My Long-Haul Trip From Amsterdam to Koh Samui with a 4-Year-Old
This week’s article is free. Enjoy it! If you like what you read and would like to support this blog, please sign up for a free or paid subscription. Every sign up is like a vote to keep the blogs coming! Thanks everyone for your support.
So we are officially back from Europe. It was a nice trip back, we got to fly premium economy on Cathay Pacific from Amsterdam to Hong Kong because we had to book so late that economy flights were about the same price as the last-minute deal Cathay was offering. It did come with a 9.5-hour layover in Hong Kong though.
We stupidly booked a flight that departed at noon and arrived at midnight, which of course meant that I didn't sleep a wink, and Hudson only fell asleep for the last 1.5 hours of the flight. Meaning that I then had to choose between leaving him on the plane and waking him up at the start of what he was likely hoping to be his long night sleep. But carrying our bulky winter jackets and arsenal of bags as I was, I had absolutely no capacity to toss an unconscious toddler over my shoulder. So I was forced to wake him up, which of course led to a complete meltdown on his part.
So out we go into Hong Kong airport, accompanied by a flight attendant who had taken pity on me and offered to help me with some of my bags while Hudson screamed on his Trunki as I pulled him along to the transfer desk where I had to go through security to get into the waiting area for my next flight — which was 9 hours away.
With Hudson screaming, I asked to be fast tracked through the long lineup. Unfortunately, the security guard looked at our tickets and shook his head. I glared at him, particularly having seen him offer other people the chance to skip the line. Clearly because our flights were so far away, he didn't think it was an issue that my child was absolutely losing his mind.
So I dealt with it for a few minutes, until Hudson announced that he was feeling sick to his stomach, at which point, I got my Mama lion on, and called the same man over again. " My son is sick, he's screaming, I'm asking you once again to please let us go through the fast-track lane,"
He let us go through.
Finally, we got to the lounge, which as I mentioned was quite disappointing (stay away from Plaza Lounges at Hong Kong International Airport). There was nowhere for Hudson to sleep, but I pushed two chairs together and just hoped that no one would say anything. (They didn't.)
For whatever reason, I still wasn't feeling tired. This is despite the fact that my body clock would have been on about 4am, but I rationalized that I used to stay up later than that all the time during my Bangkok party days, so I used the time that Hudson was sleeping to get some work done. It's unfortunate that I wasn't feeling like drinking, because that probably would have allowed me to get more value out of the lounge. But I stuck to coffee and water.
Now there's a careful dance you have to do when you take a child from one side of the world to the other. I mean it's not just children, we have to do it with ourselves too, but kids are significantly less adaptable to change in their sleeping rhythms. Hudson doesn't understand that if he forces himself to stay up all day, despite being tired, he will be much more likely to reset his body clock with a full night's sleep that night. He just understands that he's tired and he needs to sleep. Which makes it even more challenging to readjust to the new time zone.
I woke Hudson up after 5.5 hours of sleep, which was 3:30pm Hong Kong time, and 2:30pm Thailand time.
With the 1.5 hours he'd already had on the plane, that made 7 hours total sleep that he had in about 20 hours (since we left Amsterdam). I was hopeful that this would be enough sleep to get him through the day and to Thailand, while still allowing him to be tired enough to sleep that night.
He was not happy with me when I woke him up. He had quite the tantrum in fact. And that's when I realized that I probably should have tried to sleep while he was sleeping, because I was starting to fade, and I was also telling him that he couldn't sleep anymore until we got to Thailand. But I definitely needed to get some sleep on the next flight. So it's a bit unfair for me to tell him he can't sleep, when that was what I was going to need to do.
I proceeded to take him around Hong Kong airport on his new Trunki. Since KLM lost his bag, we had to buy him a new one, so we used the opportunity to upgrade. Or so I thought. Trunkis are great except they have almost no storage inside. When I was complaining about this to my bestie Swenni in Amsterdam, she was telling me that she got the Samsonite version and it has loads of room inside. Of course Germans always know the best things to get!!
But Hudson loves being dragged about on his Trunki in the airport. So we walked around and found a flight simulator that he enjoyed for a bit, and then we found some video games he could play.
I asked one of the moms who was at the video game station where I could find a soft play in the airport and she pointed me in the right direction. By this point, Hudson had forgotten that he was tired and wanted to go back to sleep and was jumping up and down at the idea of being able to play at a soft play. More than anything, he was excited to socialize with other children.
“And there will be many friends there?” He kept asking me.
“Yes, baby. You'll make many friends there.”
But Mommy lied. Or they made a liar out of me when they told me that he wasn't allowed in because he was too young! The soft play that was absolutely crawling with children was only for ages 6 to 12. I was over tired and stressed with trying to entertain my son with very little to work with, and I took it as an almost personal insult that he wasn't allowed in. The poor woman who had to tell me 😅.
And then Hudson had another meltdown.
It took everything I had for me not to have one too.
We went back to play with the flight simulator again, but Hudson wasn't interested. Luckily, he's really interested in airplanes, so we just sat at our gate looking out the huge windows and watching the planes come and go.
Then it was time to board. We got our seats and we actually ended up getting a whole row to ourselves which was nice. There's no premium economy on Bangkok Airways from Hong Kong to Samui, but a full row of economy is good enough!!
I must have fallen asleep before we were even fully in the air, because the next thing I knew, I woke up, and Hudson was screaming and laughing playing with the two kids who were sat in the row in front of us. It took me a while to fully come to and understand what was happening, but he seemed to be having a great time, as did the kids in front of him. I leaned forward and asked the mom if everything was okay, and she said ‘Okay’. So I let them continue on for a while. Eventually, she broke and asked them to all stop, so I calmed him down.
But this was after I had gotten about 2.5 hours of sleep on that flight. Which just meant that I didn't need to crash as soon as we landed.
And that I was also able to be fully present for that magical moment when Hudson went running around the corner and jumped in his daddy's arms and hugged him tighter than he ever had before. I rounded the corner with tears in my eyes as I watched them reunite. Then we all had a big family cuddle before getting in the car Fraser had rented and heading to the hotel.
Fraser had booked the hotel we normally stay at near the airport for us, Secret Garden, at 5X the rate we normally pay (that's high season for you in Thailand right now), but unfortunately the booking didn't go through on Agoda, and the only sent him an email to let her know this 2 hours before we actually arrived, which he didn't receive until he went to check in and the receptionist couldn't find his booking.
Which meant he had to scramble last minute to find us another hotel. Most of them nearby were fully booked, which put him a bit on edge, but eventually he found what ended up being a pretty good find, the P10 Design Hotel. Though it was almost definitely purpose built for middle income white men wishing to enjoy a dalliance with some of the friendlier female locals, it was ideal for us.
The room had two separate living spaces, including a bed upstairs and a pull-out sofa downstairs (where all of us ended up sleeping each night) and the balcony had pool access. There was even a small sea view.
The downside was the restaurant, since the place has been clearly bought over by Russians who were having some sort of cook-off in the kitchen when Fraser went to check in, which was probably going to turn into a party judging by the fact that every single table had a reserved sign on it. When eventually Fraser was allowed to sit down due to the fact that none of these reserve tables actually had a single person at them (probably because many of the guests were busy cooking strange Russian chicken dishes in the kitchen), the staff thought that they could make up for the lack of available seating by offering him dried meat vacuum sealed in a plastic bag. He ordered a beer, but they didn't stock any of the normal Thai local beers like Singha or Chang, Only expensive Belgian and IPA beers that were marked up to double what they normally sell for.
This was all before we arrived. So once we got into the car, he told me the story as we headed towards P10 Design Hotel instead of Secret Garden.
With my two-hour sleep on the plane, I managed to last until midnight before I crashed. Fraser wasn’t long behind me, and then Hudson woke up at 3 am like it was daytime, he wanted to get up and face the day! I was completely out, so Fraser gave him his tablet and dozed off until morning.
I woke up around 7:30am to Hudson complaining of a sore tummy. I cuddled him and we both fell back asleep. We woke up 2 hours later and Hudson proceeded to spew all over the pull-out sofa — I managed to get him over the floor before he’d done too much damage. Poor guy.
I called Fraser who’d gone to the cafe over the road to get coffees and some breakfast. We had our boat back to Koh Phangan booked for 2:30pm, but with Hudson having thrown up and complaining of a sore tummy, how could we make him get on a bumpy boat?
We decided to stay another night.
Which worked out well for two reasons:
1) Our friends Nick and Juliette (who live on Samui were coming over to see us for lunch, so it meant we had more time with them, and…
2) There were 2 nights left of the annual 10-day temple festival just beyond our back garden at our house on Koh Phangan. We’re talking shockingly loud, wall-shaking music that sounds like it’s happening IN OUR HOUSE until 1:30am daily. I remembered it well from the year before. So the fact that we were going to miss a night of that was welcome.
So we enjoyed some chill time with our friends while Hudson recovered (he was fine by the evening). And then finally the next day on Sunday, we took the boat back to our little slice of paradise.
As the boat rounded the coastline and shuttered into shore, I smiled. One of my favourite things about living on Koh Phangan is coming back from a trip. There’s no post-holiday blues when you live on a tropical island! You come home to paradise with a new perspective on it, and you appreciate all the things you started falling out of love with before you left once again.
Here’s a video I made of our homecoming to the island:
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Yes, we had the final night of the temple festival that night, but it wasn’t so bad. And it sure felt good to be home, snuggled up in my bed with my hubby finally.