Little people in paradise

It’s been a while…

Things change so quickly at the moment that it’s difficult to keep up! But there have been a few events in the Allergen Dad household that are worth giving an update on. So, quick check list: Moving house? Not yet. Mrs Allergen Dad starting her new career? In progress but reliant on moving house. Settling into my new job? Well that’s a blog post in its own right but I’m still there and I think it’s getting easier – or at least more manageable!

But the other big thing to happen is that we had a holiday. A fairly big one. We’d not really had a proper family holiday since well before COVID and even then we didn’t go particularly far; camping on the North coast of France. It was a lovely holiday but the weather was very ‘English Channel’ and obviously it was pre-Dragon. This time we had the chance to do something big!

In all honesty, I felt a little uncomfortable about it at first. It was a once in a lifetime (probably) opportunity and was just a case of things falling into the right place. But I’m very aware that many people won’t get to have a holiday like this in their lifetimes, and certainly not at the moment! I certainly never had a holiday like it as a child. But the circumstances were that Mrs Allergen Dad’s parents very generously booked a villa on the other side of the world and invited their three daughters to come and stay with them. And so we booked flights to join them knowing that fights were the only big expense of the holiday and settled on a resolve to make the most of a rare opportunity rather than worry too much about how it might come across.

Our destination: The island of Bali in Indonesia, with a little stop over in Singapore on the way back.

For context, we went to Bali and Singapore for our honeymoon, 10 years ago, and Mrs Allergen Dad has family out there on her dad’s side (and a lot of happy memories on her mum’s side). So it’s somewhere we knew a fair bit about and I was very excited about showing Piglet and Dragon some of the sights I knew they’d get to see.

The challenge was always going to be food. Cow’s milk was not likely to be a big problem with milk being (at least historically) used a lot less than in Northern European cooking. Soya, on the other hand, is a staple of many Asian dishes from Chinese to Thai to Japanese to Indonesian cuisine. In the last blog post (Big steps for little feet), I wrote about the uncertainty of Piglet’s responses to soya. He certainly didn’t seem to be completely over his allergy but it seemed a lot less acute than when he was little. We decided to take a fairly pragmatic approach and just see how we went; not avoiding it completely but still avoiding tofu and vegan yoghurt where the dose would be high. That did however mean including soy sauce as he hadn’t had a strong reaction to that in the build up to the holiday. This approach, armed with the back up plan of lots of Piriton and just cooking back at the villa if it got too bad, seemed to be the most balanced approach we could take.

For Dragon, we’ve been more cautious in introducing the allergens that we know that Piglet struggled with. We’re pretty certain we’ve seen the same reaction to cow’s milk that I and Piglet have so that one was an obvious one to avoid. We’re also pretty sure that she reacts to soya, although I’m less certain about that. At one point we thought she was having a reaction to citrus fruit which was quite a surprise but in hindsight I think that might have just been a reaction to another allergen that we hadn’t understood at the time: egg. I was fairly sceptical about her being allergic to egg when my wife originally suggested it; it had been around the time we’d tried her on soya and it had been in both of their diets when she first started eating. But I gave her some mayonnaise the other day and within an hour she had eczema on her hand where she’d touched it and an unhappy tummy for the next 48 hours. As such, the plan for her in Bali was to just avoid milk, soya and egg as much as possible and treat the symptoms if she did end up having any.

So off we set! A 13.5 hour flight to Singapore, a couple of hours in Singapore Changi Airport, and then another 3 hours to Bali. All in all it was pretty much 20 hours door to door! As much as I was terrified about spending such a long time in just 3 seats with two little children, they were fantastic. They both slept quite a lot of the way and then Piglet got the rare experience of watching in-flight entertainment (or actually just watching screens more generally!) and Dragon fairly happily played and fed for the moments that she was awake. There were a few moments when she cried before she was ready to fall asleep but they were both very easy travellers! To be fair we’d done a lot of prep and packed virtually an entire rucksack of distractions and games for them both. So much so that we ended up not opening about half of the stuff but it meant we had something to fall back on whenever it looked like it might get tough.

I won’t do a full write-up of everything we did on the holiday. (I’m aware I’m posting far less than usual this year and I’ll never finish if I write up everything). But there were some highlights I wanted to share:

We were staying on the East coast of Bali in a place called Sanur. It’s away from the hustle and bustle of the more party areas of places like Kuta, Canggu and Seminyak, but still close enough to the tourism areas for restaurants, beach bars and trips. The other advantage is that while it misses the sunsets, it catches the sun rising up out of the sea just next to Mount Agung – an active volcano and the highest point in Bali. Getting two kids up in time to catch the sunrise was never going to be easy but we packed absolutely everything the night before and just threw them out of bed into a baby carrier and a pram. I’d misjudged the timing slightly so although it was starting to get light as we left the house, we still arrived at the beach in time to see the sun breaking above the water. We took quite lot of photos and videos from one spot but as we were walking away in search of breakfast I noticed the position of the sun above one of the jetties that leads out to the pagodas which sit out in the sea. The sun rise had framed it perfectly and I took the following photo without any planning or consideration. Granted this version has been slightly optimised in terms of the colours etc but it’s very much the photo I captured and I’m delighted with it considering many people probably wait days to get a clear day where the suns at the right position like this.

It was a very beautiful morning and I think even two tired children could appreciate the grandeur of the occasion.

Another highlight was the island tour we took one day. We were given a suggestion from my sister-in-law, who had been there just before us, for a driver who would help you create a full-day itinerary of tourism hot spots without the hassle of finding someone reliable. Most people will offer you a tour of the island if you just walk past their car! This guy (Pascal) did a wonderful job of creating a family-friendly day out where we got to experience a huge variety of sights and scenes. We went to see a Barong dance, a temple, a waterfall, lunch, and then finally a rice terrace which has been commercialised to become a coffee plantation, swing seat attraction and general photograph hotspot!

The Tegalalang Rice Terrace was an amazing place. All the beauty of a tiered rice irrigation hillside and then coupled with extreme swings that send you flying out over the valley, unusual sculptures and viewing platforms for the Instagram generation, and even a restaurant and bar overhanging the valley. If you don’t know me, you might not know that I’m terrified of heights. I managed to get on one of the ‘family’ or ‘couple’ swings that didn’t go very far and was more of a sofa than a swing but still had a significant drop below it. It took me about 4 minutes of pathetic dithering to join my family who were already strapped in but I was very glad that I did. My wife then completely showed me up by going on the “Extreme Swing” which involves a man literally flinging you out over the valley with his entire weight. I’ve never seen anything like it!

From an allergy management point of view, I do have to mention one beach bar/restaurant which was wonderful and I wish we’d had more time to spend there. Right down at the very southern end of Sanur was a fairly Westernised place called Genius Cafe. It covers a few bases in a being a “whole food” restaurant with co-working facilities for Bali’s ever increasing digital nomad community. But it’s also an attractive sea-front bar with cocktails etc… What appealed to me was that having a “high plant-based menu”; nearly all of their food and drinks were dairy free. They did quite a range of breakfast, lunch and dinner options including some Balinese dishes like Nasi Goreng and BumBu curry but mostly just a big variety of global dishes with a health food twist. Ironically, I ended up having the most indulgent mix of food and drinks which felt far from ‘healthy’ but absolutely everything was fresh, visually appealing and delicious. I ended up having a ‘chicken burger with the lot’ but also a chocolate coffee smoothie, a salted caramel affogato and even a selection of ‘raw desserts’ to take home. They certainly did well out of our trip there! But I still wish we’d had more time to try more of the menu.

Another of our expeditions was a venture all the way across to the West coast (albeit at pretty much the thinest point of the island). One of the few things we’d actually booked before we arrived in Bali was to go to the enormous water park called Waterbom in the party capital of the island, Kuta. Once voted the best water park in Asia (and second best in the world!); it’s a waterslide fan’s paradise. There are more slides than I managed to count, from simple short ones for little kids all the way up to vertical drop slides with loop-the-loops. In truth, much of the park was too high-octane for a family with kids aged 6 and 1 and my vertigo was a bit of a limit for me in climbing to some of the tallest slides. But both kids loved the lazy river and the designated little ones section.

One of the things that impressed me was the level of staffing in the kids areas. Even the littlest slides had a super-friendly member of staff manning the top to keep an eye out for any one in trouble. Piglet probably went down some of the slides 30+ times, being on nearly first name terms with the staff in the end!

Piglet and I did get to try one of the more intense rides during the day. Unfortunately the height/weight limits on a lot of the rides meant he wasn’t eligible and on others even if he was, I think he would have been too scared. But we did manage to persuade each other, on a second attempt (him with a fear of the ride, me with a fear of the steps to get there!), to go on one of the big ones called Python. You sit in a life-raft-style tube together, facing each other as you fly down into a huge encompassing tube. What I hadn’t realised is that the middle section of the ride is pitch black and, having been the heavier of our two-man team, I was going backwards when we went into that section. The white look of shock on my son’s face as we both disappeared into a twisting turning race of complete darkness will live with me for a long time. I remember thinking “I hope he’s not too upset when we finish, hell, I hope he’s still in the raft!”. When the ride was discussed with the rest of the family later he apparently loved it but I can tell you as we got out at the end, he was definitely still a bit wobbly!

But one of the other reasons to mention Waterbom was the food. Being a theme park of sorts, I was skeptical that it would be easy to find much to eat; and particularly concerned when I saw that they did not permit you to bring any food in with you. However, I did see that they can give you a stamp so that you can leave the park and come back later if you want – so if nothing else we could get lunch nearby and come back later if we needed. To my surprise, the park did a huge range of food types from Pizza to traditional Indonesian, to Mexican and Japanese etc… Not only was the food impressive but it was simple to customise options and getting food for the four of us was really easy, tasty and not even that expensive (even for Bali).

In fact, that level of ease when eating was evident for our entire holiday really. Obviously it helped that Piglet was eating some soya but with Dragon we still tried to avoid soya completely and it was pretty common for us to just order some plain chicken and rice whether or not it was on the menu. Satay without marinade, pizza without cheese, steak cooked without butter, smoothie bowls without milk were all provided without the slightest hint of being an inconvenience or a worry. So much so, that we only cooked at the villa a couple of times the entire holiday.

Just as an aside, something that made me laugh is that virtually every restaurant/cafe/hotel had the same Ikea highchair that we use at home. Even the villa had the same one in the same colour. Dragon must have felt like being at home away from home. Which, actually, is quite a good description of Bali!

If Bali was relaxing in tropical paradise; Singapore was an exercise in itinerary cramming. We were only there for 3 nights but we managed to fit a lot of things in to those couple of days. It helped that we knew our way around from our honeymoon 10 years ago; and we were deliberately staying in a similar area to help with that. Within an hour of checking into our hotel, we were back out at a specific restaurant called Rendezvous, in Clarke Quay. The restaurant has an old family connection being run by a family who were friends of my wife’s grandmother who lived there. The restaurant has moved several times since then, but it’s a nice way to link in some of Piglet and Dragon’s Singaporean heritage. As much as I love the idea of taking the two kids to a restaurant linked to their maternal ancestors; the main pull for me was that they do some of the best beef rendang I’ve ever tasted. It doesn’t look like much on first impressions being one of many shopping mall eateries, and I even wondered whether we’d been over enthusiastic in rushing straight there to get food that was probably fairly common place. Or at least I wondered until I ate some. Then the wondering stopped…

Our next day was spent heading out to Singapore Zoo, also somewhere of big significance in my wife’s family history. As much as Piglet and Dragon loved seeing the animals – the zoo was possibly the closest we got to disappointment across the holiday. It’s still an incredible place but it felt more commercialised and the animals less accessible than I remembered. But we did get to go to the Night Safari for my first time and I did enjoy that a lot. But possibly more importantly, I got to catch up with a good friend who moved out there a few years ago and I’d barely seen since. It was lovely to catch up with him and his daughter even though trying to start any meaningful nostalgic or profound conversation in the presence of 3 small children eating together for the first time is tricky to say the least. I think we probably started about 30 separate threads of conversation even if we only managed to close off about 3 of them. It didn’t stop it being really heartwarming to see him again and spend time with a friend on the other side of the world.

Our last full day was spent sightseeing and catching up with yet more family, specifically my wife’s cousins, who very kindly took us for dinner right next to iconic Merlion. We managed to visit quite a bit of Gardens by the Bay, seeing the Cloud Forest and even catching the light display called the Garden Rhapsody where they light up the incredible artificial ‘Supertrees’ to a montage soundtrack. It was all quite an amazing spectacle but it was one of the few times in the holiday where I found the heat genuinely difficult. I loved the heat generally and you find a pace of life that matches the humidity most of the time. But this afternoon felt particularly hot and being out in the middle of the afternoon with Dragon strapped to one of our backs and Piglet waining; we had to start planning our next steps just to find a way to cope. The Cloud Forest ended up becoming an essential part of the trip; not just because it’s a stunning construction but because it’s kept artificially cool. We basically had to move between here, the shopping malls and the MRT (Singapore’s highly efficient metro system) just to stay cool enough to keep functioning. Even watching the light display at night later that evening; it was swelteringly hot in the night!

Eventually the holiday had to come to an end and we headed back to the impressive Changi Airport to fly back home. We’d heard a bit about the shopping/dining/entertainment complex called Jewel but had underestimated its size and not really left enough time to explore it fully. There’s nothing quite like knowing that you need to go through security to take the relaxation out of the world’s largest indoor waterfall or sky-high children’s play area.

As always, airports were one of the more difficult options for food although we managed to find something before boarding for the 13+ hour flight back home. And 22 hours since we’d woken up, we got back into the alien familiarity of our own beds.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the sporadic highlights of our holiday. Do let me know if you have any specific questions – I’m more than happy to go into any details. But for now:

Toodlepips x

P.S. I’ve just finished editing this blog to the backdrop of a monumental thunderstorm in the UK. Ironically, the one thing we didn’t get to see at any point in either Bali or Singapore (and something I was disappointed not to let Piglet and Dragon experience). I’ll never forget the first tropical thunderstorm I did get to see!