Hellobee

Every summer, we visit Mr. Bee’s family in the Philippines in the remote beach town where they live.

I used to think that very young children probably wouldn’t remember such a trip. But having visited Mr. Bee’s parents three years in a row, I now see the many benefits of traveling for kids. Olive in particular, who has experienced some developmental delays, always has a huge cognitive and language explosion after each trip.

Traveling abroad is especially stimulating for kids because they’re exposed to so many new experiences. It’s such an amazing learning experience. But I’ve noticed the kids have gotten a lot of those benefits from weekend camping trips out into nature too! Taking kids out of modern life and putting them deep into nature has had a lot more benefits than I could have imagined.

THE ULTIMATE SENSORY EXPERIENCE

Olive is a sensory seeker and travel has always had a huge impact on her developmentally because her senses are constantly being bombarded and stimulated with information. She’s already forgotten most everything from our trip last year when she was 1 1/2, but the effects of the trip were undeniable; she had an obvious cognitive leap both after last year’s trip and this year’s.

Olive’s favorite thing to do in the whole wide world is probably playing with sand. It’s such a sensory experience, and she could do it for hours every day.

During our trip we experienced sand of all kinds of textures — from gritty (like above) to soft as mud and everything in between. You can see the mud-textured sand below, which was Olive’s favorite. It was like quicksand and we would immediately sink in!

Water is another great sensory experience and we visited many beaches with different depths, colors, waves and coral. Her favorite beach was Snake Island, a sand bar that connects two islands, and that you can just walk across. The shallow crystal clear waters here made it perfect for Olive to “swim” (aka crawl on her hands and knees).

EXPOSURE TO NATURE

I’m a total nature girl and since we live in the city, I want to expose the kids to as much nature as we can. Here Charlie caught a little baby lizard!

There was always something to catch. Crabs, clams, weird hairy octopus… even a toad.

Charlie and Olive love gardening, and we do what we can in our little apartment. We compost, we have a little window sill herb garden, and we’ve adopted a local flower bed that we water and clean up regularly. But nothing beats being able to harvest your own vegetables and fruit.

Here Charlie is helping Grandma cut some okra – one of his favorite foods!

When we visited nearby Nakpan beach, there were rice paddies, so we saw lots of water buffaloes.

Here Charlie is swimming with Yochan the wonder pup, a 9 month old yorkie. The first time we visited when Charlie was 2 1/2, he was scared of dogs. The second year he learned to love them because there were puppies that had just been born. Because he was able to spend so much time around dogs on our trips, he now loves dogs – and the ocean too, which he was also afraid of. Even if he completely forgot about our trips to the Philippines, it wouldn’t change how he now feels about dogs and oceans because of his experiences there. Those are the type of real impacts that traveling can have on young children.

Since Olive has been around dogs since she first visited as a baby, she’s always loved them.

Yochan was the most chill dog. She would let the kids push her on the swing or sit in the back of a tricycle.

You may remember there were two other dogs here last year when we visited — Hana and Coco (who just had 5 puppies at the time). After our visit Mr. Bee’s mom drove them five hours to the nearest vet who spayed them, but he botched the operation. Both dogs ended up pregnant and subsequently died. It was so horrible, tragic, and devastating.

This dog below is Alko, and he’s the son of Coco. One of the staff members adopted him, and he follows her to work every day.

Alko is a bit of a scaredy dog (very similar to his mom), but he and Yochan are great friends. They play with coconut shells and pineapple tops and have a pretty great island life!

All dogs are free to wander around the island as they please, and because there are no spay/neuter services, there are tons of stray dogs everywhere. Here Yochan is chasing away some dogs that have wandered on the property. She’s right under a papaya tree with Olive, and you can see the many coconut trees in the background as well.

There are animals everywhere.  These chickens live next door and often wander onto the property.

There were also lots of pigs on leashes. They’re probably too valuable to run loose.

TEACHING PATIENCE, FLEXIBILITY & DELAYED GRATIFICATION

Getting to El Nido is no easy feat — it requires 3 flights and 2 days of travel. Because the kids are such seasoned travelers now (20+ flights), we know they can handle it. They’re used to long plane rides, layovers, missed naps, and late bedtimes, and are quite flexible travelers.

Traveling has also been a great exercise in delayed gratification, which we’ve really been working on teaching the kids. I think that delayed gratification is like a muscle: the more you use it, the stronger it gets. That was definitely the case on this trip which was our longest yet because of all the layovers and delays. The kids handled it like champs and hardest part of all the travel was actually recovering from jet lag!

Fishing was another opportunity to practice patience and delayed gratification. Charlie caught his first of three perch in a pond that Mr. Bee’s parents keep stocked with fish, and he instantly became obsessed with fishing. He not only wanted to eat what he caught, but he also patiently sat for long periods of time, waiting to catch a fish.

SLOWING DOWN & DETOXING FROM MODERN LIFE

We didn’t really bring any toys with us, but the kids never had any problem turning every day items into toys or finding things to keep themselves entertained. It really fostered their independence and creativity!

Electricity is on from 3pm – 6am on the island (the hours have greatly increased over the years). So when it was dark in the mornings, we ate breakfast by candlelight. The internet was also down half the time we were there, and there are no tvs, so I was able to read more books in 2 weeks than I did the entire year.

There was always something for the kids to watch/learn/do, and even “work” was play for them because it was a new experience. Every building, structure, and piece of furniture on the property is handmade. Here the kids are helping to sand a bed.

Grandma told the kids that it was their daily job to clean this bungalow, and they would fight over which sections they wanted to clean… a problem I unfortunately don’t have at home!

This is what we usually rode into town. (The family dog Yochan is photobombing in the background.) There are no such thing as car seats or even seat belts, so Mr. Bee and I would sit in front of (and behind) the kids and do our best to keep them safe. It helps that everyone drives very slowly because the roads are not paved.

Here’s a look at downtown El Nido where you’ll find lots of shops and restaurants.

FAMILY BONDING

Traveling is a bonding experience for the family. When we travel, we’re together 24/7 and we’re sharing new experiences together. Even if the kids don’t remember, the trip lives on for them in our pictures. You don’t even have to travel anywhere far — our recent camping trip had a huge impact on the kids, and they still talk about it all the time.

We ate breakfast, lunch and dinner together every day, which was a huge bonding experience for the entire extended family. We typically ate mostly American fare because Mr. Bee’s parents run a b&b. Girlfriend is enjoying this spaghetti!

ADVENTURE

I love adventure. Skydiving, bungee jumping, scuba diving… I’m game for pretty much anything. Traveling allows us opportunities to be more adventurous, and that’s a quality that we definitely want to foster in our kids.  Here are some of the adventures we went on with the kids!

 

We went island hopping to some of the Philippines’ hundreds of islands several times. On each trip, we would visit 4-5 different islands and beaches. This is Small Lagoon above and below.

And Big Lagoon. Over about 50 feet, the water changes from crystal clear to light turquoise to deep blue.

Cadlao Lagoon

We always have a delicious feast when we go island hopping. Fresh fish, chicken and pork chops were barbecued over charcoal. Here you also see cucumber salad, rice, cole slaw, kim chi, and tropical fruit.

We even explored caves!

This is Snake Island, Olive’s favorite beach:

There were tons of these striped fish. I got them to come to the surface by throwing rice in the water.

Tons of huge sea urchins (my favorite sushi)! They looked a little different from the ones back in the states, and they sure moved a lot more than I thought they would!

Charlie’s older cousins were visiting at the same time, and they had no fear about jumping off the boat because they could swim. Charlie was initially scared, but he jumped off the boat several times too!

Proof that I was there! Olive was the only one who still napped, so I spent a lot of time on the boat with her while the rest of the kids swam.

On another day, we went on a bumpy 45 minute scooter ride to Nakpan Beach seen above. It was totally worth the uncomfortable trip because the beach was almost completely deserted, and it had one of the best shorelines I’ve ever experienced. There were tons of sand bars that created hills and valleys along the shore, and you could stay in shallow water or deep water, in calm water or in waves. We arrived in the morning at low tide and stayed all day until high tide when the waves got too enormous.

We made “sand balls” with the powder soft sand.

 

CULTURAL EXPOSURE

The kids were exposed to people, food, language, and culture different than their own. The earlier we introduce them to different viewpoints, the more likely they are to broaden their perspectives and expand their horizons. It also gives us the opportunity to talk about perspective, and how fortunate we are.

Fishing in low tide for octopus and clams is part of daily life for many of the locals. Even the youngest of kids are amazing fisherman. This bottle is filled with octopus the little boy caught with his homemade fishing line. It takes a lot of patience and skill!

Every year, we make a stop at the weekly wet market because it’s so different from the markets the kids are used to back at home. They see livestock for sale, fresh cuts of meat/seafood, and they learn about where their food comes from.

orange chicken eggs!

On our last day in El Nido, we threw a big party as a thank you for all the workers at Mr. Bee’s parents’ B&B.  They wanted to do a pig roast, and we were told to wake up at 6 am if we wanted to see the pig being killed and shaved for the roast. But that was something I definitely did not want to see.

We worked with the kids to make thank you cards for everyone who worked there. You can see DonDon was the one who killed the pig.

We presented all of the cards with personalized thank yous that night at the pig roast. The party was a big success, and the whole crew had a blast partying until past midnight. The kids also enjoyed the evening, which included karaoke and a big bonfire.

This trip is by far our biggest expense of the year. But since the kids are not in school during the month of August, we’re able to put our childcare costs towards travel. Mr. Bee’s parents are getting older and can’t make the trip to America anymore, so we feel very fortunate that the kids are able to spend time with their grandparents every summer.

Traveling this far with young kids isn’t easy. But even if you go somewhere local, I’m now a firm believer in the benefits of traveling with young children.

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Do you travel with your kids?