10,000 hits

Oh, the places you’ll go this week celebrates 10,000 hits. We named the site after the classic children’s book by Dr Seuss, with a clue in the URL ‘great balancing act’ as to what it was all about.

We started blogging 18 months ago as an on-line diary to keep friends and family up to date with our travels during our ‘year off’ – though it would be more accurate to call it a ‘year on’. A year when the work-life balance was tilted very much in favour of life.

The photo above shows Tash asleep in her father’s arms at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, just before our flight to Cambodia, our home for the year. It was as if Tash had already absorbed the ability of Thai people to sleep anytime, anywhere, after only a few days in the Kingdom. It was the first of many instances where she slipped with apparent ease into a strange and wonderful environment.

As we wrote on during our months away, it emerged from our ‘blog stats’ — the figures that tell you what search terms people use to find your site and what links they click on when they drop by — that the site was filling a gap in terms of upbeat information on travelling in Southeast Asia with small children, especially in countries like Cambodia and Laos. At least one of our readers says she was inspired to take the plunge and head off travelling with her small son on the strength of our posts — which is about as good as it gets in terms of compliments!

This has inspired me to keep the blog going as a guide to travelling with children, wherever we are in the world — a reminder to recapture the spirit of travelling even at home. To slow one’s pace. Take in the sights. Be in awe and appreciation. Take joy from watching a child experience the world in all its glorious diversity.

Thanks to everyone who has followed our travels and visited our blog. Keep on dropping by and feel free to leave comments.

Oh, the places we’ll go…