Our first trip to Asia as a family of five brought us to Thailand.
It was January 2017, and this trip was a little different from most family vacations. Technically, it wasn’t even supposed to be a family trip! Mass was going to Phuket for a workshop, and instead of staying home, the kids and I decided to tag along.
For two weeks, Phuket was going to be our home away from home. While Mass was busy with his workshop, my plan was pretty simple. The kids and I would go to the beach, maybe do a few tours and explore on our own. Then, on Mass’s free days, we could all go on adventures together.
At the time, Cosimo and Emma were still little, and Luca was only about 10 months old.
This was also before we started traveling the world. We had traveled with the kids before, especially to Italy, but this felt different. Thailand was completely new to us.
Little did we know that by the end of these two weeks, an idea would pop into our heads that would eventually change our lives: Why not sell everything and explore the world?
But we definitely weren’t thinking about that yet!
First, we had to survive the jet lag.
Our Home Away From Home in Phuket
For our two weeks in Phuket, we stayed at Seapines Villa Liberg, a small hotel about a 10-minute walk from Nai Yang Beach and only a few minutes from Phuket International Airport.
It became our little Thai home.
The staff took such good care of us, and the hotel had a more traditional feeling that I loved. There was a pool surrounded by tropical plants, wooden details throughout the property and open spaces that made it feel completely different from the hotels we were used to.
Of course, during those first few days, we were barely functioning on a normal schedule.
Jet lag! We slept and woke up at the strangest hours.
Emma and I would sometimes wake up around sunrise and wander around the pool and garden together. I remember looking around one morning and thinking that our little hotel reminded me of the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Maybe it was the traditional-looking buildings. Maybe it was the peaceful atmosphere. Or maybe it was because many of the other guests staying there were older than us! Whatever it was, I loved those quiet mornings with Emma.
I was also fascinated by the architecture.
The high-pitched roofs, wide overhanging eaves and open spaces made perfect sense in Thailand’s hot and humid climate. The design allowed air to circulate while the large roofs offered protection from both the intense sun and tropical rain.
But there was one architectural feature we became very familiar with: The high door thresholds!
We tripped over them a million times, especially at night.
I became curious about why they were so high and started looking into it. I found several explanations connected with traditional Thai architecture, ranging from practical structural purposes to old beliefs and customs. One explanation I found especially interesting was the traditional belief that a raised threshold could help keep unwanted spirits from entering a home.
Whatever their original purpose, I can tell you what ours did: They made five jet-lagged travelers trip over them repeatedly!
Falling in Love With Nai Yang Beach
One of the first places we discovered after arriving in Phuket was Nai Yang Beach, just a short walk from our hotel. And we immediately loved it.
The beach was spacious, relaxed and didn’t feel overly crowded, which made it perfect for us with three young kids.
Parts of Nai Yang Beach are associated with Sirinath National Park, and the trees along the beach gave us plenty of shade when the sun became too intense.
Back in 2017, you could rent an umbrella with two mats for around $5 for the day, although those rentals were naturally in the busier part of the beach. We quickly discovered that if we were willing to walk a little farther, we could find much quieter areas.
There were trees for shade, soft sand to lie on and sometimes hardly anyone around.
True peace and quiet…well, except for the presence of our kids!
When we got hungry, there were restaurants around the beach serving Thai food as well as more familiar European dishes, which definitely helped when traveling with picky little eaters.
And if all that relaxing became too exhausting, there were plenty of places to get a Thai massage. Some women even offered massages right on the beach.
Our days could easily be filled with the beach, swimming, eating, wandering around, shopping and relaxing.
Isn’t that what a vacation is supposed to be about?!
But with Mass at his workshop, eventually I decided it was time for my first real adventure around Phuket alone with all three kids.
And that’s when things got interesting…
Getting Lost in Phuket With Three Kids
One day, after spending most of the day at the beach, I decided to find a local market I’d been told about. The lady at our hotel had also shown me a different road we could take to get back afterward. She showed me the route on a map, and it looked straightforward enough.
It wasn’t!!! We got lost.
So there I was, walking around Phuket for what felt like forever with three exhausted kids.
We had already spent the whole day at the beach. Cosimo and Emma were tired and whining, and Luca was hot, tired and crying in my arms. I think we’d been walking for about an hour when some women working at a little food stand noticed us. They invited us to sit down and rest while they tried to help me figure out where our hotel was.
Eventually, one of the men eating there checked the location on his phone. Our hotel was still about a mile away. Then he offered to drive us there. And that’s when I had one of those parenting moments where your brain suddenly starts screaming: Am I completely crazy?!
I was in a country I didn’t know. This man was a complete stranger. And I was considering getting into his car with my three children.
But something in my gut told me it was going to be okay. So I listened to it. And it was.
He drove us all the way back to our hotel. When we arrived, I tried to give him some money for helping us. He wouldn’t take it. He simply smiled, said goodbye and left.
He hadn’t helped us because he wanted anything from us.
He had simply been kind.
That moment stayed with me. Throughout those first days in Thailand, we experienced so much kindness, especially toward our children. People helped us, talked to the kids and looked out for us in little ways that made this trip feel even more special.
And I remember thinking: How wonderful would the world be if there were this much kindness everywhere?
That first little adventure gave me more confidence to explore Phuket with the kids while Mass was busy. Which was probably a good thing, because our next adventure involved a wild speedboat ride, an island packed with tourists, hundreds of fish…and 10-month-old Luca trying to eat shells.
Our Khai Nok Island Adventure
After a few days in Phuket, I started looking for more activities to do with the kids while Mass was at his workshop. At one of the little tourist information booths, I came across a flyer advertising an island tour specifically for families with kids.
Perfect! Or at least that’s what I thought.
The original plan was to visit three islands: Koh Khai Nok, Koh Khai Nai and Koh Khai Nui. But the wind was extremely strong that day and the waves were huge, so our plans changed and we ended up spending the entire day on Khai Nok Island.
When we arrived at the meeting point, I expected to find lots of other families. I thought Cosimo and Emma might even meet some new kids to play with. Nope. It was only us! And then came the speedboat ride. The sea was rough, the boat was bouncing all over the place and several people around us were feeling sick.
Meanwhile, my 10-month-old baby was having the time of his life! Luca was sitting on my lap, giggling and bouncing with every wave. Apparently, the crazier the ride became, the more fun he thought it was.
Then we arrived at Khai Nok Island. Oh. My. Gosh. It was PACKED!!!
The island itself was beautiful. The water was crystal clear, the sand was white and covered with shells, and there was a wonderful breeze. But there were people everywhere. I remember thinking, What have I done? Why did I bring the kids here?
The areas where the fish were swimming were packed with people trying to snorkel. Everyone seemed to be kicking into everyone else, and I got hit several times while trying to swim. Of course, we were traveling during Thailand’s peak season, so I should have expected crowds. What I hadn’t realized was that Khai Nok was also a popular stop on many island tours, including trips heading toward the Phi Phi Islands.
But our guide told me something: Wait until noon. She said many of the tour groups would leave and we’d have a couple of much quieter hours before the next groups arrived. She was right. By noon, it felt like a completely different island.
Suddenly, we could actually enjoy it.
Cosimo spent his time taking what felt like millions of pictures of the fish. Some of them swam straight toward his camera lens, which he thought was the coolest thing ever. Emma built sandcastles all over the beach. And Luca? Luca tried to eat the shells. Because apparently that’s what you do when you’re 10 months old in paradise.
We had a covered area where we could have lunch and escape from the sun when it became unbearable, but otherwise we spent most of those peaceful hours in the water. Those two quiet hours completely made up for the madness of the morning.
There was another moment from that day that I still remember. Our guide noticed that managing lunch with the three kids, especially Luca, wasn’t exactly relaxing for me.
So she stepped in. She helped take care of Luca and even fed him so that I could actually sit down and eat. It was such a small gesture, but when you’re traveling alone with three young children, those small gestures can feel enormous. Once again, I found myself thinking about how kind people had been to us since arriving in Thailand.
Even back in 2017, though, there was another side to our island experience that bothered me. The crowds weren’t only affecting our enjoyment of the beach. Seeing so many speedboats, snorkelers and people concentrated around such a tiny island made me think about what all that tourism was doing to the coral and marine environment. At the time, I wrote about reports of severe coral damage around the Khai Islands and restrictions being introduced to protect the reefs.
It was one of those early moments in our travels when we started thinking more about something that would become increasingly important to us: Just because tourists are allowed to do something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good for the place they’re visiting.
We were still learning too. And during this same Thailand trip, another experience would make us question something even bigger: the way we interacted with animals while traveling.
Our Experience at Tiger Kingdom in Phuket
One of the compromises of traveling with kids is that sometimes you want to see one thing…and they want to see something completely different.
I wanted to explore more of Phuket. The kids were looking through brochures at the tourist information booth we’d become friendly with and choosing all the things that looked exciting to them. And, of course, Tiger Kingdom immediately caught their attention.
The idea that they could actually get close enough to touch a tiger sounded incredible to them. So we hired a driver for the day. Back in 2017, we paid around $50 for a large van for the four of us, which was cheaper than joining a group tour and gave us the freedom to decide where we wanted to go. Our first stop was Cosimo’s choice: Tiger Kingdom.
I can still imagine what some of you are thinking: You took your kids into an enclosure with a tiger?!
Yep. At the time, the explanations we were given made us feel comfortable enough to do it. We were told that the tigers had been raised around humans, that staff members were always present during the encounters and that the animals weren’t drugged. We believed what we were being told.
The kids were incredibly excited. This was our first big international family trip outside our usual travels to Italy, and being close enough to actually touch an animal they had only ever seen in books, cartoons or zoos felt extraordinary to them. But something interesting happened afterward.
Once we walked out of Tiger Kingdom and the excitement began to disappear, the kids started asking questions.
Why weren’t the tigers reacting to us?
Why were they so docile?
The tigers they knew from books and cartoons were powerful, wild animals. These didn’t behave the way they expected a tiger to behave. And suddenly, the experience wasn’t simply about how exciting it had been to touch one. They were thinking about the tiger. That stayed with us.
Later, when we visited another zoo, I noticed the kids looking at the animals differently. Instead of simply being excited because an animal was close to them, they started noticing the environment the animal was living in. It became one of the first steps in changing how our family approached animal experiences while traveling.
Looking back nearly a decade later, I see that experience differently too. At the time, we trusted the information we were given and thought that allowing the kids to get so close to the tigers might help them understand and appreciate these animals. Instead, what became most valuable was the conversation it started afterward. As we continued traveling, we became much more conscious about which animal experiences we wanted to support. We started looking for wildlife rehabilitation projects, rescue organizations and opportunities to observe animals without using them purely for entertainment. We didn’t have all those answers in 2017.
We were learning as we traveled. And Thailand had already given us another animal experience that showed us a very different side of wildlife conservation: hearing the gibbons singing at the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project.
A Family Moment at Sarasin Bridge
Not every memorable experience in Thailand came from something we’d planned.
One day, while heading out on an adventure with Daddy, we stopped at Sarasin Bridge, which connects Phuket with mainland Thailand. We walked toward the pedestrian section and observation tower, but what I remember most about that stop had absolutely nothing to do with the bridge.
Under the stairs, we saw a little boy cleaning tiny fish while his grandfather rested nearby. Then suddenly, we heard yelling. An older boy had caught a fish, and he was struggling to pull it out of the water. The grandfather immediately jumped up and ran over to help him, guiding the fish toward shore.
It was huge!
Other people came running over too, cheering and celebrating the catch with them. We just stood there watching.
I remember thinking about how genuinely excited everyone was.
At the time, I wrote that the fish was probably their dinner, although of course we didn’t actually know that. What we did know was that this catch meant something to them. And seeing everyone celebrate together turned a random stop at a bridge into one of those little travel memories that stays with you.
Sometimes the moments you remember most aren’t the famous sights at all. They’re simply the moments you happen to be there to witness.
And then came one of our favorite family days of the entire trip, Koh Yao Noi. We were tired of tours, schedules and being told when we had to leave. This time, we wanted to figure it out ourselves.
Exploring Koh Yao Noi on Our Own
After spending our first days in Phuket mostly going on organized tours, we decided it was time to try something different.
We didn’t want another schedule. We didn’t want someone telling us how long we could stay somewhere or when we had to get back on the boat. We wanted to explore on our own.
Someone recommended Koh Yao Noi, an island in Phang Nga Bay between Phuket and the mainland. All we had to do was catch a boat over and then figure things out once we arrived. That sounded much more like us! And it turned out to be incredibly easy.
Koh Yao Noi and neighboring Koh Yao Yai are two islands in Phang Nga Bay, and Koh Yao Noi felt completely different from the busier parts of Phuket we’d been experiencing.
Back in 2017, we paid 800 baht for our ferry tickets for the four of us, around $23 at the time. On the boat, we met a friendly woman who gave us some suggestions about where to go and recommended Pa Sai Beach. So with a little direction and absolutely no real plan, off we went!
This was exactly the kind of exploring we’d been craving. As we traveled around the island, we saw wooden houses along the roads, buffalo in the rice paddies, rubber plantations and mangroves growing right out of the water. It felt peaceful and much less developed than the Phuket we’d been exploring.
Then we spotted our transportation for the day. And obviously, we had to try it. We saw this crazy motorbike with a sidecar that looked big enough to fit our entire family.
Perfect! We rented it for three hours for 200 baht, about $6 at the time. And off we went. All five of us. Together.
We drove along the coast, stopping whenever we saw somewhere interesting. At one point we stopped for a snack. At another beach, we thought we’d go swimming…only to discover that the tide was so low that the water seemed to be miles away! Eventually, though, we found another beach. And it was completely empty.
After our experience with the crowds on Khai Nok Island, this felt like heaven. There were large trees providing shade, hammocks, swings and places to sit. And practically nobody around. We had the beach to ourselves!
There were also a few little restaurants and shops along the road. I went into two different shops looking at clothes. In the first one, the woman gave me prices that seemed completely reasonable. In the second, everything suddenly seemed to cost about twice as much. Maybe she thought: Tourist. She’ll pay it. But we’d already been in Thailand for more than a week. I knew what things cost by now! I didn’t even bother bargaining.
I simply walked out and went shopping at the other store. Look at me, one week in Thailand and practically a local! Well…not quite.
The Days We Were All Together
This Thailand trip was different from most of our family trips because Mass wasn’t with us all the time. He was there for his workshop, after all.
The kids and I had our own adventures during the day, and when he came back at night, we’d tell him everything we’d done. But that also made the days when all five of us could explore together feel extra special.
Koh Yao Noi was one of those days. There wasn’t some huge attraction that made it memorable. It was simply us.
Taking a ferry. Figuring out where to go. Driving around the island together. Stopping when we wanted. Finding an empty beach. Getting a little lost. And having absolutely no schedule.
Looking back now, I think that’s important. Because somewhere during that day, something shifted.
That night, we returned to our hotel after our adventure on Koh Yao Noi. And an idea popped into our heads. Why not sell everything and explore the world?
At the time, it was just an idea. We had jobs. A house. Three young kids. A normal life waiting for us back home.
We weren’t sitting there with some grand plan for becoming a full-time traveling family. We certainly didn’t know what the next several years would bring. But something about this trip had shown us how much we loved exploring together.
Even the difficult parts. Getting lost with three kids. Jet lag. Crowded islands. Wild boat rides. Trying to manage a baby while traveling. Figuring things out as we went.
We loved it.
And for the first time, instead of asking: “Where should we go on our next vacation?” we were beginning to ask a completely different question: “What if traveling could actually become our life?”
We didn’t have the answer yet. But the seed had been planted.
Our Final Day in Thailand
Two weeks passed incredibly quickly.
On our final morning, just like almost every morning before it, our friendly rooster woke me up.
Except this time, hearing him felt different. It was bittersweet. This was our last day in Thailand.
We’d had so many adventures during those two weeks, especially the kids, and I found myself wondering: How much of this will they actually remember?
They were so young. But then I realized that remembering every individual moment wasn’t really the point.
One day during the trip, while we were waiting for our lunch, Cosimo and Emma started asking me about the places I’d traveled when I was younger.
We sat there for almost two hours talking about different countries I’d visited and the stories I remembered from them. And I started wondering how many places they would visit during their lives.
How many stories would they someday have to tell?
That conversation stayed with me.
Two Weeks of Firsts
When I looked back at everything we’d managed to experience in just two weeks, it felt like a lot.
We traveled by canoe, speedboat, long-tail boat, ferry, cyclo-style sidecar and our crazy family motorbike, which, at one point, almost went down a hill!
We swam in the pool every day, even when it rained.
We spent hours at the beach.
We swam with fish.
We did cartwheels and handstands.
We played, ate and built sandcastles.
We listened to gibbons singing at the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project.
We encountered monkeys, buffalo, elephants, crocodiles and tigers, experiences that would eventually make us think much more deeply about how we wanted to interact with animals while traveling.
We explored islands.
We tried a little Thai boxing.
We learned about growing rice and producing rubber.
We tried a fish spa and had Thai massages.
And we ate. A LOT.
We tried all kinds of fruit, including varieties the kids had never tasted before. We ate plenty of Pad Thai.
And we discovered a new favorite dessert: Mango sticky rice!
We visited temples, explored beaches and met people who were incredibly kind to our children.
And yes… We saw lots and LOTS of tourists!
The Best Part Was That We Did It Together
Mass had missed some of our adventures because of his workshop.
But every night, when he came back, the kids and I would tell him everything that had happened that day. So somehow, he never really felt left out. And on the days when we were all able to explore together, we appreciated them even more.
The best part of it all was that we did it together!
That was true in 2017. And it’s still true today.
The Trip Before the Journey
When I originally wrote these stories, they were separate little blog posts documenting our days as they happened.
I had no idea what they would eventually represent.
This wasn’t yet The 5 World Explorers traveling the world. We were simply a family who had taken the opportunity to tag along on Daddy’s workshop in Thailand.
But somewhere between the jet lag, Nai Yang Beach, getting lost in Phuket, strangers helping us, island hopping, animal encounters, wild speedboat rides and riding around Koh Yao Noi together, we discovered something.
We really loved this.
Not just vacationing. Exploring together.
On the final day of that trip, I ended my original post by writing: “This is it for now but we are already planning our next adventure!!!!”
I had no idea just how many adventures were coming. And that little question we’d asked ourselves after Koh Yao Noi: Why not sell everything and explore the world?, wouldn’t remain just a question forever.
Thailand wasn’t the beginning of our world travels. But looking back, I think it was one of the places where the idea of them began.
Continue the journey with:
If you are planning a trip to Asia, these unique destinations should definitely be on your radar:
- Brunei: The Family Trip That Became a Girls’ Adventure
- 5 Days in Hong Kong: What We Did, What We Missed, and Why That’s Perfectly Okay
- A Family Journey Through India
- Discovering Cambodia: From Phnom Penh to the Magic of Siem Reap with Kids
- Visiting Bhutan with Kids: Inside the Magical Kingdom of Bhutan
I hope our experience helps you plan an unforgettable Asia adventure of your own!
