We returned months ago from our trip to Indonesia, and I have been meaning to write down and share stories from our trip and lessons learned. Life has inevitably got in the way, but now, for the first time in a while I have a moment to sit down and write. Most important to me is getting down the things that we learned so that we don’t forget and can improve on our next trip.

Lesson 1: Pack familiar medications in your carry on (especially infant Advil). On the flight over (25 hours of travel spread across 3 flights Seattle -> Los Angeles -> Taipei -> Jakarta) kiddo caught a nasty bug (on the 14 hour flight to Taipei) and spiked a very high fever. I had packed infant Advil in our carry-on. I will always do this. Nothing would have been scarier than had we not had this. Kid and I were both sick for most of the trip and I ended up going on antibiotics when we returned to the states. But being able to bring down a high fever with few issues despite being contained within a tin can for over half a day was a trip-saver.

Having that initial stash of drugs was great but I wished that we had brought more, given that flights are not the best places for staying healthy. We experimented with various pharmacies in Indonesia, and various treatments, but given that we had 7 flights remaining and I ended up with a very serious sinus infection I wish that we had erred on the side of figuring out how to get antibiotics abroad (and had taken a larger stash of drugs that were familiar to us along – such as Nyquill).  The pharmacies in Indonesia were excellent, but we had a difficult time with the translations figuring out what it was that we wanted, and when you’re looking for something to knock out a serious cold it is daunting to figure out what you’re getting – “So, will this make me sleepy?”

Lesson 2: Get diapers on properly! Los Angeles may be the worst airport in the world to go from a domestic flight to an international flight (our flight left over an hour late because so many people were held up in security). Nothing about the security process made me feel safer (however, in comparison, the airports in Indonesia had more screening points, including as you arrived to the airport, so passengers were screened along with their checked luggage, and still managed to stress us out less). As we were getting through the line and talking to the TSA agent Bean’s diaper managed to slip sideways and she peed all down my side. This is also why we insisted on carrying on substantial carry on bags – don’t ever try to tell a mom traveling with a kid to check a bag that clearly has back up outfits.

Lesson 3: Use sunscreen, and then use some more, and then bring a cloth for shade, and then just stay out of the sun all together because you’re going to get burnt anyways and all of that sunscreen is just going to hurt the coral. Our first real beach visit turned in to an absolute disaster when I got fried to a crisp. I’m attaching photos to prove that we had taken sun protection seriously, but despite all of these efforts, my back got terribly burnt. Like medically dangerous. It turns out that the kid LOVED floating in the warm salt water, I can’t blame her and we ended up in the equatorial sun for close to half an hour, and I clearly sacrificed my back to keep kiddo from the sun.  When I was in the Peace Corps we often used large cloths to hide from the sun, and we should have employed the same strategy here – constructing shade tents and still wearing lots of clothes.

Related to this lesson – find good sunglasses. Runner’s World had put out a list recommending shades for around $25 and I ended up getting another pair that was closely related to try as well. Both came in handy. Kid had a pair of shades as well, but getting her to wear hers was a lot more problematic, so we mostly used the sun hat.

Lesson 4: Be prepared to abandon your plans. We had this amazing itinerary mapped out for the middle section of our trip – three days on a boat visiting Komodo Dragons, beautiful beaches, and remote villages, followed by a three day trek up a remote village (Wae Rebo) in the jungle. We ended up calling off the hiking portion of our trip as we felt tapped out on safety and realized that containing kiddo for hours on end each day was exhausting. When we realized how much time we would have in a car (10 hours) for a 3 hour hike we decided to change course. The boat trip was lovely, but it was difficult to give the kid space to run around independently, and even when we were in our room with the door closed, space was tight and at 15 months she didn’t exactly have sea legs.

 

Lesson 5: I am still terrible at packing. I am terrible at packing, too much, or too little, and this trip was no exception. We had not found a good pair of sandals for kid before we left, and ended up regretting this. Laundry was more difficult than we’d anticipated, and thanks to mishaps such as the security incident, profuse sweating, and being in small spaces we went through more clothes than expected. When attempting to hand wash some clothes we had the dye damage to a couple of shirts, and despite feeling like we were constantly running out of things our room would inevitably look like an explosion had just taken place, and packing to go to the next place was not a small task. We did bring some things that we didn’t end up using (such as a tent for kid, which was brilliant, and likely would have been perfect, had she not been so sick), and we had more small things floating around than I realized. We lost a couple of power converters and if we had it to do over I would have packed a few extra (they were $4 at REI). I also waaaay over packed on the mosquito repellent. Pretreating our clothes with mosquito spray along with a couple of the roll on sticks (think small, round sticks of deodorant) was plenty. We brought a separate bag for kid’s carrier, and this ended up being a brilliant place to tuck away extra items when we were either checking this bag or transferring locations solely by car.

Lesson 6: Bring food pouches. Our kid just doesn’t like to eat. Every now and then we will find something that she seems to tolerate, but it is a constant struggle to get her to eat anything in reasonable quantities. We packed a suitcase full of food pouches, and formula with the idea being that we could accumulate souvenirs at the rate she went through her snacks and diapers. This strategy mostly worked, but kid getting sick disrupted this more than I think that we realized. It was good for her to have foods that she was familiar with and just using formula was great. We decided against battling her to drink water, let her drink formula and were way less stressed about dehydration.

In the end, she found plenty of things that she loved to eat, though we kept her away from unwashed veggies, and when she was super sick at the beginning of the trip we played it safe and took her to Starbucks and McDonalds to get milk and rice.

Lesson 7: At least once on the trip stay in the same place for more than two nights. We did not do this, and I wish that we had. There was so much to see, and we would get a little restless after a night in the same place, but moving around this much made logistics very difficult. We stayed at one hotel for fewer than 4 hours in between flights. Hotels were inexpensive (we averaged $30/night) but we were still hesitant to change any of our plans. We realized part way through our trip that laundry would be a two-day affair and we’d have to plan to do it at the beginning of a two-night stay. A three-night place in the middle of the trip would have made more sense.