Travel quickies / Time to let go
Rural market/ Fujifilm XT5/XF16F1.4
Travelling with kids is an adventure. The more kids, the more challenges you will face, though I believe you can have this one child that is challenging enough. We have one of those plus the other‘s but that’s a different story.
We all travel for different reasons. It’s the same within a family. My daughter wants to hang by the water and jump around, my son always wants somebody or something, who or that is not around or available at the given time of request, while baby Noah wants to either hang around by the boobs or sleep in anyone’s arms. My wife wants to see the kids happy but wants to enjoy culture and learn new things. I am a photographer by heart and I just want to capture some moments, preferably at a place where I haven’t been before or where I’m not that often.
To satisfy all these needs simultaneously and as a group is impossible. But there’s another note to all this. If you are in a foreign country with your children you want them to learn something - ideally.
But what about if you know that the next excursion will be boring to one of the kids? Will you force to make them see something that clearly isn’t for them yet?
My parents took me to classical concerts every now and then at a very young age and all I remember is an undefined level of boredom. Certainly that was a good preparation for my short lived career as a long haul pilot because that was the closest as I could get to this childhood memory.
My parents did that because they both never experienced any kind of cultural activities when they were young. My father has once described his parents as “dumbasses” (literally his own words) and my mother was raised in a weird religious way where listening to the wrong kind of music would bring you one step closer to hell. For sure they wanted it to be different for their own child.
On one of our latest tours we visited rural Vietnam. It was supposed to give us a more authentic view into a country that I probably won’t visit again too soon but I fell in love with at first sight. I know my daughter would be bored. The long drive, the heat, a farmers garden in the middle of nowhere. We decided to leave her in the kids club with some of her newly made friends. At first I felt bad but then I pictured me sitting in Mozart’s Zauberflöte at the age of eight and I could let her go her way without any doubt that this was the absolute right decision.
On this trip I’ve shot some of my most favourite photos of all time and certainly the most meaningful of this vacation. I know it sounds strange but lugging around only two kids in the sizzling eat of south Vietnam is so much easier than three. Knowing my daughter happy really helped us to enjoy the impressions. Time to let go I guess.
