The Kids

The Kids
Southern Laos....

Friday 20 May 2011

All over....Back to England

So, here we are, back in Suffolk. Sam is in school, Meg is in pre-school and South East Asia seems a long way away. I went for a bike ride this morning and although it was very beautiful, no-one did a double take as I whooshed past, I didn't nearly run over any chickens, I didn't stop for noodle soup and I didn't curse and splutter over pot holes and cracked tarmac. What kind of a ride is that?!

It's been amazing and thank you to everyone who read the blog and commented on it. It's been fun writing it.

If anyone ever comes across this blog when thinking about going travelling (or better still, cycling) with their kids, then my unwavering advice is to go for it. Before we went, my imagination ran riot thinking up all the horrendous scenarios that could result from our plans...I read somewhere that Burma had open drains and I had this awful vision of one of the children disappearing forever into an abyss of stinking sewage. As with everything, the truth is seldom quite as awful - the drains were open but they were less than a metre deep and whilst the children might have got a bit stinky if they fell in, it wouldn't have been the end of the world.

The same goes for pretty much everything else. Yes, the kids got a bit sick at one point but only a bit of vomiting and it cleared up within a few days (and how many vomiting viruses go round schools every winter?). Yes the food was difficult at some points - there's only so much that you can do in SE Asia with children who won't each rice or chilli and who dislike noodles, but in the end we always found something (and they lost a few pounds!).  Yes, we stayed in some very unsalubrious accommodation but the children couldn't care less..... they didn't know what a brothel was so were unperturbed by our stays in such establishments, and they certainly weren't bothered by sheets which had seen cleaner times in previous decades.

In a nutshell, it was absolutely brilliant and I can't recommend it enough. Take with a generous pinch of salt, all the awful scenarios that your imagination conjures up and think only of all the wonderful things that you can do and see.