbrush and 2 T-shirts during the course of this trip. As long as you don’t count the passport (that was found) and Catty who ‘regenerated’ anyway! (See ‘Worse than losing a passport, or forgetting a visa’.)

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Of course, this was made easier by us packing reasonably light in the first place. This was on the basis of advice we received (not sure from where now) that, however long you are travelling for, pack like you are going on holiday for a couple of weeks. Boys are easy in this sense – my kids would happily wear the same clothes day in day out for months at a time, until they became more dirt than clothes, and Jon can cheerfully rotate the same two outfits. I took more items of clothing than the 3 boys combined, but it was still very little – and I am proud to say that I have worn the same pair of shoes for 6 months (Teva sandals – I cannot recommend you highly enough, but you will be going into the washing machine the minute we get back!).

       

Our gigantic stash of malaria tablets took up almost more space than our clothes. But, in fact, I don’t think there is anything we took that I regretted (apart from a clothes line that we never used), or anything that we left behind that I wished we’d had with us (apart from a spare bra perhaps; that’s another story!!). To be honest, in packing so little myself, I was working on the premise that if I moaned enough about how bored I was with my clothes, I’d get to buy more, because, “Clothes are MUCH cheaper here!” (wherever ‘here’ might be). (This tactic worked.)

       

But, if on this one, my boys were very supportive, in other ways I perhaps got the short straw in being the lone female of the party. Boys don’t do tidying up or organising, or at least my boys don’t; and when you are on the road for 6 months, staying in different places, what helps is creating order and calm in the places you stay. I certainly noticed that, as time went on, we ‘inhabited’ the places we stayed more and more, we spread our stuff around, tried to make each place ours, even if we were only there for a night or two. Making the grimmest of hotel rooms feel like home was my job, and, to be honest, it was helpful therapy for me, particularly at the times where I was most acutely homesick or just utterly fed up with the rest of my family.

Joe and Charlie would certainly say that the hardest part of this trip has been staying in different places all the time, having to get used to different rooms, different beds and everything else that goes with being somewhere new (and this was despite us deliberately planning it so we stayed for a good few days in most places). So creating routine and normality for them was pretty important, and something we tried hard to do.

   

What Jon has found difficult has been the lack of privacy and personal space. We very quickly learned the importance of a room with a balcony or some outside space for him to go to when he got up earlier than the rest of us in the morning, as he invariably did, or when he just wanted to do a Marlene Dietrich on the rest of us!

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For me, other than my obsessive worry about our possessions, the worry that something would happen to one of us, or something would go wrong at home was constantly at the back of my mind. For us, we got off lightly – nothing much worse than a handful of colds (in the US – I blame the long haul flight), an ear infection (for Joe in Ko Lanta), some short-lived vomiting (Joe again, in Hue) and Jon’s bizarre temporary blindness in Kuching. However, back at home my worst fear was realised when Dad was diagnosed with cancer in January, for which he had to have surgery in early February. One operation turned into three, followed by a month long stint in Intensive Care, where he remains – thank God for Skype, and Dad’s very sympathetic consultant, who reassured us that he would be OK eventually and on no account did I need to cut the trip short and come home; although I was sorely tempted at times.

 

Now, here we are in Bangkok, one final pack away from coming home, and I can I hardly believe it. The massive space left by the malaria tablets (now all taken, thank goodness) has been filled by my new clothes. Plus an extra rucksack purchased for presents, and random stuff we have bought for ourselves – the duvet cover (from Laos), 4 lanterns (hopefully not a foolish purchase from Vietnam), and various prints and wall hangings.

 

Here, in our last destination, it feels as if we have all let out a collective sigh of relief. It has been helped (hugely) by being in a 5-star hotel on the banks of the Chao Phraya river (thanks Booking.com for giving us a price, unbelievably, on a par with the hideous Phil Inn in Singapore – ‘Nearer but still very far away‘), and being upgraded to a suite (I take the credit on that one, aided and abetted by the hotel slightly messing up our booking).

   

   

But Bangkok has exceeded our expectations, perhaps because we know this is it, our last stop on a very long and incredible journey. So we need to make the most of it, and we are. Cruising up and down the river, some light shopping at the myriad of malls and markets, wandering through shady parks, popping into a temple or two, checking out Jim Thompson’s House, and, of course, swimming, eating and drinking – the mainstays of this trip, the activities that have always been guaranteed to make us feel better.

   

In two nights’ time I’ll be cramming our 6 months’ worth of possessions into our ever growing number of bags for the last time. Jon’s promised me a glass of champagne while I do it – well earned for sure, but I think it will also taste kind of bittersweet…

Roadschooling

Electing to take Joe and Charlie out of school for six months wasn’t a decision we made lightly. How would missing two thirds of the school year affect them? Would they miss their friends? Would they be behind when they returned? But I’m a teacher. Surely I could help them make up the deficit on the road. And wouldn’t seeing the world give them a great deal more than they would lose from not sitting in a classroom for two terms?

The hardest decision was not down to what they would miss, but more to how we would get them back into the education system on our return. Their school (understandably, perhaps, but not very helpfully) had been unwilling to hold their places for them and we were told we would have to apply again from scratch when we got home. What if we couldn’t get them back in to their old school? Were we being unthinkingly reckless by putting their education on the line in this way?

In the end, though, we thought it worth the risk, with the potential benefits outweighing the possible problems. Perhaps that was somewhat reckless, but, projecting ourselves into the future, we genuinely couldn’t believe that we (or they) would ever look back and say: ‘Thank goodness we never went travelling!”

What we hoped would happen

This is REAL education, surely! No sitting in rows in a dull classroom doing exercises from a book for hours on end, but actually being out there having first-hand experiences in new and exotic places. Getting to know the locals, trying the food, learning the language, imbibing the culture, living the history. Classroom-based education can only give a child so much, and, if the point of education is to prepare a child for living in the real world, surely being out in that world seeing and doing new things is the ideal of what education should be.

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One of the main reasons that we’ve taken this trip when we have is because I have become heartily disillusioned with what mainstream education in schools has become… a cart before the horse exercise in guessing what Ofsted want to see rather than thinking about what children really need. Imagination, fun and thinking outside the box is seen as increasingly dangerous. Teachers have become disempowered and deprofessionalised to such an extent that I’m seriously unsure whether I can face returning to it at all.

So what a golden opportunity to experiment with how it could all be so different. We had visions of wonderful projects on Aboriginal art and orang-utans and Thai temples and Vietnamese food. Of our boys’ eyes being opened by the richness and diversity of life and culture across South East Asia and Australasia.

Yes, but what about multiplication and spelling, I hear you asking? Well, obviously not everything that we need to know can be experienced directly. We weren’t totally naïve about the completeness of experiential learning, and brought along with us a series of ‘workbooks’ to try to keep the kids’ maths and English in line with what their peers would be up to back at home. And I’m a teacher,  so I know how children learn and how to motivate them, right?

What actually happened

They didn’t want to do any projects. They didn’t want to do any research into where we were going. They didn’t want to do workbooks. They missed their friends. “I hate roadschooling!” was a sentence heard, sadly, on more than one occasion when, for the 100^th time I attempted to get just a half hour of solid work out of them.

As a teacher, the children of others tend to do what you ask them to do, just because you’re a teacher. As a parent, ours tended to rebel, because I was just their Dad, and to not give a stuff what I did for my day job. And I did find that, disappointingly, I have a lot more patience with children when they are not mine and I’m being paid to be nice to them.

There was an awful lot of frustration all round in the early months. It rapidly became clear that the idea of ‘projects’ was out of the window at an early stage. It could be just our kids, but they simply refused to even contemplate them, and no amount of encouraging and cajoling could shift them. Even persuading them to write a travel diary became a major issue. (‘Don’t you want to remember all the amazing places we’ve been and things we’ve done?’ ‘Not if it means I have to do writing.’) We ended up abandoning the attempt with Charlie – he wasn’t to be persuaded; while Joe required Herculean efforts of will and patience from his Mum to persuade him to write even a couple of sentences about each day.

The workbooks? Generally, Charlie became surprisingly enthusiastic about doing these. He responded well to their structured nature (“I’ve done two pages today!”). For the first half of the trip, Joe was extremely reluctant to do anything that smacked of imposed learning at all. And anything new and/or tricky he shied away from in particular. Slowly, ever so, painfully, slowly, though, his attitude has changed as the trip progressed. He has stopped the kneejerk oppositional stuff, and is starting to relish a challenge. This is a big step forward for him.

Motivating the boys to work was an ongoing issue. We tried numerous tactics, finding that, somewhat guiltily, tieing ‘work time’ done to ‘computer time’ earned worked the best. Should we have even brought the boys’ Kindle Fires with us on this trip? We debated it before leaving. My idea was that they could use them primarily for research and reading. A touch naïve. They wanted to play games (and read occasionally). Was this wrong? We’ve come to think not. Being stuck together 24/7 with your family, frequently moving around and being in new places, doing an awful lot of walking about… we all need some down time and ‘normality’. Overall, we managed the computers OK. An hour a day maximum seemed a fair price to pay.

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 So what have they (and we) learned?

1 That learning isn’t always neatly quantifiable.

In truth, we don’t yet know precisely what the boys will take away from this trip, but we do know that their eyes have been opened to many aspects of our world that were unknown to them before setting off. For example, our first-hand experiences connected with the Vietnam War and its aftermath that we’ve had in Laos and Vietnam have had a major effect on both of them, and how they understand the lives of others far from their own home and comfort zone.

2 That learning can’t always be planned.

You have to go with the flow to a degree when travelling. Flexibility and adaptability have been necessary for all of us, and, in fact, developing these capacities has ended up being a key aspect of how we’ve all moved on during this trip. A lot of what we’ve all learned over the past months hasn’t necessarily been what we assumed we’d be learning. We never anticipated, for instance, that we’d have quite so many fascinating and deep conversations with the boys about religion and belief (all those temple visits clearly weren’t such a trial!). Could there have been a better way of fostering understanding of difference (and fundamental similarities) between peoples and developing tolerance than this? We think not.

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3 That learning isn’t just about acquiring information.

As a family, we have ALL had to become more tolerant and understanding of each other during our six-month sentence together. It has been seriously hard at times, and we’re all quite looking forward to a break from each other, to be frank, but we’ve come through it in one piece, and truly believe that we have become stronger as individuals and a family unit as a result.

4 That we’re braver than we thought.

There were so many aspects of this trip that seemed daunting and scary before we set off and as we proceeded. One fairly profound thing we’ve all learned is that we’re not afraid any more. Most issues can be sorted, most people are kind and trustworthy, most places are interesting and understandable given time. The unknown can be challenging, but there is nothing to be scared of. (As one minor example, both boys were keen to try giant snails smothered in garlic and chilli on a street food crawl of Hoi An a week ago. We simply couldn’t conceive of that occurring a few months ago!) Nothing really seems that daunting to us now. That one achievement, if it stays with us (and we are sure it will), makes this whole trip worthwhile.

 

And what do the boys say about their experience of learning and ‘roadschooling’ over the past months?

Joe: “I found it hard to work from books in the beginning because it was so different to how it is in school, but then, as we went on, I started to find it easier to focus, and I started to learn a lot. Even though we only did one hour a day, I think I learned a lot more from that one hour, plus all the history of these places, than I would have learned in 6 hours of school a day.”

Charlie: (Charlie was unavailable for comment.)

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‘Roadschooling’ has been a great deal tougher than we ever imagined. For us, at least, it has required an adjustment in just what we consider education in this context to be. It took a long time to find some kind of rhythm in the formal learning, but we made it eventually, and it just goes to prove that there’s more than one kind of journey you embark on with a trip like this. And we 100% stand by our original belief… There is simply no way we will ever say “We wish we never went travelling”.

Tales of the Unexpected: Buddha Park

I liked Buddha Park despite the horrible one hour long bus journey from Vientiane to get there.

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Its real name is Xieng Khuan, which means spirit city, and it was built in 1958 by a monk called Luang Pu Bunleua Sulilat who studied both Buddism and Hinduism. That’s why both religions are shown in the sculptures, which are made of reinforced concrete.

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Kattee also really enjoyed the park, even though she did almost get eaten by a giant crocodile!!

  

I loved the reclining Buddha, which is massive and is 120 metres long.

But my favourite bit was the ‘pumpkin tower’. It’s only 6 metres high, which it doesn’t sound so tall, but it looks and feels tall when you’re on top of it. There are three levels – hell, earth and heaven – and you enter through a metre tall demon’s mouth.

   

I also liked the sculpture of the elephant with 3 heads. This has a special meaning in Buddhism and especially in Laos, the land of the million elephants.

It was all amazing and beautiful, and the five of us (me, Joe, Mummy, Daddy and Kattee while munching her pilchard) loved it.

   

What do you expect…? It’s Thailand!

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Having travelled the length (if not the breadth) of the country, we have now reached the end of our Thailand odyssey.

We’ve ridden motorcycles…          

       …and elephants

swam in seas and lakes and waterfalls,  

travelled on speedboats, longtails, tuk tuks, songtaews, buses, minivans and trains;

  

and learnt that ‘going with it’ and maintaining a sense of humour is the best way to enjoy a country that runs by its own rules and at its own pace.

Here’s some of our observations; some things we knew already and some things we just hadn’t anticipated…

Coup? What coup?

We did waver slightly about coming to Thailand at all in the wake of last year’s army coup. Would we find military checkpoints everywhere and people cowering under heavy restrictions? No, and indeed travel websites were quick to stress how generally safe it was to travel. In fact, we only caught sight of the odd soldier (and none holding weapons) and saw no evidence of any type of obvious oppression. Clearly, tourists are only going to see so much as we skim through the more picturesque parts of the country, but what did surprise us was that, on more than one occasion, Thais expressed approval of the army’s intervention, about their apparent sweeping away of corruption and suppression of crime. Tourism has certainly been hit by nervous foreigners opting out (down about a million visitors from the previous year apparently). However, and without wishing to sound like apologists for military dictatorship s  , it has become clear to us that in these parts unfettered democracy isn’t perceived as quite the same panacea for all evils it may be in the West.

Orange is the colour

The far south may be predominantly Muslim, but the great majority of Thais consider themselves Buddhists, and Buddhism still plays a central role in the country’s identity, architecture and culture. Monks are ubiquitous. You rarely encounter a street scene without a flash of orange robe in it. For many boys, particularly in rural areas, a few years as a monk is a passport to a decent education. However, respect for tradition has been diluted by 21^st century consumerist temptations. Older Thais have lamented to us how many youngsters would far rather stare at their iPhones than pay homage in their local temple these days.

God (or, rather, Buddha) save the King!

Do the Thais ever love their king? Oh, yes, they most certainly do. Pictures of his highness are everywhere; many Thais all but worship him, and woe betide you if you diss the monarch in public… lengthy prison terms await… (Although, interestingly, the blanket veneration of old seems to be slightly waning; we did encounter a few Thais willing to utter the odd less-than-complimentary comment about him.)

 

Still the Land of Smiles?

Thais are extremely proud people – something to do with living in a country that has never come under the Western colonial yoke, maybe? They are also the consistently the most warm, open and friendly folk we have met thus far; our boys felt sometimes a bit overly so at times… having been stroked by almost every Thai women who walked past them, grabbed by Thai men (not quite as sinister as it sounds), and asked repeatedly to pose for photos with groups of Thai tourists.

Small is beautiful?

Jon has hugely enjoyed being a giant among men in SE Asia; Sel has enjoyed rather less the teeny cut of Thai clothing and the realisation that there is not a bra anywhere in the country made big enough for her (being giggled out of a department store in Chiang Mai one day was a particular humiliation)!

Totally wired

Wise up USA, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia…! By far the best and most widely available wifi we’ve encountered on this trip is here. (We even came across it at a bus stop one day.)

Restaurant etiquette

 

Dishes in restaurants come in no particular order, at seemingly random times, and often with the cutlery arriving 5 minutes later, so you are left salivating or, if you really don’t want to wait, tucking in with your hands. We learned not to fight it… just shared each dish as it came along, Thai style. In Sel’s opinion men are less naturally inclined to do this, stubbornly wanting to eat what they ordered and nothing else – so a steep learning curve for all the boys…

 

Oh, but the food was always worth waiting for– we probably only had a couple of disappointing meals in the 7 weeks we were here.

Of all the bars in all the world…?

The soundtrack to many of our meals and drinks in Thailand was often rather tasteful acoustic cover versions of songs (in some cases provided by live Thai singer-guitarists). All surprisingly good… Black Eyed Peas certainly sounded better this way!

…and other random observations

  

* Thai towns are often just not that aesthetically pleasing. Yes, many have stunning settings, cultural riches, beautiful temples, premium grade hawker food, etc, but they are mainly messy, unsentimental, practical, workaday places.

* Thais don’t really do soft mattresses. In fact, sleeping on a board would have been more comfortable sometimes.

* Thais are really surprisingly keen on camping.

* Beer and massages get cheaper the further north you go.

  

So Thailand, thank you. In our 48 days here you have often amused, sometimes frustrated, but generally completely beguiled, and certainly not disappointed us.

Tales of the Unexpected: the ‘White Temple’

One of the occupational hazards of travel around Thailand is temple fatigue. There really are only so many wats, chedis and prangs you can visit before they start to blur. True, the multitudinous and remarkably varied old ruins of Ayutthaya really did leave us with a powerful impression of both the central importance of Buddhism to Thai life and the one-time wealth and confidence of the civilization that created them. But modern temples? We might be missing something, but they really have seemed a bit samey… a blizzard of gold and mirrors, soaring steep-pitched roofs and glistening gilded Buddhas.

So when the lovely host of our B&B in the far northern town of Chiang Rai insisted that the ‘White Temple’, a few kilometres out of the centre, was a must-see, we took a deep breath before acquiescing, hopping on a rickety local bus and heading out for a look.

Now, there are lots of extraordinary buildings in the world, of course, but very few are sufficiently surprising to actually produce an audible gasp from viewers on first sight. Wat Rong Khun, as it is properly known, is one of this select band. As we rounded a corner and saw the full insanity of the ‘White Temple’ laid out before us, we slowed to a stop, looked at each other, slack-jawed, and broke into broad grins. ‘What is THAT?!’

The original temple on this site was in a poor state of repair by the end of the 20^th century. No government funding was forthcoming for renovations, so in stepped millionaire local artist Ajarn Chalemchai Kositpipat, who decided that he would make the rebuilding of the wat his life’s work. But not for him a bland identikit contemporary temple, or even a recreation of a more noble, ancient structure. Oh, no. He wanted to create something as arresting and original as Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, and was prepared to wait just as long to see it completed. Although it opened to the public (free of charge) in 1997, the White Temple complex isn’t due to be completed before 2070.

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How to describe his vision…? Perhaps crazed wedding cake design meets Dungeons & Dragons? Or Athena poster-style air-brushed sci-fi fantasy collides with Nightmare on Elm Street? The artist himself has said, “I want to be the only artist in the world who can create anything with utmost freedom. I do not want to work under anybody’s influence or thought processes.” To this end, he has already spent more than £1 million of his own cash, and refuses to accept donations from single donors greater than £200 to preserve the purity of the project, free from outside influence. He can be seen on site every day working on his dream.

  

 

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Inside the main temple building the walls are covered with murals that, at first glance, seem to reflect traditional Buddhist stories, but, wait… isn’t that Superman over there? And that is clearly Osama bin Laden and Dubya sitting astride a missile. Ajarn Chalemchai has said that he wished visitors to contemplate the evils of the modern world, and the lack of real heroes in our wicked consumerist societies. But most of the tourists looking round on our visit seemed keener to play ‘spot the character’… Hello Kitty! A minion! Jack Sparrow! Harry Potter! 

Disaster (almost) struck on 5 May 2014 when a major earthquake shook the Chiang Rai region. For a few days it looked as if the whole structure would have to be demolished. Mercifully, it was declared structurally sound and survived, although evidence of the earthquake is still visible in cracked plaster and the odd wonky spire.

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We all LOVED the White Temple. Yes, it’s totally, utterly bonkers, but in our ever more homogenous world, how can we not celebrate the (possibly crazed) vision and determination of one individual to leave his unique and hugely enjoyable stamp on the world.

Present… and in the moment

At the start of this trip I decided that it was going to be really important to try, as much as possible, to live in the moment. It’s not really something that I’ve always been good at and real life throws up many distractions that often makes it impossible. Trying to get my 3 boys to do the same has been even more of a challenge, when they are constantly keen to move on to the next thing and the next thing. As Matthew Broderick says in the ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’: “Life moves pretty fast sometimes, and if you don’t stop and look around you, you might miss something.”

But try saying that to an impatient 10 year old with the concentration span of a goldfish or a husband who’s up at 6 again, ‘doing a bit of research’ on the next destination. As we charge towards the last month of our trip, it’s getting ever trickier not to start counting the days until we see friends and family again; it’s not that we’re in a rush to get home, but there’s also lots that we are really starting to miss. However, this leg of Thailand, the journey north through the mainland, was always the bit of the trip that I had been looking forward to the most; and it certain hasn’t disappointed, although it’s also thrown up a fair number of surprises.

We certainly weren’t expecting Kanchanaburi to feel as seedy as it did. Amazing history (as described by no.1 son in his last blog) notwithstanding, Kanchanaburi is a bit of a messy place. The main tourist strip, leading from the famous Bridge on the River Kwai to the Death Railway Museum and war cemetery, is a 2km road lined by bars popular with middle-aged men staring through the bottom of an empty beer glass at 11am, signs offering the opportunity to get drunk for 20 Baht (around 40p), and the odd unsavoury food stall guarded by a very sleepy Thai and some of the most aggressive dogs we’ve come across in the country. The main town is another kilometre away and doesn’t seem to have any real connection with all the Death Railway sights.

Somehow we were still beguiled by the place. Perhaps it was speeding down the Kwai from the main town to the Bridge on a souped-up longtail boat;

walking across the Bridge (completely over-touristed as it was) and jumping out the way as a train thundered (albeit extremely slowly) into the town; and watching the sun set over the river, beer in hand, from the jetty by our hotel – which was for me one of the loveliest places that we have stayed.

Sangkhlaburi, around 220km north of Kanchanaburi, is not on the way to anywhere, unless you are heading for Burma (which we weren’t, and anyway the border there sporadically closes so is not a very reliable entry point!), but it sounded worth a 3-day diversion.

As our 3-hour bus journey became a 5-hour marathon, due to an unscheduled stop in a non-descript town and the inability of the bus driver to navigate the windy mountain roads at a pace quicker than 10km an hour, we did question the wisdom of this. But sitting on a balcony, with – yup, you guessed it – beer in hand, gazing out across the water at another sunset, it felt worth it.

Sangkhlaburi – so good they named it 3 times!!

Like Kanchanaburi, the guidebook gave us no real sense of the place. Again, Sangkhlaburi town itself is an unremarkable, sleepy, workaday place, with a population of around 15,000 people and a rather temporary feel to it. But what is fascinating and amazing is its history and its setting. Sangkhlaburi sits on the Vajiralongkorn Lake, and the original old town was demolished, or rather flooded in 1984, to make way for a new hydroelectric dam and reservoir, with a new town created on higher ground. As a result, the large ethnic community of Mon people were suddenly without a home. Most of them were refugees from Burma, without any rights in Thailand, but were allowed to establish a new village on the opposite bank of the lake across from the new town, and a bridge was built to connect the Mon village to the town.

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It is the sight of the misty lake, with the tall, intricate, handmade wooden bridge – famous throughout Thailand – spanning it, and the mountains and hills rising behind that gives Sangkhlaburi its unique allure. What we also didn’t realise is that it’s not a destination for many Westerners. Most visitors are Thais, often weekenders from Bangkok who completely take the place over..

  

It was refreshing to be somewhere that wasn’t particularly trying to cater for Westerners and Western tastes, and made the finds of a couple of incredibly cute cafes even more satisfying.

We stumbled on our best discovery, sadly, on our last night – isn’t that always the way? – a tiny guesthouse, with only a few tables and chairs. We ordered a couple of bottles of Chang, and saw the waitress whiz off on a bicycle, only to return 5 minutes later with a bag full of beer – she obviously had the measure of us. This really was food… and drink… made to order, and one of the freshest, most delicious meals we’ve had in Thailand – clearly made with love.

By contrast, the city of Ayutthaya is large, old and firmly on the well-beaten tourist route north from Bangkok. Founded in 1351, it was once the capital of Thailand and one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the east. In 1685 it boasted a population of 1 million – roughly double the population of London at the same time. Sadly, the city was sacked by the Burmese in 1767, and, although Burmese rule only lasted a few months, by then the old capital had been largely reduced to ruins. The grand old city, picturesquely surrounded by waterways was never rebuilt. The ruins were eventually preserved and designated a UNESCO Heritage site, with a small modern town being built to one side.

But Ayutthaya will forever be ingrained in my memory as the place where our children decided they’d had enough of travelling. As we trudged around some of the most stunning remains of temples and palaces, Joe and Charlie sulked, refused to walk, demanded constant stops for drinks… Perhaps the nadir moment was Charlie declaring, amidst a crowd of awe-struck tourists: “This is the most boring place in the world!” We took stock, we slowed down…

We found a boat and went for cruise along the rivers and canals surrounding the town, and watched the sun set over the amazing temples. The next day we hired bikes and peddled, exceedingly slowly, through the many parks that enclose the ruins, with frequent stops to sit under trees and watch the wildlife. We also spent a lot of time just hanging out at our amazing B&B – a wooden shuttered house built on stilts, with fish ponds, a couple of very friendly dogs and Kittiya, the very motherly owner – where the boys felt extremely at home.

  

 

After an evening in the fantastic night market, around the corner from our homestay, we left Ayutthaya on the night train for our last main stop in Thailand, Chiang Mai. We certainly saved the best until last (OK, so we are going to two more places in Thailand, but they are short stopovers en route to the Laos border, so hopefully I’m allowed a small bit of poetic licence here). Chiang Mai is the second biggest city in Thailand and a complete tourist and traveller mecca.

Like Ayutthaya it’s a city surrounded by waterways. The old town, literally a square kilometre in the centre of the vast modern city, used to be entirely walled in. The 4 gates on each side, the bastions and the moat still survive, which perhaps is what makes it feel surprisingly cosy, compact and well organised. Well, that’s if you don’t think about the fact you are taking your life in your hands every time you walk down the streets lining the moat, dodging the absolute non-stop speeding procession of cars, motorbikes and bicycles.

I’m not sure why Chiang Mai ‘got us’ in the way that it did, perhaps it was simply the right place at the right time. We were certainly in need of some real city life, some variety and a bit more of a cosmopolitan vibe. It’s perhaps also that it’s a great place to just wander around and ‘be’ in.

 

 

We spent a good few days just exploring on foot, popping into a Wat here, or a park there, stopping at a café whenever we felt a bit tired – with children, this was quite frequent, but then there is a serious surfeit of rather lovely cafes and restaurants in Chiang Mai.

 

The boys will also always remember Chiang Mai as the scene of our greatest adventure: a day ziplining in the Thai jungle, which exceeded our expectations (still trying to get Charlie to blog about the day he described at the time as ‘the best day of my life’)!

 

On our final day we hired a private guide to take us on a tour of the nearby Doi Suthep National Park. Only half an hour out of the city, and an amazing cornucopia (have been waiting to get that word into a blog) of beautiful temples, waterfalls, coffee plantations, hill tribe villages and some views back over Chiang Mai to die for.

   

At one point, we all stopped at a waterfall with one such spectacular vista, and our guide motioned for us to sit. We all spread out, found a rock each and did so, and there was silence. We sat there for a very long time, not speaking just being – all of us – it was magical!

   

The Death Railway

‘Working in swampy wet conditions, men dying from cholera, malaria. I’ve experienced hunger, sickness and torture. Working 18 hours long and hard shifts. Night marches from early evening to dawn.’

The Burma-Thailand ‘death railway’ was built by captured prisoners of war and voluntary Asian labourers. It was said that one man died for every sleeper laid.

In 1941 Japan entered World War 2. It rapidly took over most of south-east Asia, but, fearing an allied blockade of the Bay of Bengal, it looked for an alternative supply route for its troops in Burma. The solution was to build a 415 kilometre-long railway through the jungle and across the mountains between Thailand and Burma, starting at Nong Pladuk in Thailand and ending at Thanbuyzat in Burma. They shipped 60,000 POWs (prisoners of war) up from captured territories, and later 200,000 Asian labourers were recruited/forced to join them. One later recalled:

‘I was studying at a nearby university and I had a Sunday off. I went to a market when two Japanese soldiers came up to me and told me to come with them. They said I was to be sent to help with the Burma railway. I said I was in the middle of a course at the local university, so I couldn’t go, but they said you need to come right now. I started to cry, but they took me off in their van and I didn’t see my parents or friends for 3 years.’

Work began for POWs in June 1942 and Asians at the beginning of 1943. They were working in wet and marshy conditions and were forced to work 18-hour long shifts with sometimes long night marches to the next camp. They suffered a range of diseases, but the biggest killers were cholera and malaria, especially during the monsoon season. The worst casualties came in 1943, with cholera killing tens of thousands.

‘I remember men skinny enough to be skeletons and the faces of men screaming in pain and agony from surgery and disease,’ recalled an Australian POW.

The railway was finally finished in 1944 and the Asian labourers were free to go, but POWs were sent to other prison camps until 15 August 1945 when the Japanese finally surrendered.

I found out about all this when we went to Hellfire Pass (so-called because it was the most gruelling part of the railway to build, being the longest and deepest cutting on the line) near Kanchanaburi. There was a small museum there, which gave loads of information about it. We were then given audio guides, and there is a walk you can do along the original path of the railway.

The actual railway no longer exists here, as after the war a large section of the railway was torn up so as to destroy the Thailand-Burma link forever. Along the way there are signposts with audio guide numbers, which tell you about Hellfire Pass, the building of the railway and includes quotes from POWs who worked on it. It was extremely interesting, but very moving and emotional.

 

There is still one section of the railway that has been left intact – from Nam Tok to Kanchanaburi. We left Hellfire Pass and took the 20 minute bus ride to Nam Tok (which is south of Hellfire Pass) and did the journey – although nearly 3 hours long, it was amazing and we saw some beautiful views and stunning wildlife. It was brilliant.

The journey ended with the train crawling over the famous Bridge on the River Kwai. Well, sort of.

    

There were actually two bridges, neither over the nearby river Kwae (not Kwai), but the Thais got round the inconvenience by rebuilding the bridge here and renaming the river the Kwai.

Around 16,000 allied POWs died (mostly British, Australian and Dutch) building the Death Railway, and up to 100,000 Asian labourers (mostly Malay and Thai) are also thought to have perished. In Kanchanaburi, I visited the cemetery where around 5,000 allied soldiers are buried. Not one single grave exists for the Asian victims.

It was very emotional and sad, but I’m extremely glad we did it.

RIP, your bravery and courage will never be forgotten.