Seriously, you are going all alone? Well no, I´m not going all alone, I´m going with Lu, he is actually a person, even though he is 5! I heard this question so many times when I told people what we´re about to do. See, we´re going to Asia in just a couple of days – but this time it´s not going to be the usual 3 of us. This time, we are leaving Gin at home. One of us has to work haha. Jokes aside – sometimes it´s really not easy for us to synchronize our holidays due to work and this year it just so happened that we would have to wait the looong 6 months until summer before we went somewhere together. This seemed like eternity to me, so I started searching for plane tickets, more for fun than real. After all, as long as Lu still goes to the kindergarten we can go where ever when ever. Want to know how are we doing this?
So, I´m online searching for flights on my favourite site and just like that type in Hong Kong under “destination”. Hm, nothing good from Frankfurt. I think again and try with Hanover as departure city, after all this would save me like 2 hours of driving on the Autobahn. I´ve flown several times from Hanover to London with British Airways so I knew there were good connections. And well well, look what I found – a great connection! Well, it was a bit too expensive. So I changed the dates a little bit. Of course we would want to leave on a Friday, to get the most out of my off work time. Just to be clear – I was still in my fantasizing mode. I sometimes do this, stare at Google maps and virtually discover little islands and places I don´t know. Or search for plane tickets, just because. But I did have a pretty good plan already right? Must have been subconscious ;).
Anyhow after I changed the dates again I found my winner – a return night flight via London for 450€ with BA! Yahooo! All of the sudden everything became more real. And then I got scared for a moment and asked myself if this is even a good idea, that we go all by ourselves like this. No doubt it´s going to be a great experience, but what if something happens? What if we get sich, robbed, kidnapped? What if, what if.
I chased those bad vibes away by remembering a wise answer from a fellow traveller I once got as a response to a question of mine, he said “You know, if I only thought about everything that could go wrong, I would never travel!”. So, I stopped thinking about what could go wrong ;).
Besides, did you ever ask yourselves how the heck do all these single moms go on holidays? Seriously, I don´t think they just sit at home the whole time and feel sorry for themselves. I choose to believe they also make holidays and even travel to far-away places with their kids. I have great respect for them, managing all this on a daily basis, all by themselves.
Next day I booked the flights. Hong Kooong! Wow I´ve been really wanting to go there. I´ve only heard nice things about it and some say it´s even better than Singapore – hm, we´ll see about that ;). We´ll definitely enjoy its foodie paradise. But what next? Our trip was booked for 18 days. 18 days in HK would be a bit too much haha. So is tarted to search additional flights to some countries nearby. We love Asia and have been to many of its countries. A couple of those still unvisited we would rather visit in warmer months, so we were kind of left with the Philippines. Which was great! A direct flight to Cebu, 150€ per person return. We could not have asked for more. Altogether 600€ return to the Philippines is not a bad price, especially for night flights.
So some time later we were swimming in a local pool with a friend and her 5-year old son, who also happens to be a kindergarten friend of Lu. And I start to talk about our plan. Suddenly she goes “I want to come with! We want to come with!” By “we” she means her and her son, as she is one of those single moms who don´t sit around at home all the time. To be honest, at first I was a bit sceptical, because on one hand I really wanted it to be just me & Lu and on the other hand it´s been like 7 years since I last shared a bathroom with a female while travelling. But then all of those “what if” questions came back and I decided it might be a good thing to do, to have someone to travel with. The boys can play during the day and we can have some chats in the evening while sipping a cold beer.
You are probably asking yourselves what does Gin have to say to all of this? Well, nothing really, he is totally cool with us going. After all, he married a travel junkie so it´s his own fault anyway haha. I think he knows Lu and me will take care for each other and of course will be sending some msg´s home regularly.
So, we´re off – 2 moms, 2 5-year olds! 4 backpacks and one big Asian adventure. If you want to be updated and follow us on the road you can do so on our Facebook and Instagram page – we will also post some thoughts right ere on the blog.
