Traveling with young children is always not an easy experience for most of the parents. With proper planning and preparation, you can have more fun and relax time for your next family vacation.
This year, I’m truly blessed with 3 trips in-a-row within a month. First, we went to Labuan Island for my hubby’s paintball tourney. Second, me and my son went to Kuala Lumpur for holiday with my mom. Third, I went to Johor Bahru with my hubby for the Florafest Paintball Tournament. It’s a 7-day break in between of each trip, the Kuala Lumpur trip was planned earlier on, and the tournament trips are added later on.
Our first trip to Labuan was a total disaster. It’s not planned, and my hubby made the last minute decision about the trip (that’s 1 day before the trip!). No preparation was done except packing for the basic stuff like clothings and toiletries. On Saturday morning, all of us have to wake up early - 6am in the morning and drove to Menombok (about 2hrs drive) in order to catch the ferry about 10am. As usual, my daughter slept in the car, but my son was wide awake throughout the journey to Menombok, and lacking of sleep will normally makes him hyper active. We reached the Menumbok ferry terminal about 9.30am, and because of last minute booking, our car couldn’t get the admission ticket. Thank God my hubby managed to talk to the ticketing officer and they give us the green light to go, otherwise we would have to drive back to Kota Kinabalu and cancel the trip. There, we boarded the ferry. Well, that’s not the end of our disaster yet - children, when they are exhausted, lack of sleep and hungry too, they will either be hyper active or irritable. In my children’s case, it happens altogether at once! We were really having difficulties in keeping our kids to behave in the ferry, they were running and answering back to us when we told them to behave. In the end, my hubby has to raise his voice and it attracted unwanted attention from the other passengers. Still, this is not the only fuss, as my kids were making noise in the passenger seats, my hubby’s friend has called and told us that the our hotel room is not available. Then my hubby started calling all the hotels in Labuan, and the room rates are too expensive. We have no choice but to wait until we reached Labuan and try to look for any available inn. It’s a 1 and a half journey in the ferry but it feels like ages!! Thank God we managed to find a hotel that cost us RM150 per night for the family room, nothing fancy but at least a place for us to stay overnight. After we have checked in the hotel, I have decided to stay in the hotel so that my children would take some rest while my hubby attended his tourney. At night we went to the Financial Park Shopping Complex to have our dinner @ KFC since we do not know where to eat at Labuan. The next morning, me and the kids stayed in the hotel as I have to pack all the luggages and the Chocolates that we bought here - Labuan Island is a well know duty free island with lots of fancy chocolates 
- and we were supposed to catch the 1pm ferry. We have our lunch and more crisis to come!! According to my hubby our car is in the waiting list, so we took our sweet time to have our lunch rather than going to the ferry terminal early. When we went to the ferry terminal, there were lots and lots of vehicles and lorries queing there! There we waited, waited, for about 1 hours, until the last vehicle boarded the ferry before us, and nothing happened, we were still waiting at the port…means we MISSED the ferry!! We have to stay here for another night, my hubby couldn’t go to work and my daughter has to miss her school next Monday! Not to mention we totally overspent on the hotel accommodation. And the worst thing was, my hubby really worried and couldn’t sleep well that night fearing that he would be fired! And our family were really feeling tense and irritable during the whole trip…On our way back to Menombok the next day, the kids still couldn’t keep still in the ferry, and we were still very angry and upset. The air-conditioner in the car was not working properly during our 2 hours drive back to Kota Kinabalu, all of us were really exhausted after we reached home. 
The moral of this story are :
- Never, ever, go for any unplanned trip, especially if you are bringing your kids along
- Know your destination well, you can check out tourism information from the internet
- Book your hotel reservation early
- Go to the ticketing counter early if you need to purchase bus fares, ferry fares and so on and do not take things for granted.
Labuan Island
My second trip to Kuala Lumpur was a total enjoyable trip with my son, mom, aunt and my sister. We made our airline reservation online, chose the window seat for my son, and booked the 10.50am flight from Kota Kinabalu to Kuala Lumpur. For the first night, we stayed at the Le Meridien Hotel, KL where it is located next to the KL Central, we used the LRT to the Mid Valley Mega Mall, it’s a bit congested around 5 to 6pm so we didn’t do any shopping yet. We moved to the Boulevard Hotel which is located at the Mid Valley City the next day. It’s a very convenient place to stay especially if you love to shop or vacation with young children. We have our hotel reservation booked online and got quite a good deal on the room rates. Why do I love this hotel so much? Well, we love to shop, after our hands were full with many shopping bags, we can go back to the hotel and unload! When my son was tired, we can go back to the hotel and take a rest. If we were hungry after the shopping complex closed, we still can go to the Kim Gary to have our supper, and they also open 7am in the morning, so my son who normally wakes up early can have early breakfast there. You can check out more details of the Boulevard Hotel here : http://www.hotelscombined.com/Hotel/Boulevard_Hotel_Kuala_Lumpur.htm
I absolutely enjoy my time with my son in the new Borders Bookstore located at the Gardens (the new shopping mall connected with Mid Valley Mega Mall). Since this is a family vacation, I didn’t do much shopping but rather spending a lot of times going to places that my son would enjoy, theme park, bookshops, toy shops and ice-cream parlor (his favorite place!) Here’s some tips for traveling with young kids :
- During the flight, bring your child’s activity books, coloring pencils, scrabble pads, magazines to keep him/her occupied.
- Pack your child’s favorite snack in his/her backpack in case he/she doesn’t like the in flight meals.
- Pack extra clothes, sweater in your child’s backpack.
- Write down your cell phone number, hotel’ name, hotel room number and telephone number on a piece of paper and put it in your child’s pocket. Show your child the information counter of the shopping complex and teach him/her to identify security personnel. Tell him/her to go to the information counter or security personnel if he/she were lost.
- Find out the family friendly place of interest for your destination from the internet.
Floral Fest @ Sunway Pyramid
Well, my third trip to Johor Bahru with my hubby is fine too. Since I’ve never been to Johor Bahru, I did a lot of research from the internet, especially hotel reviews. Most of the time, you’ll not get the real picture of the hotel unless you read the comments or reviews from the hotel guests. I did a bit of research on the public transport too as we were on the tight budget for this trip and couldn’t afford to use taxi transport most of the time. From the Senai Airport, we boarded the shuttle bus that cost us RM8 each to Johor Bahru city center, I found out about the shuttle bus service from the Senai Airport website. After that, we took a cab to our hotel - J.A. Residence, quite a cozy place to stay and about 5 minutes walking distant to City Square Shopping Center - one of the largest shopping mall in JB. When booking for hotel accommodation, I always opt for hotel that is located near shopping complex since I like to shop and there’ll be definitely no problem in looking for places to dine. The next morning, we took a cab to the Larkin Bus Terminal and took buses from JB to Kota Tinggi, from Kota Tinggi to Bandar Penawar, then took a cab to Desaru Damai Beach Resort. It costs us less than RM15 per person to reach Desaru (on sharing basis), if we took a cab from JB directly to Desaru, it would cost us RM120 one cab! Thanks to Wikitravel and well planning, this is a great and cost effective getaway for me and my hubby!
Desaru Damai Beach Resort, Johor
Last advice on travel survival guide : Know your destination well and plan ahead 
