Thailand and South Korea 2016: Travel Planning

    We are getting ready to hit the road again!  All six of us are heading to Thailand and South Korea next month.  The kids' godparents are getting married in Chiang Mai and they've asked Sky and Fire to be in the ceremony.  We're all excited to be heading back to Thailand and looking forward to exploring some place new during our layover in Korea.

We leave in about three weeks and we're starting to think about specifics.  While it would be nice to just keep going until we got to Chiang Mai, that would be hard on the kids so we're stopping in Bangkok on our way there and back.  There are tons of things to do with kids in Bangkok and great parks (like this one at Lumpini),

and between the trains,taxis, and tuk-tuks

it's a very easy city to navigate.

We'll be in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, for most of our trip.  One thing we try to do every time we travel is to stay in a house rather than a hotel because it's that much easier to keep up your normal routines (and you can still eat breakfast in your pajamas!).  This time we'll be renting a bungalow at the Secret Garden Hotel.  Its our first time staying there but it came highly recommended.  I'm hoping it's the best of both worlds- the privacy and space of a house and the amenities of a hotel.

We've already started talking to our kids about the trip (like we did for our trip to Singapore) and we've been looking at pictures of our last trip to Thailand.  The kids are getting excited about riding on elephants

petting tigers

and swimming in waterfalls.

    Our go-to guidebooks for travel are the Lonely Planet, for the cheaper options and more cynical, backpacker-esque, perspective, and Eyewitness for it's wonderful maps and more varied activity suggestions.  I've started reading both of our Thailand guides again and am already looking at day trips to line up for us.

  So far so good, but on the way back we're stopping in South Korea.  We've passed through the airport before but never stayed.  We have friends living in and around Seoul now so we're going to spend a few days there seeing them and exploring the city.  One of my main planning steps for that part of the trip is to get our winter gear organized so that we can mail it ahead- Korea is cold in October!  Since we're only going to be there for a few days, we're going to be relying on our friends and the internet to find things to do rather than buying a guidebook.  Have you ever been to South Korea?  Any suggestions?

  It's going to be pretty stressful traveling with four kids but we're using the lessons we've learned on other trips to make things go smoother.  Do you travel with your kids?  Got any travel tips to share?

See where I'm linking up here