Southeast Asia with a 1-year old

We traveled Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam for a little bit of everything as Maya turned one.

This trip was five weeks long and covered three countries so it requires some breaking down to readable pieces. I’ll do that soon, but first I’m writing this blog post with an overview of our trip. If you have any specific questions or things you want me to break down in the next few posts about our 2017 Southeast Asia trip, please do so in the comments section.

First, our itinerary:

2 days in Bangkok (whenever I say or write this I start singing the Chess song “One Night in Bangkok” that I don’t even know the lyrics to).

To get to Bangkok we got a direct flight from Oslo, and that’s also partly why we chose Bangkok as a starting point. Long haul flights are extremely tiresome and even more so with a small child, but it would be so much worse having to get a connection somewhere making the trip even longer. One day I’ll do a blog post just about long haul flights. But not yet.

Five days in Siem Reap, Cambodia. We stayed in a very nice little boutique hotel that cost almost nothing compared to the quality and size room we had. There we had two days of sightseeing in Angkor Wat, and that was more than enough with a hot one-year old. Going without children and with enough interest in history and archeology, you can easily spend a week exploring temples and ruins. We spent our remaining time getting massages, eating and relaxing in the little hotel pool.

Two weeks in central Vietnam.

This was unique! We rented a room in a homestay on the countryside right between Hoi An and the beach. Our nearest neighbors were cattle and rice paddies. To get anywhere we had to use bikes or get a taxi.

Now we didn’t have a car seat for Maya, and if you want to know more about that situation you can read about it in Packing and Transportation and safety.

Anyways, the homestay was really more like a hotel. They only had four rooms, but they were spectacular! And the owners and staff were the nicest people. Maya turned one whilst we stayed there, and they fixed us a nice little breakfast celebration.

The beaches nearby were almost deserted, and with calm, clear waters it was perfect for Maya. And even though there were few people around there were plenty of little restaurants that served some of the best food we had on our trip!

In Hoi An city we got ourselves some tailored clothes, something I recommend to anyone going there. Not only was it cheap, but service and quality were top notch!

Two weeks in Koh Samui, Thailand.

We decided on this part of Thailand mainly because it was dry season there, and rainy season almost anywhere else in the country. We had originally decided to stay one week in Koh Samui and one week in Koh Tao, but a few things happened that made us decide to stay an extra week in Koh Samui. Read more about that in my post about going to Thailand with a toddler.

In Koh Samui we found an excellent Muay Thai trainer called So, who taught us alot of Muay Thai, enjoyed the beach and the hotel pool and ate lots of good food.

We had to go back to Thailand’s capital, as we didn’t feel we had seen enough, so we spent our last two nights in Bangkok before we went home.

What did we bring?

We like to travel light, and getting off planes we like to avoid waiting for our baggage, so we had only carry-ons for this trip. That is, we had one backpack each, plus a little tiny one with things like nappies, wet wipes, snacks etc. for Maya. No stroller this time, and we never felt the need for one either. She was mostly carried in a woven wrap or in our arms. She was a bit in the heavy side for our arms, but we never carried her like that for very long.

Transit is so easy this way!

More coming shortly!