Thailand | Our first international family holiday with a toddler!

Today is the day we’ve been waiting for, we are finally off on our first international family holiday to Phuket in Thailand.

Both of us have previously been to Thailand (I know, we are really blessed), I went with my friend Lauren during my undergrad years at University and my husband went with his family. We have great memories of Thailand and it was easy to pick Thailand as our first family holiday because we have already both been before.

Having said that, I’m not the biggest fan of holidays to places I’ve been before.  I have this thing about seeing as much of the world as I possibly can before I die. However, there were certain criteria that we needed to check off the list when picking our travel destination.

• The flights had to affordable – a holiday for three is not cheap and it’s important to save as much as possible.
• The hotel had to be either all-inclusive or as inclusive as possible for my budget.
• The flights had to be of a limited length.  A 27 hour flight is just not something I want to do for “fun” and we have to do that when we move to New Zealand sooo….
• The destination had to be somewhere fun and family friendly.
• The exchange rate had to be in our favour – so Europe was just not an option for us.

Thailand ticks all the family holiday boxes

We looked at various options for our international family holiday and finally agreed that the flight to Thailand was doable, the price was good and the accommodation, which included both breakfast and dinner and all airport transfers was a good fit for our needs as a family!

Our flight, on Singapore airlines is not direct but it isn’t a very long flight – my only concern is that Oden has recently stopped wearing diapers and refuses to let us put them on him. I’m worried about our toilet experience on the plane. I really hope people will be kind enough to let a two-year old go ahead of them.

We are staying at Horizon Karon Beach Resort, it’s a 4 star hotel and thought it’s not ON the beach, it is a short two-minute walk to the beach which is fine for me. The hotel has a massive swimming pool, is child friendly and as I’ve mentioned before, breakfast and dinner are included in our package. Also included are airport transfers and there are also shuttles we can take to the main centre. Karon beach isn’t the busiest part of Phuket which is what I liked most about it. I really just want to relax and swim in the ocean and spend time with my family while eating good food. Thailand is really budget friendly so although our lunch isn’t included, it will be nice to get out and try some of the local options. I can’t wait to eat loads of seafood.

Although we booked through a travel agent, it is much cheaper and completely possible to book a really budget trip for yourself. Booking directly through the airline and hotel almost always works out cheaper. This time, I didn’t use that option because I needed to be certain that the flights and accommodation was child friendly and there were no mix ups etc. It just felt safer for this first international family holiday to play it safe and trust the experts.

We have a very short list of things we want to do but mostly, we just want to chill, not think about our never-ending drama with Home Affairs and just eat and swim and relax. Of course having a toddler means that we will be doing a lot of hanging out in play areas and entertaining a toddler but I reckon he’s going to a hell of a lot easier to entertain in an exciting new place than he is at home.

We told him about the holiday and he’s so excited that he woke up at 5am demanding to go on the plane now! Speaking about the plane ride, we are a little nervous about having a newly potty trained toddler on a plane so wish us luck! Send advice if you have any!!

I’ll write all about the ups and downs of our first international trip with our toddler when I get back!

See you in a week! 

xx