Travelling and Comfort Zones

When we travel with JED, we aren't very adventurous or ambitious. We play it safe, we do minimal and we like it familiar.

What was ambitious was that we had a travelling party of 10 which included my parents.

We took everyone to Phuket which was easy enough. 2 hour flight and all.

With no sightseeing plans, we let JED do whatever they liked. So their days were a strict regime of wake up, watch tv in bed, breakfast, pool, lunch, tv, pool, dinner, tv, bed. Rinse. Repeat. On the first day, we showered them after they came out of the pool for the first time. We wised up. Thereafter, we showered them only before bed.

Admittedly, it is easier to do comfort zone travelling. Less stress for the parents.

But they did get to do new things, new things that they weren't keen to dip their toes in.

1. A rustic beach in the middle of monsoon season meant unadulteratedly large waves. This made me sweat but once they grew enough deluded courage, they loved getting thrown about by the waves and rushing back to shore before the waves could topple them. They brought back to the apartment enough sand to build their own sandpit there. In Evan's words, 'there was a beach in my pants.'

2. My brother went with us and rented a scooter. We didn't do much with the scooter unfortunately (one thing about our resort, there really isn't much else around) but JED loved joyriding. And judging from my brother's face, he loved it too. Jordan lapped it up. Evan was worried he'd fall off, Muffin rode hands free (much to our screaming horror).

3. We had our own pool. We are spoilt and we've spoilt them. From this point on, they are going to expect this whenever we travel. Yup, we've royally screwed ourselves here. But part of the experience for them was about living in the pool. Pool time was punctuated by necessary land time. Toilet, food, tv (time to digest food) and sleep. And swimming at night was a total novelty until Muffin, not being able to see clearly at night clonked his chin on the step. The thing with travelling about my mother was that she kept fussing about how the kids had been in the pool for too long and would get sick. Thankfully, nary a  cough or drippy nose in sight.

4. We chose to go to Phuket during the monsoon season. It meant that accommodation was cheap. But it also meant the high possibility of rain. And rain it did. While it didn't stop the kids (they still went into our pool), it did slow them down. But it led to new discoveries. Winds so strong that golf umbrellas got blown into the pool. Loading the umbrella with rocks or water made said umbrella sink to the pool floor. The perfect excuse to jump back into the pool to retrieve it.

So, four days of not doing very much and nothing much to show for it except Muffin and Evan discovering Mommy's love for tom yum soup and coming home 5 shades darker than they set off with.

Would we do this again with them? Probably. It's simple and JED had fun. We liked that they loved it so much they wanted to live there forever. We didn't have to plan elaborate, go far or pay an arm and a leg for it.

Did we as adults do much? Not at all. Much of the time was making sure that they didn't end throwing rocks at each other or being swept away in the ocean.