fijipina

from group of islands to another

24 Jun 2010 4 Comments

by shallow in thoughts

i came back to fiji the other week with a two-year-old in tow. traveling with a pre-schooler was smoother than i expected. she was well-behaved throughout the entire trip, even during the long hours in flight. granted she slept about half the time going to fiji from hongkong…

before i went on the trip, i asked other mothers who have tried traveling with their two-year-olds to very distant destinations how they kept their little tykes entertained enough to keep them from throwing a tantrum in extreme boredom. and the recommendations came in both ordinary and unfamiliar forms:

bring a portable dvd player with her favorite movies.
let her carry a favorite stuffed animal.
coloring books and crayons.
give her a dose of cough syrup.

the dvd player would have been nice, but i don’t have one nor do i own a laptop. and i wasn’t willing to spend for it.

i couldn’t find her favorite stuffed cat “oliver”, so i bought the stuffed horse she’s been wanting in s.m. i didn’t show it to her until we got the airport. as soon as she walked around the check-in area with it all excited and cheerful, another kid tries to snatch it off her grasp. the nerve. robyn held on more firmly to the little horse which just made the other kid more determined. i finally pried it off their hands, but the kid kept tugging at it even while i tried to keep it from her reach. she eventually gave up.

i brought crayons and a coloring book. i didn’t even get the chance to show her the coloring book; she enjoyed drawing on blank sheets of paper.

babyn's 'happy square', though it looks more like a smirking square.

babyn's 'mumu' under her 'moon' that looks like a sickle about to decapitate the 'mumu'... if that is even possible to do to a ghost.

and i had a few disney princess storybooks as well.

as for snack food, we had enough cheez curls and choco mucho to last us until hongkong. then i had to buy popcorn to last us until fiji.

we stayed in the regal hotel, the one you can walk to via footbridge from the terminal. i love that place! it’s just the kind of modern maximalist i like. we were bumped up to a one-bedroom apartment with two queen size beds, a kitchen and a veranda. but we only paid for the standard room we booked earlier. talk about lucky. i wish we could have stayed there longer.

speaking of hongkong… i am crazy about their new airport. because it’s so huge i can get lost there. which i did. and i am positively obsessed with the noodles there. hey, it’s the chinese after all. i dream about those noodles. i told my husband we should go back to hk just to eat those noodles.

so here we are now.