Dora the explorer- Beatrix explores the ruins

                             Confession 1: Beatrix has quite a thing for Dora

                             Confession 2: So do I

Its true, i like Dora the Explorer. I am no expert, i haven't seen any animated Dora, just read some of the books but at this point I like her. She is cute, she speaks Spanish, her best friend is a Monkey and she loves exploring- what's not to like?! I also like that she knows how to read a map, has very good manners, and never seems afraid.

There are times when travel with a 2 year old can be tough. It is those times that we have Dora up our sleeve. Sometimes it is in the form of a tiny travel sized Dora book to take a minute out and be whisked away on an adventure. And other times we use her to explain to Bea that we are about to do something really cool like Dora would do. Whenever we say this Bea lights up with a big smile and looks quite excited that she is an adventurer like Dora. Thanks Dora and co.

Last weekend while we were in Champasack we visited Wat Phu, a very Dora-esque location. There were no monkeys but there could have been. Wat Phu is a UNESCO listed site of Khmer architecture, not dissimilar to Angkor Wat (to my eye). It sits at the base of a sacred mountain and extends up the slope of the hill somewhat in shade which makes it a lot cooler to explore. We had a brilliant time exploring the ruins, climbing up huge steps, looking over beautiful vistas and generally being awed by how well preserved it was.

Ruins and temples are a fantastic place to take toddlers. Old enough to walk around themselves, but young enough to get excited by the climbing. Bea won't remember visiting amazing places like Wat Phu but it is still important. It is important because she has spent another day loving adventure.

Trip Review: Champasack

Last weekend we took advantage of some cheap flights and discounted accommodation to head to Southern Laos. It was an area of the country that i had really wanted to get to but was unsure whether we would find the time to explore it properly.

We flew down to Pakse, a reasonably sized hub for Laos, and headed out to Champasack town, approx 40 minutes away by tuk tuk.

It was a lucky weekend and we are incredibly grateful to have been able to enjoy it.
Everything seemed to go right and it was extremely relaxing!

When we got off the flight it was early in the morning so we headed to a cafe in Pakse to get some breakfast and also try to make some inquiries about tours in the region for the following day. We were sitting there, having just ordered our food when a tuk tuk driver approached us and told us he would wait for us to finish our food and then we could head to Wat Phu (khmer ruins/ temple) We were a bit perplexed, we hadn't booked a tuk tuk. We tried explaining that we didn't want to go, we had only just arrived, and that maybe it was someone else that had booked him?? Let's just say it didn't go well. The tuk tuk driver got more and more annoyed that we didn't want to go to Wat Phu until finally he stormed off.

About 10 minutes later a Swiss guy approached us asking if we had seen a tuk tuk. Oops. I guess all foreigners look alike. Especially when they are travelling with a wife and small falang daughter.But in actual fact every cloud has a silver lining and it could not have worked out better.  For the next 2 days we shared transport and tours with this couple who are travelling around the world with their 4 year old for a year. What fun we had.

We only had time for a very small part of southern Laos but we would love to go back. It is a beautiful part of the country and has so much to offer that a lot of people don't get the time to see.

Happy (and slightly sweaty after some serious ruin exploring)

Beautiful Mekong

Living not blogging

Sorry for the lack of activity. I can assure you that all is well.
We have simply been busy living. Just the way it should be.

There has been lots of fun and challenging things going on- a couple of full week training courses, one of which took me away from Vientiane for the week. I have been training local doctors and nurses on newborn health, in particular how to look after babies in their first few hours of life. It has been a roller coaster of emotion. One moment you are worried that you mustn't be teaching it properly and the next you see something that makes you realise that it has all come together. Teachers- i have always had a lot of respect for your job, but the last few weeks have multiplied this by 100!

Poor Joff was solo dad for 5 days- a challenging week for him as well, although in a completely different way. Although, now that i think about it, perhaps we both were practicing how patient we could be. Bea continues to be a joy, albeit an exhausting one.

I have lots of posts i want to be writing but for now i am just going to leave you with some photos of my travels to Phak Lay (about 4 hours from Vientiane by minibus)

Stay tunes for updates on choosing a preschool for Bea, a weekend away in Southern Laos, and how to survive the heat…

Mekong river

The view across the street from my guesthouse

The power went out the first night we arrived so it was dinner by candlelight!

Pigtails

Its been a busy few weeks.

There has been lots of work, lots of dinners and other things on. And consequently not enough time to update the blog.

Time is rushing by and we have now been in Laos for 3 months. It's flown.

So this morning i started thinking about the small details. The things that are changing, mainly with our not so little girl, and focus on them.

The way her hair is growing. Farrah Fawcett flicks due to the humidity. Tiny golden pigtails.

The way she can now easily see what is on the kitchen table instead on peering on tip toes.

The way she has mastered climbing the three flights of stairs to the apartment. (When she wants to). And the way she confidently jumps down.

The way she can slide under her mosquito net with ease.

The way she informs us when she hears rhyming words. Or the way she has started to tell us jokes.

Its a brilliant thing to watch them grow and develop. Made even more fascinating when you move country, languages, culture. It is exhausting but i love it.

Virtual travel

I remember how it started. There I was, in a 2 bedroom unit in Auckland, having just moved there in the last month with Joff and Bea, who was 5 months old at the time.

It was raining. Bea was probably putting her feet in her mouth, or trying to reach for a toy. It seemed like it had rained every day that week. And it was before I realised that in Auckland in winter, you just go out in the rain. Because otherwise you would not get out.

And it happened. I had one of those panicked moments, like a lot of new mums, and thought- this wasn’t quite what I had expected. Now don’t take that comment the wrong way. I loved my beautiful newborn daughter, I loved my husband, and I looked forward to my daily walk out the door around the beautiful tree-lined streets of Auckland that looked out over the harbor. But I was still in the eat, sleep, poop, repeat stage of life with an infant. I felt like I was a bit trapped. Was I really going to become a suburban mum in the city with a dog and a vegie patch? Don’t get me wrong, I quite like to sound of that. But I wasn’t ready for that. I still had have itchy feet.

So when Bea went down for her nap I sat down with a cup of tea and opened the laptop and googled “families going on adventures” or something like that. And when the search list came up I sighed. It was exactly what i as searching for. 

Turns out there are lots of amazing people out there who have even more itchy feet that I do! And a lot of them had written a similar post to this one explaining that they just weren’t ready to “settle down.” They were full of phrases like "wanderlust" and "life outside the box". That afternoon I virtually travelled from Costa Rica, to the alps in Europe, and then sailing in the Bahamas. There was a world of opportunities. And to make it even better, all of these people were doing it with kids.

I still read a lot of those blogs today. They have helped me get here. They have helped me realise that kids can enhance the journey rather than prevent it. 

So, if you also have itchy feet, a newborn asleep on your shoulder who doesn’t want to put down, or a toddler who just had a total meltdown, grab yourself a wine/coffee/hot milo/lactation tea and enjoy. But be warned, it is kind of addictive!

www.Windtraveler.net

Brittany is a fantastic writer who set sail on a yacht with her husband and few years ago from the US. Since then she has documented her experiences sailing with a toddler. She is currently back in the US as she has newborn twins but her blog has many archives that make excellent reading for some inspiration to live life outside the box!

www.itsanecessity.net

I got to this blog about another family sailing full time through windtraveler. They have two young girls and have recently settled in the Dominican Republic to do some work for an NGO.

www.hotpotblog.com

Dani is a great photographer who is currently living in India with her 2 kids, having previously lived in China, and is about to move to Milan. Great insights into what it is like to be an expat.

http://travelwithbender.com

A family that have been travelling for nearly 2 years with their 2 children all over the world.

www.familyonbikes.org

This was the website I found that blew my mind. And I think when Joff got home that evening and was listening to my ramblings it was when I mentioned this family that he gave me the look that I think equates to “oh my gosh, my wife has gone crazy”. I may have been suggesting we cycle through cuba with our 6 month old daughter.

www.edventureproject.com

Another nomadic family with their children living and travelling around the globe.

Design Mom

A lot of people know Design mom. Although not really a travel blog, for those who don’t know she move to rural france with her husband and six (6!) kids for 2 years. Some really interesting reading.

Cup of jo motherhood series

Cup of Jo is a really popular blog by Joanna who lives in NYC. While on maternity leave she did a series called motherhood around the world which interviewed various Amercians living abroad with children and the different experiences they were having. Find the link here.

Do you have any blogs that you follow? Any other blogs that inspire you to lead a life less ordinary? I would love to hear about them if you do!

A world away from Auckland. Northern Laos

Kuang Si waterfall, Luang Prabang

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! I hope that you are having an excellent break.

I think it is the first time I have been in a country for Easter where no one has even heard of Easter, and you can't buy an Easter Egg to save yourself. Not even at the Falang/ Western supermarkets. Luckily for us we had a special delivery! Easter Laos style was quite different. It is hot at the moment, really hot. I have been craving ice cold showers at 8am and yesterday the air-conditioning was on by 9am.

The Easter egg hunt occurred in the air-conditioned confines of the apartment. Still the joy of a 2 year old looking through her regular belongings trying to find small foil parcels of goodness is priceless.

Trip Review: Luang Prabang

One of the benefits of having international visitors is getting out and seeing new things. For us, with my parents in town for 2 weeks, we were lucky enough to escape to Luang Prabang for 5 days over the Lao New Year (Pi Mai) festivities.

Luang Prabang is the tourist mecca of Laos. Surrounded by mountains, sitting on a peninsula between the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers it is in an ideal position. Couple that with the fact that it is a UNESCO protected site full of temples, the old Royal palace and it ticks all the boxes for many travellers.

We were no different. We had a wonderful 5 days staying in a lovely hotel with a pool. It is the hottest time of year in Laos and Luang Prabang was no exception. Combine the heat with a toddler and our daily routine involved an early morning expedition to a few of the must see sites followed by a lazy afternoon by the pool, and finished with a stroll through the beautiful frangipani lined, colonial streets of the old quarter.

It was one of those trips where we were pleased to be in a tourist town sampling amazing french and laos food, drinking lovely wine on the banks of the river, and enjoying some down time by the pool.

There is so much to see in the north we are hoping to get further afield later in the year but for the time being Luang Prabang was everything we were craving and more!

  Elephant parade for Lao New Year

So many beautiful images in the temples

Wat Xieng Thong

Sticky Rice offerings

Chilling in the shade on the cool steps