5 Worries of Travelling (with Young Children) in Asia that Led to Understanding Seneca’s Stoic Lesson
Travelling with an infant and a toddler is not as bad as you thought it would be.
3 months ago, we travelled to Asia for 2 months with a 5-month-old baby and a 3-year-old.
Now, this is our first time travelling with an infant. And when it’s you’re first, you try your best to get everything right. The more prepping you do, the fewer headaches you go through. However, the kind of prepping we typically do is limited to our previous experience and our imagination.
Because you don’t know what you don’t know.
That’s where research comes in.
It comes in the form of watching YouTube videos, reading online forums and talking to other parents who had the same experience. While that increased our level of awareness, it also made us more worried.
The more you learn, the more you realize how much you don’t know, and the more possible scenarios you need to prep for!
However, ninety percent of the time, whatever worries I had never happened.
The following is the Stoic lesson from Seneca that kept coming up:
Worry #1 — Will they make us drink the milk we brought?
There’s a story in the online group where the airport security staff made the father drink some of the milk they brought — to make sure it was milk!
Here’s how we prepped ourselves for that:
- We brought extra infant formula simply because they expire after two hours (after opening). We’re on a long-haul flight with stopovers.
- We brought two types of formula: pre-mixed and powdered formula. If they ask us to get rid of the pre-mixed (because it’s liquid), then we have the powdered formula as a backup.
And just as expected, the airport security staff inspected the liquids we brought. It’s standard protocol. But they never made us drink it or do anything weird to prove anything.
None of the 7 airports (we’ve been to throughout our trip) gave us a hard time regarding the infant formula.
Worry #2 — How many passengers are we going to piss off on the plane?
I found a story on YouTube where the passenger went all berserk when it couldn’t handle the crying of a baby.
I get it. It’s tough to get some sleep or watch a movie when you’re around a crying baby. That’s what I used to think before I had kids. But even if I was around a crying baby, I’d be too polite to complain about it. Doing so would make me look bad.
That said, I expect everyone would be too nice to complain, but they would not have a problem giving us the stink eye. I had to make sure I could calm our baby down or handle the heat from annoyed passengers.
Here’s how we handled that:
- Colouring books, sticker books, a tablet and a kid headset for our toddler.
- We brought a blow-up pillow that served as a footrest for our toddler.
- Keep an empty bottle and pre-mixed infant formula in the backseat pouch. It takes less than 2 minutes to prep.
- Walk the baby around the aisle when he is up. He prefers to walk around rather than stay in one spot.
- Cradling our baby to sleep in the bathroom. The white noise in the bathroom calms him down. At the same time, his cries are suppressed because in an enclosed area.
The solutions we implement can be boiled down to this: the more comfortable they are, the less fuss you need to manage, and the better the flying experience for everyone.
While there were moments when our baby cried for about a minute or two, it wasn’t long enough to flag the flight attendant to come over.
Worry #3 — Is the water safe to drink?
My partner’s cousin’s boss told a story of how her boss went to Bali, stayed in a resort and got sick. The cause? They weren’t sure, but they’re thinking it was the water.
Now, regardless of how accurate the story was, the point is, he got sick (even when in a nice resort). This made us think twice about going there, especially with the kids. But our booking is non-refundable!
Would you cancel your trip based on one horror story?
Here’s the prep we did:
- Got our daughter vaccinated as she may eat something that could make her sick.
- Ninety-five percent of the infant formula we brought was pre-mixed. So we won’t be using any water at all for our baby.
- In Bali, we bought bottled water at a nearby grocery store.
Five days later, in Bali, none of us got sick.
Worry #4 — The weather is so hot it can make you sick!
The lawyer who drafted our estate planning document got sick when he visited the Philippines. The reason? He said the weather was too hot that it made him poopy (even when he had air conditioning).
The same thing happened to my cousin’s kids. They believed that the weather was too hot that it made the kids sick (despite having access to air conditioning).
In addition to that, our baby also has eczema, which could flare up in a hot environment. Prior to our trip, I was also getting nosebleeds. I was told that the hotter the weather, the more frequent the bleeding would be.
These stories made me feel like we’re taking a lot of risks going to the Philippines.
We stayed there for 1.5 months. Weather temps would sometimes reach 40 degrees Celsius. It was sauna hot! But none of whatever I was worried about happened (getting sick, eczema flaring up and more frequent nosebleeds).
This confirmed my gut feeling that our experience is unlikely going to be exactly like the stories we heard.
Worry #5 — How do you get around with a double stroller?
Japan is a very popular destination to go to these days.
There are 3 reasons why bringing a double stroller is going to be an issue:
- It is for twins and is wider than your typical stroller. It might not fit the doors.
- A friend mentioned how Tokyo has a lot of stairs.
- Getting on the subway feels impossible after seeing a video of “professional pushers”.
I cannot imagine myself carrying the stroller up and down the stairs or getting squeezed into the train.
Here’s the prepping we’ve done:
- Brought a baby carrier (to make going up and down the stairs more convenient). The plan was: the baby stays in the baby carrier with mom, the toddler walks with mom, and I carry the stroller.
- I mastered folding and unfolding the stroller (to make sure I’m not holding the flow of foot traffic in a busy area). The estimated time for a complete cycle is 20 seconds.
I searched for “parents with strollers in Tokyo” on YouTube, but I did not find much.
It all made sense when we got there!
Tokyo is kid friendly. There are elevators everywhere. They also have a designated car for disabled passengers, expecting moms and parents with kids.
No one is posting on YouTube about it because travelling with a stroller is not an issue at all.
Prepping as per others’ experience is a double-edged sword
“Expecting the worst that could happen”, while it mentally preps you for unwanted surprises, can prevent you from welcoming new experiences — your own unique experience.
It helps to remember that our experience is (very likely) going to be a little different from others. There are a lot of factors in others’ stories that we don’t take into account. All we care about is preventing their bad experiences from happening to us.
Now, this is not to say, “You should not pay attention to others’ experience”, but taking too many preventive measures can cause unnecessary concerns.
“Bad stuff can happen to us. We need to be aware of that. We shouldn’t be surprised by it. But we also shouldn’t work ourselves into a state and confuse that worry with prevention or preparation.”
I learned that the more I open myself to the surprise of my own experience, the more I enjoy our travels.
