Hey everyone sorry it’s been like a whole year since we got back from our travels and well, I didn’t really have anything to blog about. But I’ve been encouraged and I do love writing.

So we got back from Australia last April and well, let me tell you I think missed the entirety of the British summer because I was inside hibernating with the heating on wrapped in a blanket and just adjusting back to life in England. Cold but lovley.

Then just as we got the children signed back to all the club’s cue the covid 19 situation. I’ll come back to that in a subsequent post.

Hope this blog finds you well and you and your families are well

So we’ve spent the last month staying in Vietnam and needless to say it’s been amazing. We stayed right in the heart of the city in district 1 or formally known as Saigon. We were there to experience the celebrations of the Lunar New year which was lots of fun. It’s like our Christmas, they have a week long public holiday where families make special foods and exchange presents and gift red envelopes with money in to the children. They have decorations of these beautiful yellow flowers and everything was covered in red ribbons. Everybody was coming up to us and shaking our hand wishing us a Happy New Year.

Our kind landlord gifted us their traditional new year gifts of Vietnamese glutinous rice cake and nuts and candied coconut and sweet wine and money for the children.

They invited us into their home to celebrate with them and drink Vietnamese tea which was really nice.

We took a traditional cyclo tour around district 1 and played the logistics game of how many people can you fit into a seat made for one. One thing about travelling around Asia is that you are in constant fear of certain death, my face shows my fear of this.

After our stay in District one we moved onto Vaung Tau by the seaside and the children enjoyed watching the fishermen clean and mend their nets and they enjoyed collecting and playing with many beautiful shells. By playing you should understand what I mean by that is, they were crafted into weapons of war and became smoke bombs, swords and hand grenades.

We did school on the beach

We found an awesome soft play.

We found a cute puppy to play with by the local farmers market.

After our stay in Vietnam we did a one night stop over in Singapore on our way to Brisbane, Australia and it turns out glamping was our cheapest option (It wasn’t very cheap) and picture for cuteness.

So our latest month has been spent between the two Islands of the coast of Malaysia. Langkarwi (again because we loved it 😍 so much last time) and Penang

Our initial impressions from George town weren’t good due to there being lots of rubbish and the overpowering smell of raw sewage you become accustomed to after travelling around South East Asia for a while. After our initial disappointment we quickly discovered the beautiful parks and surrounding scenery of Penang.

We spent about 3 full days exploring Youth Park where they had a swimming pool, splash pool, a skate park a play area and ice cream! All of it was free except the ice cream.

Aimee found a leaf the size of her (that later became her pet which in turn caused much upset because she wanted it to have legs and walk )

We spent a day exploring Penang hill which if you are ever there is a must do. It’s a funicular rail way that takes you up a steep hill with an awesome view point at the top and from there there is board walk you can do above the tree tops.

We went to Penang Quarry where we found an unexpected waterfall with small fish swimming in the pool (free).

The children got busy catching things to observe. I love it when they play like this and are really engaged.

Another thing to do in George Town if you are travelling with children is a science museum called Tech Dome which is part of complex of different activities, including a soft play, Jurassic encounter, bumper cars and aquarium amongst other things. We spent 8 hours here! It cost £50 for me and the children for the whole package of entertainment and it was money well spent.

After 10 days in George Town we moved on to Batu Ferringhi where we enjoyed the national parks. We saw many monitor lizards, black faced monkies, though we did get accosted by macaques which have quickly become our least favourite animals in S.E.A (though it’s not their fault they associate any type of bag as food and have opposable thumbs).

After a Macaque climbed it’s self up Aimee to try ane steal her softies the children armed themselves with sticks

Was still had a fun day and there are many different trails and hikes to do there.

One other thing to mention is that Penang, only being a small island of 10 miles wide attached by a bridge to mainland Malaysia had many delicious vegan restaurants to offer if you are interested in that sort of thing. The one we found that we really liked was called Pinxin Vegan Cuisine.

Penang gets our thumbs up.

I wanted to dedicate this post to the truth about travelling with children.

Ok so right of the bat. It is hard. It is really hard. Nothing could have prepared me to understand how difficult it can be sometimes.

The first glitch in the system is packing day. Packing day with a time limit before we miss our flight. This means we are running around clearing things away and are not able to tend to the children’s needs as we normally would. We do much of the packing and things the night before when the children are asleep but there is still often a henious amount to do on the day.

Travelling lighter would help a lot but I feel no shame.

We hand them over to their electronic devices on packing and flying days . Which I feel no shame for either.

The picture above was taken at 530 am while I was dealing with somehow packing a urine soaked blanket (after one of them wet the bed) that is of utmost importance to come with us.

The flying with them and the general being in the vicintiy of airports is by far the most stress inducing. When they actually do have to behave to some degree. We have strictly forbidden the behaviour I frequently refer to as cats on speed where they run and jump on each other in hysterics often accompanied by the hissing spitting and mouthing of each other

It honestly does look just like this photo except you need another one charging in from the other side.

We have managed the situation by travelling slowly, we do a month in each country to alleviate the stress.

The other part of travel induced stress is that we are spending alot of time with each other and there is no one I can send the children to, to give me a break or to give them a break from each other so some days are just a days where we do damage control. And those days are shit.

But the other side to travelling is really so joyous it does. It really does make up for the all the stress.

The days where we spend all day hopping between the beach and the pool and doing things that brings us joy. Experiencing the breath taking beauty the world holds before us that cannot be paid for.

It’s the shells that are perfectly symmetrical and have the added bonus of looking like butterflies

It’s the finding of a star fish that’s bigger than your face

It’s the jumping from rock to rock at the bottom of a waterfall

For me, it’s the golden sands and the setting of the sun.

So in short, travelling can be really really stressful but there are jewels of joy that make it all worth while. So my advice to those wondering it is totally totally worth it.

So we moved on from our stay in Cambodia Siem Reap to Malaysia. We then flew to a small island of the coast called langkarwi.

We met family here and I got a chance to meet Stephen’s wider family again which was lovely and we’ve all had a blessed time.

(Photo credit to David Gray my brother in law)

We did the cable car which was fun, we didn’t see much as it was really cloudy on that day but the kids enjoyed the fact that we were actually inside a cloud lol. It’s the little things that really make an impression on them. Then of course the things they love the most of anything we do are the parts that are free. We spent 2 hours playing in this water feature and 15 minuets on the cable car.

We hiked to the top of 7 Wells Water Fall which was my personal favourite of our stay there. This is Aimee 2 minuets from the top stopping to die a little lol. It had six points where you could go and swim in the water fall, we only managed 3 as the sun was setting. It was really really beautiful and would highly recommend to anyone thinking of visiting here.

The beautiful water fall it’s self

We did a tour most parts of it were amazing. We got to see a bat cave, eagles, monkeys, vipers and a floating restaurant.

All photos below taken by my brother in law David Gray who has some amazing photography skills!

Part of the tour included a floating restaurant which I didn’t think much of. Mostly because they had sea animals cooped up in cages and the staff were tormenting the animals for the pleasure of tourists. So I could not recommend this tour because of this reason but the monkeys, bats, eagles and snakes were in their natural environment albiet fed but at least not disturbed or handled.

We enjoyed good food here even for me being vegan! There was a subway and McDonald’s to keep the kids happy and the shops sold what you needed.

The beach is always a favourite spot for us we spent many hours here collecting shells, doing sand art looking at star fish and sunset walks.

So we moved on from our stay in Cambodia Siem Reap to Malaysia. We then flew to a small island of the coast called langkarwi.

We met family here and I got a chance to meet Stephen’s wider family again which was lovely and we’ve all had a blessed time.

(Photo credit to David Gray my brother in law)

We did the cable car which was fun, we didn’t see much as it was really cloudy on that day but the kids enjoyed the fact that we were actually inside a cloud lol. It’s the little things that really make an impression on them. Then of course the things they love the most of anything we do are the parts that are free. We spent 2 hours playing in this water feature and 15 minuets on the cable car.

We hiked to the top of 7 Wells Water Fall which was my personal favourite of our stay there. This is Aimee 2 minuets from the top stopping to die a little lol. It had six points where you could go and swim in the water fall, we only managed 3 as the sun was setting. It was really really beautiful and would highly recommend to anyone thinking of visiting here.

The beautiful water fall it’s self

We did a tour most parts of it were amazing. We got to see a bat cave, eagles, monkeys, vipers and a floating restaurant.

All photos below taken by my brother in law David Gray who has some amazing photography skills!

Part of the tour included a floating restaurant which I didn’t think much of. Mostly because they had sea animals cooped up in cages and the staff were tormenting the animals for the pleasure of tourists. So I could not recommend this tour because of this reason but the monkeys, bats, eagles and snakes were in their natural environment albiet fed but at least not disturbed or handled.

We enjoyed good food here even for me being vegan! There was a subway and McDonald’s to keep the kids happy and the shops sold what you needed.

The beach is always a favourite spot for us we spent many hours here collecting shells, doing sand art looking at star fish and sunset walks.

So, we have been in Cambodia for a nearly 2 weeks. We have had the most amazing time!

When we got outside of the airport our air bnb host sent these death traps to pick us up (one for us and one for our luggage ba hahaha) . They are majorly fun but I’ve been using my arms as seatbelts to hold the children in when we go round the corners!

First thing we did was go to Ta phom, which is the temple filmed in the Lara Croft movie. This movie is responsible for Cambodia’s growth in the tourism industry and it has catapulted the country to a top destination for back packers and travellers alike. The trees joined with a beautiful historic building makes the most wonderful scene to look at and it’s preservation makes you feel like you’ve stepped back a thousand years in time.

The next thing we did was go to see an training centre for dogs that are trained to detect landmines and U.X.O’s The Belgium Shepherds are trained to detect the smell of T.N.T and since they opened in 2013 there has never been any fatalities to the dogs and they have helped to clear lots of minefields in Cambodia after the Vietnam war. The company is called NPA Explosive Detection Dogs if anyone would like to check them out. Using animals is an extremely efficient way of clearing mine fields. Both the dogs and the rats (see below) can smell the T.N.T. from one meter away whereas human efforts can only use a metal detector which is a long laborious job as there is lots of scrap metal buried in the ground as well as landmines.

Then we got caught in our first tropical rainstorm. This photo is picturing on their faces the most joy they’ve had since we’ve been out here. The best things in life are free!

We went to the famous Angkor Wat which is a spectacular building though in my oppinion Ta Phom is way better.

We went to a place called APOPO Humanitarian Demining where they train Giant African Pouched Rats to detect T.N.T. Similarly to the dogs there has never been a fatality to the rats on the field and from January-Agust 2018 29 rats have cleared a total of 130 landmines and U.X.O.’s from the mine fields.

When a mine field is being cleared of mines they start at the bottom and work their way up using poles placed on either side of the field. Once that area has been checked and cleared they move the post one meter along and repeat until the field is cleared. They use lots of different coloured, marked and lengthed poles that mean different things so everyone knows where they stand on the minefield!

The workers attach the rat to a harness that slides along a ropeline that goes the width of the minefield. If it picks up a scent, it scratches the floor. Then later on, a worker comes along to the spot where the rat has scratched with a metal detector. The rats are light enough to step on the mines without exploding them.

They are extremely cost effective as their diet consists of bananas which are plentiful out here.

These rats ARE enormous I would equate them to be the size and weight of a fat cat. Josh thought they were puppies lol.

We went to a silk factory which is a long drawn out process. There are so many steps involved starting from the caterpillars to the finished product. I can understand now why silk comes with such a hefty price tag! Also it’s all done by the work of the weavers at their stations. No factories.

The photo bellow is a picture of the caterpillars in their cocoon phase where they spin themselves into a yellow chrysalis.

This is an empty one.

Unfortunately, I did not know this before I went there, but the chrysalis’ that are used for silk are baked so the moth dies and the chrysalis is spun into silk and dyed ready for weaving.

Here is one of the workers weaving the silk. It’s amazing that they can produce something so beautiful with a loom that looks so clumsy.

The below picture does not do justice to the actual beauty of this scene. This is a picture of the mulberry trees that the caterpillars eat the leaves of. Pictures like this make my heart sing so I wanted to share it.

Sorry it’s been so long folks, I never seem to have prolonged use of my phone these days. Go figure… anyway.

So the 1st part of my unschooling blog was about how we let our children decide what they want to learn. Part 2 is about how we let our children decide how they wish to live their lives.

Again, please understand I am not saying the way anyone else is doing things is wrong, I’m not saying school is wrong. The Lord knows I do things wrong all the time. I royally mess up with raising my children and lose my temper more frequently than I would care to admit, but then you pick yourself of the asphalt and carry on.

So, firstly to say no rules doesn’t mean no boundaries. The boundaries in our house are basically if you are infringing on another person’s human rights or belongings then it’s not ok. Anything else is up for discussion.

Below I am going to mention a couple of things we do or do not do with a short explanation. Any questions or quibbles are welcome by the way.

No bedtime

So we don’t say our children have to have a bed time they tell us when they are tired and we put them to sleep when they are ready which takes a maximum of 15 minutes per child. We do help set the bed time scene and have taught them to recognise their bodily cues and how in our own experience some things don’t help to get your self well rested. They are always all down before 8 pm and up before sun rise 🙄.

No meal times

We completely gave up the idea of having a “nice family meal” long ago. We realised it was far too much effort before we even started. Truthfully we’ve fed them on demand since they were born, but we all end up eating at the same time anyway.

We don’t limit any food or say that they can’t eat a particular food for a certain meal. Cake for breakfast is totally okay in our house and so is cereal for dinner. I buy the shopping once a week with a mixture of healthy foods and some treats. When they are gone they gone I can’t afford to feed them what they would desire the most all the time, which before we left for Bali was cheese strings and smoked salmon! Joshua doesn’t get the whole when it’s gone it’s gone concept, he will eat a whole packet of cheese strings for breakfast the minuet our asda delivery arrives and then cry for 6 days that there aren’t any left.

No chores

We don’t give our children chores as in they have to do a certain job. We encourage helpfulness to each other as a family. When they are asked to help and they don’t want to I say it’s fine. But through lots of different conversations and interactions over the years they understand that if they aren’t willing to help it takes me longer to get the job done till I can play with them.

No rewards or punishments

We don’t give rewards or punishments. We give them an allowance which they can have to spend on whatever they want and it is given regardless of behaviour. We don’t punish our children, we try to explain why the behaviour is unwanted and how to make things better. Of course I have to physically intervene sometimes to stop the throat punching of other people and the breaking of objects. Sometimes we have to just leave where we are at and try again some other time. Too often, regretfully, I lose my temper with them and have to apologise. Parenting is hard.

No limits

We don’t limit any thing the children are wishing to do that brings their enjoyment/learning; time money, environmental factors, resources and other people’s feelings/needs play a factor in some things which has to be taken into consideration.

We don’t limit the use of technology we let them use it for however long they wish. You’d think they use them all the time but they don’t! They use them for a few hours in the morning then the crazies set in. They start doing things like wearing all their underwear on their heads and nothing on their bottoms. Then. We go out. Mostly because they are driving me insane!

We try to balance everyone’s needs while having no limits. So it’s not ok for one person to do what they like with no limits while another person wants to do something else. An example of this is Ethan (if he didn’t go crazy with needing to run of his endless energy) would happily play on computers all day long. I, on the other hand find this incredibly boring so we talk and make a deal to make every one happy. Tablet time until lunch then we go out.

One more thing

Along side letting our children choose their education, their meals, their bedtime, their life, we try our best to allow them and respect their emotions. I see emotion as their way of communicating and sometimes their communication is, well… shitty. Sometimes it comes in the form of a chair being thrown at my face and it’s because they are tired and their cereal didn’t pour the way it was meant to and their sibling violated them somehow and mummy said they can’t dig up someone else’s garden. I think about all these reasons (after I’ve removed object of wrath) and it fills me with compassion. Then after the tears have fallen and calm has been restored (more or less) we talk about it and my aim is to gradually teach emotional intellengence. One day we will get there… Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I don’t get to compassion at all. Sometimes before I get to compassion I have to go shut myself up in my room PRAY and scream or cry or punch my pillow until I am ready to communicate like an adult.

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading this capsule of our lives.

I’ve decided to split this post into two so its easier to read.

We entered Ethan into school when he was just 4 and reception went smoothly for him. However after he went into year 1 we found he was really struggling with the pressure to achieve and still be a little kid. We got through 2 terms of year one and I made a decision to take him out of school forever. I had thought at first we could homeschool him and help him learn what he needed to at home but then I quickly realised I’d rather chew off my own arm than be the one to force him to learn.

Unschooling is wanting to do scuba diving

Our unschooling journey started on this day. I had no idea what I was doing but I made a decision on that day that it didn’t matter if he didn’t learn what he was supposed to, and that we were going to blaze our own path to victory.

So ever since then we have let our children decide what they want to learn and to do whatever makes them happy (except throat punching!)

Every day we do what we want to do which focuses around their freedom to play and our bank balance!

Unschooling is getting up at 6 am to see in the dawn

Unschooling is finding things that make our hearts sing (mine is photography)

But I have to tell you all; this journey has been a major uphill struggle for me to let go. To let go of all that I thought that learning was and how it ought to be done. I thought it was learning to read and write and do multiplications so they could be educated to get a job one day. I have discovered learning is all of that and more.

I continually have thoughts that I should be doing more so they learn what the other children are learning at school. I often wonder if they will come to regret my choices to let them not have the same education as others when it comes to job searching later in life. But I come full circle with the knowledge that they are blissfully happy right now and one day they won’t have the freedom to live their lives so extravagantly.

I am pleased to tell you – despite my lack of faith in my children and my own disbelief in my self – my children have learnt a ton of stuff over the last 3 years and we did nothing to make it happen except provide the time, equipment and presence. Both Aimee and Ethan have picked up the fundamentals of reading out of necessity to understand Minecraft. Ethan is exceptionally passionate about maths and just understands stuff like percentages and fractions with no understanding of a particular way to reach his answers.

Unschooling is making several attempts to build a lego raft that finally floated

Unschooling is taking an interest in this exceptionally large bettle that sounds like a miniature hover craft

Aside from them learning the fundamentals of what the world needs in terms of being educated, they have learnt all the cool stuff that has piqued their curiosity.

They have learnt how to use a microscope to look at insanely gross stuff, how to dive, how to identify insects and loads of other things I can not think to mention.

Unschooling is begging me to let him go diving only one month after learning how to swim without drowning
I thought it good to mention I am not all bashing people who send their children to school, and I acknowledge not everyone is able to financially afford to keep their children out of school. This is just my life and my story. Hope you all enjoyed reading.

So yesterday 5th August at about 8.15 pm local time Bali we had an earth quake that was 7.0 on the richter scale. The earth quake was in Lombok which is a small island near to Bali where 82 people have died on a count this morning. The quake followed a previous earth quake 6.7 on the richter scale in Lombok 1 week prior where 16 were killed. Here in Bali there is damage to buildings, huge amounts of tiles have fallen of of buildings so much you can see daylight going through. Locals said their doors had fallen of and their ceilings and walls were falling in.

Pictured above is the tiles fallen from our apartment complex in Amed.

Picture below is the damage that happened in poor Lombok.

We had got 2 out 3 kids to fall asleep last night when the earth quake shook Indonoseia. Then we got them back to sleep and were told to evacuate to higher ground as Bali was issued a tnsunami warning. So we woke them and trapsed up to higher ground. It was a sureal feeling, we left with nothing but the shoes on our feet, clothes on our backs and what might have been useful left in day bags. Thankfully their was uno, bottles of water and some honey stars!

Ethan of course grabbed his essentials which was his favourite pillow called piggo his muzzling cloth and his duvet! All of which we had to lug up the hill.

We were very frightened but tried to resolve a brave face for the children, assuring them everything was going to be ok and that they were safe. Though in reality we had no idea that we were. Aimee and Joshua were scared because of the loud noises and our urgency in waking them twice. Ethan however was more aware of his own mortality and understood despite our false calm that he could actually be in danger.

We left higher ground 4 hours after the quake and the tsunami warning was lifted. When we came back to our hotel we weren’t allowed back into the rooms incase of structural damage and the government issued a warning of another possible quake (which thankfully didn’t happen). We set up camp in the hotel lobby until 5 am where we awakened other campers because a massive beetle came flying that was making a loud noise. Sorry fellow campers.

We are all tired this morning but we are all safe. Thankyou everyone that prayed for us last night we were terrified and it helped me to know that others were carrying us on their prayers.