Hello! I’m glad you’re thinking about getting in touch. The best way to contact me with general thoughts, questions or introductions is to drop me a comment.
You can connect with me on Twitter or through our Facebook page. I dock into all these regularly whenever we have internet access and reply as fast as I can.
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If you’d like to contact me privately with a question, please first use the search box on the top right of my home page to find out what I’ve written about it already. Then feel free to email me at Theodora DOT Sutcliffe AT gmail DOT com.
Just came across your website via a tweet thread. As a (sometime) travel writer and would-be wanderer, I am fascinated to know a bit more about the practicalities of your life. Do you mind my asking what your your occupation was before you left London, and whether you intend to pick it up once you settle down in Spain? Good luck to you and your son on the rest of your journey. It sounds amazing.
Yeah. Freelance journo, copyeditor, subeditor and copywriter. Briefly had a creative agency which went catastrophically tits up. But, yes, I intend to pick up freelancing but work less, also, hopefully, to sell some travel writing. Have some work lined up for the new year but trying not to think about it right now….
Hello,
I recently compiled a list of the Top 100 Travel Blogs, and I wanted to let you know that you made the list! The list is published online at
http://www.onlinedegrees.org/top-100-travel-blogs/
Thanks so much, and if you think your audience would find useful information in the list or on the site, please feel free to share the link. You can also use the button we’ve created for the list, which I can e-mail you. We always appreciate a link back!
Thanks again, and have a great day!
Maria
p.s. If you have a button or logo for you site that we haven’t included, feel free to pass it along and we will include it with the post.
Maria Magher recently posted..Top 100 Travel Blogs
Hey! Figured I’d ask you as you seem the most qualified to answer
We are trying to plan a ‘family-moon’ (us and our two girls, 8&13) a few weeks before our wedding. Which place would you suggest for a two week, rugged, backpack style trip which has lots of hostel options (that welcome kids) and is super cheap in terms of day to day expenses? We are on a super tight budget.
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Hokey cokey.
Cambodia and Laos are both super-cheap: in Cambodia, you can get nice hostel rooms with enough beds for all of you for $6 (though whether you and the girls want to share on familymoon is another issue). And, I think, pretty rugged and adventurous.
Thailand’s also do-able, and has better beaches than Cambodia or Laos, and will feel bloody cheap after Sweden. I guess your biggest single element of expenditure’s going to be the airfare for all for of you: check AirAsia and China Eastern for flights to Asia….
Latin America, in general, is more expensive than Asia (in Central America, Guatemala’s not so bad)… I’m assuming you don’t want to do eastern Europe, as you’re in Scandinavia anyway, and north Africa’s out at the moment cos of the politics. Which would leave you, I guess, with Asia (though Kenya/Tanzania can be relatively affordable).
What’s your total budget for the fortnight for the four of you? But also make it somewhere you really want to go….
Hi happy family!!
I found your web searching for family travelers. Please, check this forum out (www.freakfamilies.webs.com). For sure you hat a lot to contribute. It’ll be a honor to have you as a member!
Thanks to pass by..
Hope to hear from you soon!
Yanna Seabra
http://www.freakfamilies.webs.com
I don’t think the contact form is working.
Scott recently posted..20-000 hits
Hello!
I’d like to contact you privately, would you mind sending me an address to where I can drop you an e-mail? I’m planning a long trip to SEA and I am incredibly inspired by yours and your writing, so much that I can’t wait to take off, unfortunately I still have to wait a few months hahaha
Thanks!!!
Tamara
Tamara
I am going to revise this page soon, I promise. An easy way to contact us is through our Facebook: http:www.facebook.com/travelswithanineyearold
I’m a mother traveling with a 10 and 13 year old and will soon be arriving in Lombok. We are very beginning surfers and would like to find waves that break on a beach minus a reef. I have read of a couple of possibilities but it sounds like they are far from towns. Do you know of a beach with waves that we can handle with accommodation nearby? Thank you very much for any advice you have.
Oh dear, Margaret. I drove the West Coast of Sumbawa looking for that illusory beach — if anyone mentions Pantai Runteng on the west coast of Sumbawa, they are lying (it’s a reef break, and hardcore). In Kuta, Lombok, the surf beach for beginners is Selong Belanak, which is 25k from Kuta over a terrible road. There are also breaks to the East of Kuta, in Gerupak, which are deep reef breaks, so suitable for not-quite-beginners, but you need a boat to get out to them and the currents can be strong — that’s only 8k from town, over decent but potholed roads. Also in Lombok, generally, longboards are few and far between, and they don’t have the foam rubber boards that real beginners use. My impression is that Kuta is going to be your best bet in Lombok, and that you’ll be going out to Selong Belanak initially. If the road freaks you out, there is a back road, which involves a long detour back along the main road. That’s a bit potholed, but not nearly as scary as the thing you need to drive on the short road.
Hi mama and Z.
I just wanted to drop you a line to let you know that you’ve been a constant inspiration to myself and my son for the past year. Our children are the same age and I swear sometimes you’re travelling with my child’s doppleganger. They seem very much alike which could be because they’re both 10 or because they’re both independant free thinkers.. anyways. I wanted you both to know that we’ve been following your blog and are working on a travel of the same sort.
We’re living in Canada’s Yukon, both of us born here with no travel experience. Since I was very young I always knew that I wanted to travel, and had lofty dreams of travelling as a parent. Our first trip out of Canada will be this winter (when it’s 40 below celcious)!! Either to Costa Rica or Guatamala. I hope to travel the world with him before he’s done high school.
I’m a single mama and wondering what your take is on the best courses of work while travelling. We will be travelling together, and at this point alone. Do you have any suggestions or hints that perhaps would help?
Thanks for posting your adventures!! We continue to follow and my son is in love with Australia! He has large maps all over his walls and the Ozzy map sits very close to his bed.
All the best in your journey
Jasmine
Hi Jasmine, And thanks for your lovely comment. We loved Guatemala, I’m sure you will too. Incredibly diverse country — lots of stuff to do. It’s also relatively affordable for LatAm.
Work while travelling is a problem for a lot of travelling families — I’m in a FB group with a lot of us, and there’s different working patterns, none of which are optimal. I earn money freelance writing on drink and travel, freelance copywriting, and, now, from this site too. Which is on the one hand a wonderful thing because you can travel and work. On the other hand, you’ll find yourself getting off a very long boat ride with a deadline to hit and in desperate quest of internet, and it’s less fun…
I think it’s especially tough for single parents. I know one couple where he works as a web developer while they travel, but then she takes the main role in the childcare. So — portable jobs are one thing. Do you have a portable career? Because if so, I think the best way to do it is to travel slowly, with a month or two in each place, getting a fixed base with internet. There’s another single mum, Lainie, who’s doing that in Latin America. You might want to check out her site: http://raisingmiro.com – and get in touch with her.
Another thing I’ve seen done successfully is where one parent goes and takes a high value contract somewhere for six weeks, then returns and travels — still not idea for single parents — this guy did some form of specialist construction. There’s a family travelling Australia longterm, and they take short-term contracts in small towns along the way…
So let me know what you do and I’ll see what I can recommend. It’s important to be aware that in cheaper countries a) wages are low and b) jobs are hard to come by, and that you need work permits to work. You could look into WWOOFing: it won’t leave you with a lot of spare cash, but it’s one way some families have travelled successfully. I also know Family On Bikes make money doing beadwork and similar.
As a general rule, the sorts of jobs that can make sense for young, single, child-free travellers — bar work, hostel assistance etc — aren’t suitable for parents. Long hours, shared rooms, and no childcare.
Feel free to connect via our FB page and I’ll direct you to an FB group I belong to which is a lot of nomadic families — some on a one-year trip they’ve saved for, others working on the road.
Hope this helps,
Theodora
Hi there ~
Came across your website through Thorntree, on a thread about travelling with a toddler.. Looking forward to spending some time on your site ~
Just posted a question for you on Thorntree but thought I’d try you here as well. Any suggestions for a good destination for us, a couple with twin 2-year-olds? We live in New England and want to go somewhere not too hard to get to, e.g. maybe a 6 hour flight max, and then want to find somewhere that’s beautiful and interesting enough in itself that we can mostly stay local, with maybe a few simple side trips.
We are used to very “rough” travel, but now we have the little ones to think about. So as much as we love snorkeling, long hikes, fascinating cities, it all has to be more low-key. Shorter walks. Days on the beach or on a farm. Good meals. We have thought of Ireland, Scotland, and Mexico ! Very open to ideas though. Planning this for 2nd week of July.. short notice.
Any thoughts would be very much appreciated! Esp. particular destinations, inns etc.
Sorry — I’ve been offline for a week or so. We had a lovely time in Mexico when Z was tiny — 2 — based in Tulum, which is south of the hell of Cancun. Beaches, iguanas, Mayan pyramids, blue landcrabs. Ireland and Scotland are beautiful but, as always with our part of the world, you cannot rely on the weather — it is perfectly possible to spend a fortnight in Scotland in July and for it to rain for more than half that time. We loved Guatemala, also, but there, I think, you’d want to move around a lot. So I’d opt for the Yucatan in Mexico. You can hire a car, also, and have a lot of interesting things within easy travelling distance.
Hi Theodora,
You left a comment on my blog a while back – thanks for stopping by! I’m currently looking for my next interviewees – would you and Z be interested? My goal is to represent people with a variety of experiences and perspectives, and I love your story. Shoot me an email if you’re interested!
Thanks,
Amy
Hi Theodora
I’ve been inspired by your writing (congrats on the prize!) and my son Fintan (8) said ‘they are SO much better travellers than we are!’ I have posted you before but don’t know if you got it. Well we started on oct 5 from st Petersburg – 3 weeks later in irkutsk we were walking down a dark road, and I tripped and broke my arm. Fintan found it hard to cope and I couldn’t cope with him not coping, so here we are back in england. Next week we’ll fly to china after 4 weeks home, for another try. Question for z: do you manage to make friends easily? Fintan was really struggling as we hadn’t stayed anywhere in our3 weeks for long enough to make friends and he was fed up with me being his only friend. Have u met children in china who could speak English?
Btw we will be in Beijing nov 2 to 10. Then moving south west. Are we likely to cross paths?
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We might well overlap in Beijing, Julie. I’m sitting in Lijiang waiting for credit cards to arrive from the UK at the moment, but I think meeting up in Beijing is definitely on the cards. In China? Well (I actually posted about this yesterday), the key thing to understand is that school age children have NO time during the week. School runs from 7.30am to 4pm, and then there’s at least 2 hours homework in the evening — often also classes at the weekend. Because we were studying intensive Chinese (and our teacher has a daughter of z’s sort of age), it wasn’t an issue in Kunming. Now we’re on the move we’re going to make an effort to hit parks &c. Most Chinese children only start learning English aged 9 or 10, so the English-speaking kids you’d meet would be older than Fintan. We also now speak enough Chinese to do basic socialising (Z actually has a little girl’s phone number). I’d say your best bet for friends in China without Chinese would be to get onto couchsurfing and try and find a family to stay with with kids of a similar age. Does Fintan have Skype to chat with his old friends? The friendship thing does get a lot easier in the rest of S.E. Asia — language barrier or not! — where families are larger and children’s time is less pressured. I’ll give you an update re: Beijing timings when I’m closer to Beijing itself….
Hi T and Z,
Just wanted to drop by and say I am a fan of both of you. I found your website this past summer when I was preparing to move to Jakarta, Indonesia to teach English. Aside from the entertainment of the site, I found the stories (especially the Indonesian adventures) informative and helpful. They helped me start to get in the mindset of living in Southeast Asia for the first time.
Now that I have been here in Jakarta for 5 months, I still enjoy reading your adventures. I have a few holidays next year that I don’t have plans for, yet, but after digging around more on this site I think I will have a better idea of where to go.
I really admire both your’s and Z’s sense of adventure. As a recent college grad with little holding me back, I am inspired by both of you and hope to have even a fraction of the experiences you have had. Keep the stories coming!
Tyler
Thanks for your lovely comment, Tyler — I quite envy you living in Indonesia. And I’m glad you also found the stories helpful as well as entertaining. Where are you planning for your holidays?
There are several places I would like visit, but I don’t know if I will be able to make it to all of them. Towards the top of my list are Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore. I will probably only be able to visit two of those places next year, so I will have to begin my process of elimination soon. I am also planning a trip to Jogjakarta in January, which I am really looking forward to. I have heard great things about that place.
Wow! Well, the Philippines, obviously, is a mission in itself due to the number of islands, though Palawan is wonderful.I was surprised how much we liked Singapore, but it isn’t a cheap option compared to the others. What a great choice to have, though.
Hi Theodora, we are Jax and Caye, sailors and full-time travelers. We are looking for guest blogger submissions on our blog Mangolandia. Specifically, full/part-time travelers telling about what inspires them to take off on adventures, leaving family and friends behind. We run into your blog a couple weeks ago and were inspired by your story and would love to hear what you have to say.
For more information follow the link and send us your story if you feel inspired.
http://mangolandia.com/2011/12/16/call-for-submissions-what-inspired-you/
Thank you very much
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Lets come and work with together for Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet Tour, trekking
I will email you, Kedar. We’ll be in the region later this year — currently in the Middle East — but very interested in trekking both Bhutan and Tibet.
How do I get the RSS for just your China category?
John Rockefeller recently posted..On Game Development and Akihabara
Umm, I’m not sure you can, actually, John. I have the site set up to publish the feed through Feedburner, which means that the China feed just redirects to the main Feedburner feed, and there’s not going to be much China on there for another few months, so if I burnt a specific feed for that I’d get a lot of very disappointed readers. Are you on Twitter? If so, you could follow me there (I’m @mummy_t). Alternatively, I can try and remember to email you when we are back in China.
Hi Theodora, you rock !! I’m glad to find your fantastic travelogue. I’m also a 30 something proud single mother of 3 years old who can’t resist adventures. I’m a journalist too and Indonesian. I will keep my dream to follow your path, taking my daughter one day experiencing the best school in life, traveling the world !! Thank you for encouraging me to do so.
Thank you, Reynette! You should totally do it. Your country is amazing, and I’m sure your daughter is too. You just made my day.