Photo Friday: The Vagabondboy

A trip to Phuket Thailand, Spring 2002

In the first nine years of my life, I think I traveled to exactly 2 foreign countries. Canada and Mexico. I think I did not go beyond those 2 countries, and my own home country of the USA for an additional 10 years. At the age of 19 I stepped out of my comfort zone and went to Germany with stops in France and Austria. Not a huge step into the un-known, but quite enough for me.


Taipei Taiwan 2002

Now, contrast that with my Son’s first 9 years. He was born in Taiwan. Traveled to China, Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand, the continental US and Guam, as well as Singapore and Japan all before he was 2 years old. A few more years he has made trips to Thailand an annual event, with side trips to Malaysia, Indonesia and the island of Borneo as well as semi-annual trips back to the US and a trip to Mexico. Not bad for a kid who does go to school from August to June and whose parents work full time.


In honor of my third culture son, who is celebrating his 9th birthday with an Indiana Jones Adventure birthday party this weekend, here are some highlights of some of the explorer's trips around the world.



Shanghai China, Summer 2002







Macau Fall 2002


Japan Fall 2002





Guam 2003






Penang 2004

Singapore Zoo


Phuket 2006


Mulege Baja Mexico 2007



Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia 2008


Disneyland 2010




Sharing these as part of Photo Friday on Delicious Baby visit her page for more great Photo Friday posts

How I spent my summer vacation aka back in the USA

So how did you spend your summer?

Ours was jammed into a three week trip back to the States...

family goofballs

Visits in California included Disney, American Girl, Legoland, La Brea Tar Pits and the Page Museum, Hollywood and the Santa Monica Pier, and then stops at the Mission San Juan Capistrano, getting lost in the Rancho Santa Margarita hills....kids in hot tubs and visits with the OC family.

Visits in Oregon, including McMinnville and the Evergreen Air and Space Museum, a drive through Salem to see the State Capital and Willamette University, the Enchanted Forest in Turner (South Salem), OMSI in Portland, Thursday Music @ Kruegers Farm in Sauvie's Island, Fort Clatsop, Fort Stevens, and Seaside with a stop at Tillamook Creamery for Ice Cream. Kids running through sprinklers and enjoying summer evenings in the twilight.

Washington State visits included Mt. St. Helens (the long way) Fort Vancouver and ice cream in old town Vancouver.

Summer Fun!

Add in visits with family and friends, a family reunion in Oregon, too much food and wine and great conviviality. Great people great summer. No time to blog. But, come back to Singapore and this is what happened.

Kiera's broken arm.

She is recovering well but will be attending second grade with a new cast on her right arm. I am back on the road in Kuala Lumpur and will be back on Flickr, Twitter and blogging regularly now that things are slowly returning to normal.

I hope your summer is perhaps less eventful than ours :-)

Photo of the Day- Sunset in Dallas Texas

Sunset over North Dallas/Addison

Oregon With Kids: Timberline Lodge

I love Timberline lodge, it brings back such great memories from my childhood. Mostly memories about what it must have been like to go skiing (we didn't start skiing until I was in highschool) and how cool it was that Mt. Hood had a big St. Bernard. Well, Heidi the dog has been replaced by a Bruno, and while we didn't get to see him, the lodge is still a great place to take the kids for a bit of fun as well as a history lesson. Timberline was inducted as a National Historic Monument in 1978. Timberline is a ski resort (one of the only in the US with year around skiing) a museum, a hotel and a work of art. It is also just fun to go see snow if your kids live in the tropics like mine!




Timberline lodge was a great ambitious public works project that was launched during the depression. I love the fact that the whole lodge was crafted by hand, with artisans creating a structure that would stand over time and act as a symbol of what can be done. Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the lodge in 1938 and stated the following

"This Timberline Lodge marks a venture that was made possible by W.P.A., emergency relief work, in order that we may test the workability of recreational facilities installed by the Government itself and operated under its complete control.

Here, to Mount Hood, will come thousands and thousands of visitors in the coming years. Looking east toward eastern Oregon with its great livestock raising areas, these visitors are going to visualize the relationship between the cattle ranches and the summer ranges in the forests. Looking westward and northward toward Portland and the Columbia River, with their great lumber and other wood using industries, they will understand the part which National Forest timber will play in the support of this important element of northwestern prosperity.

Those who will follow us to Timberline Lodge on their holidays and vacations will represent the enjoyment of new opportunities for play in every season of the year. I mention specially every season of the year because we, as a nation, I think, are coming to realize that the summer is not the only time for play. I look forward to the day when many, many people from this region of the Nation are going to come here for skiing and tobogganing and various other forms of winter sports."

One of my dreams is to be able to teach my children about the places they travel. Mt Hood's Timberline lodge is no exception. What a great opportunity to teach the older kids about the history of the depression, the WPA and what craftsman style design can be (check out some of the old pictures here).

The food in the Blue Ox bar was great, simple and inexpensive, but while kids are allowed into the bar to eat, OLCC (Oregon Liqour laws) require kids to sit at tables rather than the very cool bar. The mosaic work in the Blue Ox was amazing btw.







After Lunch we took the kids up to the chairlifts and were able to take the lift about half way up. Skiers and snowborders were heading further up the mountain, but hikers and people like us were able to head up about half way up the mountain, get off and walk around. If you were able, and not exhausted like our kids were, you can walk back down the hill to the Lodge in about 20-30 minutes.

After our snowplay we loaded back up and went to Hood River for some fresh fruit and a stop at Multnomah Falls. Come back for more!

For more information about the history of Timberline you can check out the Friends of Timberline website

Disneyland Pictures (circa 2008)

Just a few pictures from Disneyland and Disney California Adventure

Anaheim California Trip Plans and Review

Repost from July 2008

One of the most important things about traveling with kids is being able to adjust and go with the flow. I know I struggle with this, I have certain expectations and things that I want to do, but I think Jeff has even more trouble with it. What we learned on this trip is while planning is great, and frankly made our trip more do-able, you need to be able to adjust when necessary.

I like to be a seat of the pants traveler, to go where the winds blow and be able to move around when I want. I have learned, from the school of hard knocks, that doesn’t work when you have kids. Without certain plans in place kids get grumpy, they don’t deal well with transitions and while I may be able to run an extra hour without dinner, the kids are much more difficult to keep going. My Spouse on the other hand does a fair amount of logistics planning, but forgets to plan for the little things. So before we left Singapore (in fact months before because we knew it was peak season) we booked our hotel. We were able to book through Hotel Travel.com and got a fair rate on a hotel right across the street from Disneyland. Jeff also was able to book our car from Alamo, on line. From that perspective we were set.

I set our schedule, in terms of who we would meet and when, where we would go and who we would stay with while we were in Oregon. This is crucial as managing greater family obligations is probably harder than your own direct family expectations. But the best planning and expectation management we did was to use the advice from The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland and that was….” Plan your day in the park before you get there!” While we didn’t follow the touring plans offered in the book… we did plan our day (see my upcoming post on Disneyland in a day).

So, when we got to LA, things went rather smoothly, all things considered, we didn’t sleep well on the plane, but the kids did. I am sure that without advance planning on our part, even as to our estimated dinner plans, we would have been a mess. When we landed, we got our rental car and drove to the hotel. Originally we had hoped to be at the Hotel by 7 and be able to walk over to Downtown Disney for dinner, but again, adjustment was the key. Things took longer at the rental car place and we were all super tired, so before stopping at the hotel we decided Pizza at the California Pizza kitchen just down the street from the hotel was our choice for dinner. Well, frankly, I knew the food wasn’t the best in the world, but I didn’t expect the huge line. I knew Bubba Gump’s next door would be packed and we wanted to grab something and head back to the hotel and other options were too fancy or required us eating at the restaurant. So, we thought Pizza was the answer.

I DO NOT RECOMMEND CALIFORNIA PIZZA KITCHEN FOR YOUNG CHILDREN. The pizza, billed as gourmet, was too expensive, the types of pizza were not young kid friendly (and our kids are great eaters) and the wait was pretty long, even for take out. Note to self: Next time, just head to the hotel and call for Domino’s. The price will be better and the food can’t be worse.

Eating a late dinner after a 16 hour direct flight and the stress involved of getting and renting cars, facing rush hour traffic and having two tired kids tends to make adults crazy and cranky as well, but all told, tempers were kept in check and after a brief mumble or two, a few slices of crappy pizza we showered and got into bed. Sleeping was easy, it was the 3am wake up that was hard. Declan woke up at 3 and fussed and fidgeted. All of us sharing one room meant that we all woke up as well. After about an hour the kids went back to sleep, but I don’t think Jeff or I did. This made our planned wake up call at 6:30 a no-go, but I let everyone rest/sleep until 7. We got up, got dressed and went to breakfast in the hotel. We were eating by 7:15 and out the door on our way to the park to get our tickets before 8am. A few notes of advice, either try to get your tickets early or get them at the hotel if possible, many hotels offer this service and it saves you lots of time and is one less line to wait in. All and all, having made plans and being willing to adjust our schedule

So, more about the day at Disney later, but as always a picture.
Notes and recommendations:

Hotel: Anaheim Plaza Hotel- 1700 Harbor Blvd.
Price- Inexpensive (we were able to book online for 115 a night)
Room 2 stars
Service 3.5 stars
Breakfast 3.5

My Notes: It was ranked 2 stars in the Unofficial Guide to Disneyland, and frankly I would have given it a bump simply because the service was pretty good. The hotel caters to big tour buses but the staff was all friendly and gave Park information as soon as you check in. While I think if given a chance we would have stayed somewhere nicer, for the price and location it was a good deal. Plus, the kids loved the breakfast buffet (which actually wasn’t bad… I have had much worse in Asia) and the hot chocolate had whip cream on top!

Rental Car: Alamo- 3.5 stars
I have rented multiple times from National (right upstairs from Alamo) and found the check in at National to be much easier. We stood in line for a long while, only to find out we could have used the computer kiosk. The plus though was the huge play structure in the Almo section which kept the kids happy.