Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 264 | Recapping Our Trip Around the World! (with 3 kids)

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Check out our Youtube channel to watch vlogs from these trips! ▶ https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@ShawnandAndrew⁩  Shop Pioneer ▶ https://pioneerpastures.com/products/a2-chocolate-milk?srsltid=AfmBOoo0X22fff5w369E59BDllVfbFlHdgr8yCP54d_tOQzZVRqz_pE Subscribe to our newsletter ▶ https://www.familymade.com/newsletter Follow our podcast Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/shawnandandrewpods/ Follow My Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnjohnson Shop My LTK Page ▶ https://www.shopltk.com/explore/shawnjohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow Andrew’s Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Andrew’s Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewdeast?lang=en (00:00) circling the globe with three little ones (04:50) debunking “vacation is relaxing” (07:22) travel logistics (11:32) landing in tokyo, ramen, and the bullet train (13:20) our time in osaka (16:06) how we became our own travel agents (21:20) timezone change parties :) (22:11) story time: stressors 1 and 2 (29:00) stressors 3, 4, 5, 6... (31:18) i thought i was prepared (31:50) japan was amazing (35:04) drew lost her first tooth (35:27) more japan fun (37:50) off to singapore (44:00) time for dubai (44:20) pause... hospital visit story first (46:50) meeting our remote team member (47:13) back to dubai (50:28) dubai made up for every stressor (54:30) back home we go Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to a couple things. With Sean and Andrew. We are back. And we have so much to share about our circling the globe with three little ones. That's right. This episode is going to be a recap of our experience, taking our five-year-old, our three-year-old, and our one-year-old around the world in 14 days. And we went to three main locations.

We went to Osaka, Japan. Yep. Singapore. Yep. And then Dubai, UAE. Yes. And we thought when we were planning this trip, that those were all kind of in the same area. We called it our Asia trip.

And it's not. It wasn't until we bought the flights. It's not an Asia trip. Yeah, it's not. It's around the world trip. We took way more time on the plane than we expected to. So much time on the plane. But we'll get to that.

We'll get to that. We're also doing a bunch of YouTube videos about this. So if you want to see the live experience, including everything we packed, all the activities we did, then you could check out our main channel, YouTube. But I hope that the takeaway from this episode and any videos we publish about our adventures are twofold. One, I hope that people know that we do enjoy traveling. Oh, yes.

I don't think it's like an idol in our lives. I don't think it's like the end all be all in life. I more view travel as a way to capture unique, intentional time with our kids. in this phase of life. And for us, we're pretty routine oriented when we're at home. And so when we travel and we take these trips, it's really the only time, the whole year that we'll be off the routine.

Well, and we work a lot, which is, I know a lot of you don't see that, but we do work a lot. And I feel like if we are home, our schedule is very crazy in the sense that people can, you know, grab our attention and require us to work more at the drop of a hat and if we schedule travel it's a way for us to literally like go black and go dark

on the on the calendar to where nobody can touch that. Yeah. And it's just one on one super like amazing intentional, fun, adventurous time with our kids. Yeah. And I want to say that because we're not travel influencers. I don't, we don't

want to make travel this aspirational dream to try to sell, but our motivations are just to get this type of quality time with our kids. You can do that a bunch of different ways. This is just our way to do it. I will also say, and I by nature and just like how we're wired, we aren't routine or repeat vacationers. So we don't have like that one place that we like to go every single year at the same time for the same holiday. We are very curious people and we like to go try and see new things and because of us our kids are the same way they like trying new things and going new places and so it's just kind of been a family thing that we wanted to do together we do seem to travel a lot though it's not like you said an idol of ours we love it um we are getting ready to leave

for another international trip tomorrow which is wild yeah we just got back last night uh and so we wanted to record this podcast while everything was fresh top of mind um but yeah we're kind of samplers and our goal in sharing and talking about this is that maybe we'll share experiences that weren't really well for us in this phase of life with the kids being the age they are and things that weren't worth doing but the second reason I want to talk about this and our experience is traveling as a family is I do think there is a connotation and kind of this default setting when you have kids you're like my life's going to stop I'm not going to be able to travel. It's too overwhelming. Oh, my gosh, it's too much. And we definitely

experienced that. I think there is, obviously, the newborn phase. You're not going to travel much. But hopefully us sharing this is inspiration that, like, you can still do all the wonderful things you like doing. If travel is one of those things, then travel included. But it actually enhances the experience or it has for us to bring our kids along. It's definitely changed it drastically. It's made it more logistically challenging. Packing looks a lot different. You're lugging around, a bunch of stuff. You're playing more of a shirper role. But it's also not nearly as difficult as people think. Right. And so that's my, yeah, that's my goal is like, hey, you can do this. If it is a bucket list dream of yours, then please try it out because you're

going to love it. So that's a high level. I also want to start with this. Let me just ask a question. Did you have fun on our trip? I had a blast. I think there was, as we dive into this, there were a lot of stressors, unforeseen stressors. Yeah. That caused me to be on edge quite a bit at the beginning. But I think by halfway through, I was able to settle in better. I think it was the last third, probably.

The last third. There were a lot of stressors. Yeah, because, yeah. There were a lot of stressors. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. But I would say, I would say this. Let me just debunk this whole vacation.

I think when you're single, vacation is this relaxing on the beach, reading a book by the sun, whatever, the pool. Fun when you have kids, to me, means we're making meaningful memories as a family. We're teaching our kids something. We're becoming more of a team together and learning this, like, reliability on each other. When I grew up, we took camping trips. We would take long road trips. and then camp and very rarely did we go on a vacation where we were all like excited as kids to get in

the car for the road trip to start the vacation but inevitably by the end of it we were all closer together better for it had incredible memories my perception of vacation is not like oh it was this giggly frolicing on the beach experience it wasn't that for us this experience either this trip was more of a... But it was the last third of it. We had a blast if blast means meaningful times. There were also a lot of like

throw-ups on the plane. That's not a blast, but like, would I change? Anything about it? No. What? Nothing. How would we just tell them the story? What's... Well, you want to do this chronologically? Because I do think it's sounding

pretty doomsday-ish. I'm just repositioning. What is your idea of fun? I know. If it's like, oh, it was so relaxing. But positioning it, like, I see it as the way that I grew up, getting in the car and none of us want to be there and none of us want to go.

And, like, that doesn't sound good. Our kids were very excited about this trip. We were all ecstatic. I'm saying this was a meaningful experience together as a family. Yes. Our kids bonded. Yes. And really, it seemed like became teammates in a different way.

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, we grew. We got better. Go ahead. You can convince. Okay. So traveling logistics for this trip were definitely different than any other trip we've done because there were so many different flights and different hotels and different

transportations, planes, trains, automobiles. We flew from Nashville to Atlanta. We jumped on a plane from Atlanta and we went Atlanta to Japan. So we went west. It was a 14-hour flight. We have done first class before with our kids. we went first class to Israel with them a couple years ago and my two cents was it's not worth the money especially for like toddlers because especially when we went first class it was a fortune and we agreed to do it but the kids spent all the time just in like my seat or your seat yeah so we paid for like six place six seats and we used maybe too so for this trip I had planned on at least we'll get to the other parts but from our flight from

Atlanta to Japan since it was 14 hours I bought two extra seats I bought a seat for bear and then I bought an extra seat we were on Delta and they were very accommodating for that you have to pay the same fare that you paid for all your other seats but we paid we had two extra so we had two three person rows and it was actually great it was a very long flight but the kids did wonderfully we played with toys we used to like the little airplane slings they slept we ate we did laps around the plane we watched movies we did all these different things but overall on that flight it was a solid like a minus I only give a minus because it was so freaking long our five and three year old are fantastic they get pretty much just we let the kids binge screen time

on the planes we just do that with no guilt it's like hey let's get through this yeah they're champs about it and they were they were they've also traveled since they were young since they were born and they've gotten the hang of it they understand like they can get up and go to the bathroom by themselves they know how to ask you know the flight attendants for juice they are very familiar if they bring over a tray of food they know how to do that they know how to work the like the screens they're very familiar with planes and they like flying i feel like if you're of the mindset oh my gosh is too stressful to fly with kids i'm going to wait till some ambiguous age down the road it's still going to feel overwhelming at that age so our experience has been it's super

stressful to do a 14 hour fight with a 16 month old that is it was super stressful that's it but if you're able to deal with that stress for a little amount of time in their early age it does i think mold them into people jet our three-year-old was phenomenal He was up asking the waitress for water, going to the bathroom by himself. It was no maintenance on our part. We do buy the extra seat because our one and a half year old is very active as our other two kids. More courtesy for any person who's going to sit next to us. Yes.

And we kind of bounce back and forth holding him. He took intermittent one hour naps every now and then. He did great. And I also just want to say this. I have never been a fan of spending a lot of money on flights. I'm like, yo, this is such a small fraction percentage of our time on this trip. Let's spend more on our hotel room instead of the exponential increase from coach to first class on this. Do you feel that way after the last three flights that we had?

I would rather have bought the middle seat. I will say that. I don't think it's worth it in the phase we're in right now for first class with toddlers. It's exponentially more. exponentially more but paying for extra seats in economy or coach and making sure you have like a row or have an extra seat for space was definitely worth it and still drastically cheaper yeah so they did great we landed in Tokyo late at night late at night and then we had to uh mid mid afternoon oh that's right it was still it was like it was 2 p.m in Tokyo it was 2 p.m in Tokyo it was 2 p.m.

I'm all messed up. So, and then we had to get on a cab to go to the bullet train that was a two-hour ride down to Osaka. Yes, which was comical because by the time we got to the train station, first off, we had our first Tokyo meal at the train station before we got on the bullet train. We had a ramen and it was some of the best ramen I've ever had, just at the train station. We all, the kids got ice cream. We kind of like got ourselves back together and then got on the train. And that was our first introduction to Japanese culture, which is so quiet. It was incredibly quiet.

Nobody talked. Yeah, it's very clean. People are respectful. Very. And our kids probably were challenged most in that situation because they're pretty rambunctious. They're 5, 3, and 1. Honestly, I don't know if we give them too much slack or room to play. In Japan, we do.

Yeah, yeah, it did feel like that. It was funny though on the plane or on the train by the time we got on it was a two-hour train ride down to Osaka and we were exhausted at one point and this is I I'm shameful to even admit this at one point I woke up and Andrew was asleep with Bear in his arms and Bear was asleep Marsha Andrew's mom went with us she was asleep and Drew and Jet were still awake just like kind of running around they had stayed very close they were like right next to us but I was I was like, oh my gosh. Just a five and three-year-old unschaphroned. We were so tired. So tired. We couldn't stay awake. We made it to Osaka.

We stayed at the intercontinental in Osaka, which was incredible. Osaka was amazing. Imagine a version of Chicago that's very quiet, not busy, very green. And that's what Osaka felt like. There was this beautiful river with the bridges like you get in Chicago. the area we were staying was so walkable and wonderful we were right by the train station

so when we went to Kyoto or Nara it was just like an easy node to transport from I would also say the hotel was a perfect place to take because it was attached to a mall and it was also walking distance

to the train stations I think it was attached to the train station so you could access anything by walking the Intercontinental's food and the restaurants and the gym The service was amazing. We stayed in a two-bedroom residence there, which was great.

So instead of like a hotel room, it was like a residence that they were renting. And it had a master and a guest bedroom and a living room. The way we usually set it up is Andrew sleeps in the master with Bear, who is still in a crib when we travel. I will say this is nothing against our kids. It's just how it is. Traveling with a kid under two is the hardest. That is the hardest phase because you still need cribs and you need sleep sacks and diapers and like it's just the hard.

It's the hardest phase. After two, it gets exponentially easier for sure. So bear is still in the rough phase. But it's still worth doing under two. Thousand percent. So Andrew will sleep with bear and like, because I don't travel with monitors when we go overseas because we don't like leave them um and then i sleep in the guest bedroom with the big two we

usually just like i share a twin bed with one of them and we usually alternate nights they fight over they fight over it um and then marcia slept on a roll away in like the living room we like make that her room so a couple things that you just touched on one logistically um the hotel rooms and the accommodations and our travel style we've done a better job at pre-setting a budget yes that then we're both communicating on I kind of feel like set that threshold and then you run wild with it Sean loves planning I do not use travel agents Sean loves finding the hotels and finding the experiences booking all the travel she loves it so she just does all that because she likes it And the way that I do that for anyone that's curious is we basically throw darts and we figure out where we're going.

We set our budget and I work from there. I usually book the flights and the hotels. That's like where I start. And I usually don't book flights until I find hotels that feel really good. So like if I can't find a hotel in a city that feels like it fits for us, then for me I'm kind of like. So, for example, we were either going to stay in Kyoto or Osaka in Japan, which are both south of Tokyo, and we stayed in Osaka because of the hotel. Yes. We were going to stay in Abu Dhabi or Dubai.

We stayed in Dubai because of the hotel. Yes, we were going to stay, Tokyo was also an option, but Osaka had the best, you know, accommodations. I always do that because I do feel like especially if you're traveling with toddlers and kids, your home base is really important, especially if you're in a country that doesn't speak your language. Just being able to have a good home base is huge. If we were traveling in Europe, we 99% of the time will do Airbnbs, but because we are going to Japan and Singapore and places that don't really speak English, and they were culturally a lot different and new, we went with hotels. The intricate thing about Japan, Singapore, and Dubai was they had capacity issues,

especially in Japan and Singapore finding places that would accommodate three kids was very, very difficult. Very difficult. Some required that we had three hotel rooms. Some required that you couldn't have more than one kid per room per adult. It was really interesting. So trying to find something that accommodated that was hard.

Intercontinental was perfect because they had the residence options and they were very accommodating to many children. Yeah. So the first logistical thing was We've done a way better job at presetting a budget that then we'll plan everything around, flights, hotels, everything included. Second, our packing has drastically changed. You can see the whole video on main channel YouTube, but we had two carry-on rollers, two check rollers, and then two backpacks, which felt perfect.

It felt perfect. One person could pretty much carry all the bags while the other person was corraling the children. I will say we were one carry-on over. We didn't need a second carry-on because I packed one carry-on filled with toys and one carry-on filled with like blankets and like sound machines. Our kids never touched the toys the entire time we were gone. They just played, which I thought was incredible. I think at five and three they're playing more with each other,

kind of telling stories. Maybe they'll have a hot wheel or something. Yeah. Yeah. And then the days back to the hotel, like having a shared space like we did. was really good because our days are structured pretty much in two activity windows we have like pre noon 12 o'clock window where we'll go out and do something for three or four hours we do come back and we'll still let the kids nap because we try to mimic their normal routine we don't want to

throw all this new stuff at them so we try to like mirror their home routine a little bit we even did pasta night on Saturday night on our trip just like we do here in Nashville every week and then there'll be the afternoon post-napp window too, which is usually more relaxed than the morning window. And then I will say logistically speaking, as far as like the travel agent side, we put together an itinerary after I book the hotels and after we book flights.

And something that we do, which people are kind of torn about, is we never book experiences or activities until we're there. I will do a deep dive on research before we ever leave and I'll have like our top five to ten things that I want to try to accomplish while we're there like for example we were there in each place for five days so I picked out at least five activities and I would rank them one to five and then below that

I'll have like an extra five to ten and then each day depending upon how the kids are doing if they're needing to stay in for a day if they're too tired if they're ready to go then we'll say, okay, let's do this one today. And we'll go on Viator and book it last minute or, you know, do something like that. Yeah. Lastly, we did bring my mom. Yeah. Because that's been a really fun tradition we've kind of started is bringing her along.

And yeah, we're spoiled. We get to have intergenerational vacations. But if we can do it, we will. And so it was a blast to have her with us. We did not bring her for child care, but it is nice to have a third set of eyes to watch a one-year-old. when you're in a foreign country. Yeah, and we didn't use her for child care at all. No.

It was truly just having mom with us to experience it. And like I said, a third set of eyes with our kids who are running. Yeah. Okay, so now interjecting story time. Yeah. We make it to the hotel. As far as like time zone changes, by the way, people have asked how we do that. we like Andrew said we try to mimic the same schedule here no matter where we are so when it gets dark

we do bath and bedtime and but we're also very attuned to like if our kids wake up at 3 a.m. and they're just ready to go we're up at 3 a.m. and we're ready to party yeah you walked on the beach with them you would play in the pool with them I went to the gym with them yeah yeah um and we do naps during the day we don't cut off their naps like if if they need to nap and they end up napping for six hours, they're napping for six hours. Yeah. But I do feel like the more you can sleep, especially when it's like a drastic time change, the better off you are because you're not just like dying of exhaustion. Okay. So we go to bed. We wake up. I think we woke up at 3am the first day, which was great.

We went to the gym. We played around. And this was when the first dresser started. We had noticed Jett had a bug bite on his arm. Oh my gosh. Before we left, probably like a date before we left. But it looked like a mosquito bite. We have a lot of mosquitoes here in Nashville. Um, he has like a pretty good histamine response too. I have that as well where like if he gets a bug bite, he swells up a lot. Um, and so we didn't think anything of it. It was like on his wrist and literally I'm going through my text messages. The next morning, it had blown up and it did no, it like no longer looked like a mosquito bite. It looked like a bad bite. It was swollen. It was hot. His like full full forearm was swollen it looked weird and I was like holy crap like what is this so now we're in

Japan on a completely opposite timetable than Nashville it's literally 12 hours ahead I'm trying to get in touch with our pediatrician um an ER doctor here just trying to figure out what to do like is this nothing is this just another response and come to find out it is a brown recluse bite A very poisonous spider bite. This is a fun thing about parenting. A spider bite like that from, what you say, Black Widow,

or I would even put brown recluse up there with that. Yeah. Those are the top two. Was one of the things that I was most terrified about. But then it happens to your son and he handles it like a champ. That dude didn't even say a word about it.

No. I don't remember him even telling me that he got a bite, which is wild. Anyway, it makes a whole situation less daunting. But ground recluse bites, though, can kind of go one or two ways. It's either, like, it's fine. And we ended up treating it with, like, a really strong steroid cream and just covering it with band-aids and making sure it was clean.

Or it can turn very bad, very fast. Like, your skin can die. You can get systemic issues. It can, like, get into your bloodstream. Like, bad. Oh, man. So you either have a three-year-old situation. in Japan where it's like okay we either have to go find a pediatric hospital here where you're

going to be admitted and it's going to be bad or it's nothing you just kind of have to wait to find out but then it gets even more interesting so I'm texting our pediatrician we have all these opinions we've all deemed like just watch it it's fine next day we'll get to the activity that we did that day next day though in the back of my mind as a worried mom I'm stressed. I'm like, okay, we just have to make sure it doesn't go systemic. Like, get into his bloodstream.

He wakes up with a rash so incredibly bad all over his arms, all over his legs, all over his butt, and he's like so miserably uncomfortable because they're itchy. Imagine, imagine like a poison ivy rash

that was all over your lower body. That's pretty much what it looked like. But not on his torso at all. Yeah. At all. Now, when you become, come a parent to toddlers you get very used to rashes there are so many viral rashes but they usually all start on your torso and they might go to your arms and legs but they like it's very

common it's like private parts and torso that's where it starts and this wasn't there i was like what the frick is this so now we're calling more people getting in touch with the pediatrician again he's probably literally going to like say you can no longer be a patient of ours and we're trying to hustle around these Japanese pharmacies and like communicate with the local workers there through Google Translate and honestly that worked pretty well The Japanese pharmacies were incredible

We were also using ChatGPT to upload pictures of To ask what this rash was Which was clutch And we ended up finding out it was Giannati-Crosti syndrome Very rare It's a viral thing ultimately he had to take Zyrtec twice a day and it has since gone away

you can still see it like it is still all over his body it can take a very long time to go away but it's like a viral thing and honestly the way we came across exactly what it was our pediatrician was a saint he just kept saying it's viral it's okay like just take the Zyrtec twice a day he wasn't concerned but the way in my mind I was able to come to that conclusion and figure it out

and stuff was from you guys. Dude, social media is really cool in a lot of ways. I, and this is one of them. I desperate mama desperate times, trying not to harass a pediatrician even more, making sure he didn't need to go to the emergency room. I, like, asked you guys,

and I was sorting through DMs. And I told Andrew, it's so funny as a mom, you're introduced to so many things that I had this, like, roller decks of like, I know what things are and I know what things aren't. And I'm going through DMs. I'm like, nope, not that, not that, not that, not that.

that who what's this hold on let me google it nope not that and there is one mom who is like my son had this exact same thing at three years old it's called this and i googled it and i sent it to our pediatrician and they were like yep which i guess this is a whole issue with like webmding yeah self-diagnosing but sometimes it's really helpful because there are so many nuanced fringe medical issues that like you know it the best yes so having a doctor be the first filter is really important but also using the internet as a tool and social media as a tool is really helpful and before you start critiquing and saying like why don't you just take him to the emergency room or the hospital or a doctor in japan i have done

that jet has always been the kid where if we go overseas we have to find a doctor and we took him to a hospital in paris france yes and i'm not like absolutely i would definitely go to the hospital They had wonderful hospitals there. We actually ended up going to the hospital. With bear. With bear in a different country. But we are so fortunate and so lucky to have so many phenomenal doctors back in the States who have given us resources to call them, Zoom, FaceTime, I'll do all these things.

And under the guidance of them, they kept saying, it's not time to go yet. It's not time to go yet. It's not time to go yet. and we were able to, like, take care of it for him and not have to take him to the hospital. Well, all in all, we ended up having seven or eight medical issues, which is ridiculous. It was ridiculous.

But we, before we left, I had this little infection that was going on my hand. I had, like, red streaks going on my arm. The night before we were supposed to leave. We ended up buying travel health insurance because of that, and I was like, oh, what happened? So there's a couple good travel health insurance companies. If you've never done it, I would actually recommend it. We used Fay, F-A-Y-E, and it was like a couple hundred bucks.

And it gives you a peace of mind where you're like, if I do end up in a hospital for whatever reason with kids. You're covered. Yeah, it's nice. So I had this infection. I end up having a sty as well. And then I also had a bug bite myself. Yeah.

None of them were like serious. The kid's stuff was way more serious. But then Jett had the spider bite and the rash. Yep. And then Bayer had a reoccurring double ear infection that we could not get to go away. He was on two antibiotics and then we had to take him to an emergency E&T pediatric doctor in Singapore. How was that experience, Sean? We'll get there. It was horrible. Horrible. Yeah. Sean and I are dialing in our nutrition for the summer and our first priority is getting

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We pretty much spent all our time on vacation. Not actually. Curating different health. Not actually. it was very interesting though because this was the trip where I was like I'm going to be prepared as a mom and I talked to our pediatrician we talked through each location I even traveled with like an antibiotic and I traveled with plastic surgery glue because I've learned from our plastic surgeons with Jet how to like stitch things up and I thought I was prepared I traveled with a steroid because Jet. is very jet and they are very prone to like the croup cough and they their airways close easily oh my gosh this just sounds ridiculous we haven't even talking about what we did no anyways I was prepared and then I had nothing that we needed so so Japan was amazing

it was crazy because you go to a city in the U.S there's loud cars people are honking it feels overwhelming busy people like honks and talking and whatever there's noise but in Osaka It was so quiet. No noise. And it was not busy. People don't talk. And it was very green and beautiful. So that was just beautiful.

They had these parks that we really enjoyed. They had the most extreme playground I've ever seen in my life. It was so much fun. I think we'll make a whole YouTube video out of that because these slides were crazy. I'm talking like, you're going 20-some miles an hour down these slides. Our kids were in heaven. But let's just rip through some of the things we did. So the first day, once we slept in, we went to the Osaka Castle, which was incredible.

beautiful you walk around it was not busy for us it's this like a couple thousand year old structure yep that's just beautiful you feel beautiful park you like walk around it we took a double stroller and it was very accessible we almost didn't take a stroller very glad we took a stroller I'm very glad we took a stroller I was the crazy person that said we're not going to take a stroller we probably I think we averaged 13 to 15000 steps a day the kids could not keep up with that so glad we brought the stroller yet never got in the stroller um at oscar a cast we also took a boat ride which is delightful um i will say as a parent if you guys are thinking about traveling with your kids uh we don't have super picky kids when it comes to eating but i'd say they're

moderately picky like they like their macaroni their butter noodles their chicken nuggets they're you know very normal um we had zero issue in every location yeah we could find plain rice we could find plain chicken we like then the kids dealt with it great yeah um we went to the children's museum what was that called it's in it's in Japan Osaka that was a blast and we were in there with all these Japanese locals and the kids were just having a hoot of a time so that was a highlight kids Plaza kids Plaza that's also where the playground was if you're in the area or interested I would definitely recommend doing that we went to dottenbury yeah which is kind of like the Santa Monica Pier area.

How would you describe it? It's like Nashville's Broadway or... It's like the main strip of like walking malls or street vendors. We did Turkish ice cream. This guy was clowning on the kid. That was... Street vendors were incredible. Yeah.

Think like you could go to any street vendor like five feet apart and they had A5 Wagyu beef on a stick and you would buy it and they would sear it and put salt on it. I think we went through 15 of those. they had Gioza and they had, oh my gosh, what was the thing you ate? It was like Gioza, but it had the mayonnaise on top and the onions. Oh, I love. That was my favorite. You were like a kid and a candy store.

I could eat Gioza all day every day. I can eat A5 YUB. Are you kidding? That was a good day. Oh, I also forgot. On our way to Tokyo on the plane, Drew lost our first tooth. This one was talking about, like, for us, it's fun. I feel like the travel.

and the destination enhances the experience. So it would have been just as fun and memorable if she lost it at home, but that's a pretty epic. I lost my first tooth. We did this thing called the Team Lab Botanical Gardens. It's at night. If you are in Nashville, it's kind of like a cheekwood.

It's just like beautiful botanical gardens, but it was all lit up with like neon lights. Yeah. And the kids loved it. Yeah. That was really special. It was a little bit chilly. and then we went to Nara Park,

which was by far one of my favorite things we did in Osaka. It was in Kyoto. It's hard to describe this place. You show up and it's a bunch of Buddhist temples, which are beautiful. And then it's like this state park, which has so much greenery. There's green grass, green moss, these beautiful trees.

And then thousands of deer. Thousands. Just walking around. But they like humans. So they like come up to you. it was insane and you can feed them and oh my gosh like our kids were petting natural like deer yeah all-time memory for sure uh i actually one point got so close to deer it was scary for me you and jet were loving it for me i was like i'm not scared of animals but they were you had this

food in your hand and they would come bite your shirt yeah nip your hand and i was like these are wild They were like nipping Jets butt, and he was belly laughing so hard. He was living for it. So Nara is about an hour east of Osaka. We also went to Kyoto and Arraish – I'm going to say this wrong. Ariasima? Yeah. I don't know how to say it.

But that's where the bamboo forest is, which is beautiful. It's also where some more street vendors were. We also went to Fushimi, which is where the Tori Gates are, like the orange. The Tori Gates were incredible. Yeah. That was cool. and I think that was most of our time in Japan

It felt like a short time It did feel like a short time just because we were adjusting to a lot of the time changes and yeah it felt like a short time but we did a lot We were on the train a lot

The train was pretty easy to navigate there which was great We did the micro pig cafe Which was a little odd I would not recommend it Sean and Drew seemed to like it It was a little anticlimatic It was kind of like you go into this cafe, but it's not really a cafe.

Like a dirty room. And you just sit with little baby pigs. It was all right. It was cute. Then we loaded up and flew out of Osaka Airport on Scoot Airlines to Singapore, which was a seven-hour flight. Scoot Airlines is the equivalent to spirit. But it was great. The kids slept the whole time.

It was great. They had a snack pack that was nothing right at home about, but it is what it is. The snack pack was, it was like a blueberry muffin. a brownie, a nest quick packet, Prangles, and that was like their dinner. Yeah. Did not feel great about that, but whatever. So we landed in Singapore.

It was about a 15-minute ride to Marina Bay Sands Hotel where we stayed. Probably the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in my life. It was incredible. We thought this was going to be a place that we would live in. We were like, let's move to Singapore because this place is so awesome. It was epic. It was epic. But what we realized is a hotel for us was one of the best.

Yeah. Yeah, it was one of the best parts, which is not why we travel. We don't travel to stay in the hotel. I didn't feel like there was as much to do in Singapore as Japan or Dubai. I felt like in Singapore, the service, like the services and the hotels and the accommodations were drop dead, just stunning.

Incredible. The, like, 15 out of 10, the nicest we've ever been given. Like, we walked into our room and the kids had like a little bunk bed. room and they had custom robes made. For the kids. And we weren't by any means staying in like the penthouses or like this was just truly how they handled

it at the hotel. The food was incredible. They had a pantry for families where you go in there and you have this option to get a stroller or diapers or an assortment of different things. It was they stocked the fridge, the mini fridge with like fruit

pouches and milk and it was incredible. It was incredible. It was awesome. I will say, though, it didn't feel like there was a lot to do in Singapore that was kid-friendly or just outdoors because it was so humid and hot. It seemed like a lot of the attractions there had to do with the malls, which was like very high-end luxury shopping, which is just not our style. So in the Malaysia area where Singapore is and also in the desert area countries, what I didn't realize functionally, it's so hot or hot and humid. there that pretty much all people do there is spend time at the mall.

Yeah. So that also is just not any interest of mine necessarily. I'll like do it if it's the Mall of America and it is a site but that's not why I want to travel. And this was a site. It's just you can only like your activity

can only be the mall like once or twice. Not every day for five days. Yeah. So we got a little antsy there just wanting to have more activity options. But I will say I almost shed tears twice on the trip. One of them was in Singapore. They have these cloud gardens. Is that right? Cloud forest. Cloud forest and cloud gardens. It's kind of two different greenhouses. And the flowers in this place and the trees and the

greenery and the other bubble greenhouse were overwhelmingly beautiful. And I would go to Singapore just for those. That was amazing. something else we were we really wanted to go to the aquarium but it was under renovation because it's ranked as one of the top aquariums in the world they also have centosa that we weren't able to get to think of like a Disneyland or a universal but a different variation they had Lego land they had a lot of like those same theme parks that you could get but if you could do it anywhere I don't do it there I agree I agree and this the hotel we stayed at is iconic It has this pool on top of these three columns, and it's an infinity pool.

We swam in that a couple of times, which was honestly incredible. But it was a little hard because Bear had an ear infection, so Bear couldn't swim, and Bear is, like, the biggest water kid in our family. It was also not fully kid-friendly in the sense of, like... A lot of breakables. A lot of breakables, and it was a very calm pool. It wasn't like a go-play splash pool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it was stunning. the food in Singapore though that buffet at the hotel was it was on a different level unbelievable it was unbelievable the most food I've ever seen in my entire life yeah and it's like crab legs also the first night that we got there we got the kids to sleep and I think it was around midnight yeah and I ended up going out Andrew's mom went to sleep too and we went to the food court in the mall and got a hot pot dish for the first time and it was probably My favorite meal, we had the entire trip. Yeah, that was delicious.

It was the most delicious thing I've ever had. That's also in Singapore where I passed at 11 p.m. local time, my oral defense of my dissertation proposal. Which caused the stress stye. Yeah, that's where I got my stye. But that was a highlight. I feel like we hung out most in the hotel there. We worked out quite a lot there. And early in the morning, we were still on the time change differential.

Sean and I are training for something. So being able to work out was great. We also did Chinatown and Little India. Oh, yeah. Which was beautiful. It just was so, so incredibly hot that it was, which is interesting. It wasn't as hot as Dubai, but because of the humidity, it was unbearable for our kids. Yeah.

We did a Viator city tour, which was fantastic. I'm super glad we did that because I feel like we actually got to experience a little bit of Singapore. I did love being able to go to one of the food markets. the oh a hawker center yeah like the OG hawker center in Singapore which is super cool and we got to try a bunch of food found out jet loves curry yeah loves curry and then we got to try

a bunch of really interesting things that were delicious yeah so Singapore is great another highlight was a Singapore airport they have this incredible waterfall that people travel just to the airport for as well as this park where there's like a ropes course and all these activities that I did with the kids, so much fun.

We loaded up on Singapore Airlines to go to Dubai. This was where the flight got real spicy, seven hours again. Should I tell them the hospital visit real quick? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Backing up, our last day in Singapore, so Bear has now putting you in the place that we are,

Bear has now gone through two full antibiotics, which sucks. The worst. And even after two full antibiotics, his ear is still oozing like pus which sounds disgusting to say he does have ear tubes like we're very familiar with what to do with ear infections and like everything and he just needed to be seen again and so we went to ratville's hospital i went to especially in different countries it's very hard with pediatrics you can't just go in anywhere you have to find like someone who will see a pediatric

patient so we found this en t the en t would see him and it was just it made me really really thankful for the pediatric specialist that we have in the United States because it just was a different feel. I don't think they were used to handling a pediatric patient

and Mama Bear came out because they were manhandling bear so much that it made me want to punch someone in the face. Squeezing his cheeks, that what they did? Oh, like turning his face purple and he was screaming bloody murder because they were trying to like, yeah.

just see in his ear and do stuff, but different than how you would handle a pediatric patient. At one point, they told me that they needed to do surgery on him and like all this stuff. So I was just like, get me the freak out of here. No. We ended up getting ear drops for him though,

which were worked wonders. I was able to get a hold of an E&T doctor here in the States who was such a blessing who walked me through a bunch of things to do and reassure me that we were doing the right thing. But yeah, so we had the hospital visit in Singapore. Raffles Hospital was incredible. It was very easy to get in and easy to get an appointment.

I don't have anything against them. I don't have anything against the doctor. It was a language barrier. It was so many different things like going on. But I meant it was just a cultural difference too. So you can't. And the lady's just trying to take care of the year. They were trying to take year of bear.

But there was no like, let. Let's cater to an infants or like a baby's emotional needs. It was like a, let me lay on top of him and just like get this over with. Yeah. So Singapore's great. We also got to meet up with someone who we've worked with for nine. Kim. No, not nine years.

Seven years. Kim, who flew over from the Philippines, first time meeting her in person. And she has. She's like our best friend. Yeah. It was great. The kids loved her. We've known her for seven years and worked with her for seven years, but never met her in person.

So this was a fun excuse to be able to do that. And that was a blast. Then we got on an airplane to Dubai. Singapore Airlines. Was fantastic. One of the nicest airlines I've ever been on. The flight attendants uniforms were amazing, like ornate design dresses, the whole thing. We owe all of them flowers for a century.

So we get on this plane, Bear has a poopy diaper. We did not bring diapers. So we're trying to figure that situation out. We're about to ask people for spare diapers, other parents on the plane. In the middle of that, bear throws up, like projectile vomiting. He's not a good situation. And it's not because he's sick. It probably has to do with his ear.

And also, he's always kind of done this. He's just always kind of done this. He's been a puker. Yeah. So now he has throw up all over him. The seat has to throw up all over him. Andrew is covered. I'm holding him.

I always covered and throw up. So the flag. light attendants were amazing. They cleaned it up. We got them changed. We got a diaper. They had diapers on the plane. They had diapers on the plane. But I didn't have a change of clothes. We had one for Barrett, not for me. So we got off the plane in Dubai, and I'm wearing Sean sweatshirt. It doesn't even color my belly button. We're in a country where you need head coverings, and I did not have a belly. I did not have a belly button covering. Very modest, Muslim country. So felt a little ridiculous, but Ksara, sirrah, what will be. be will be and then Dubai was amazing we loved it we would live there if we could loved it we did the aquarium in the mall another big mall country by the way but there's an aquarium there we stayed at imagine a world-class city that's miles away from world-class beaches there's no place in my mind that matches it I mean maybe Miami but on a whole different scale not even close the whole like Dubai was started in 1971 and

And they found oil and they had all this money. So they said, let's make the best city. And honestly, they did a good job. Yeah. So it's beautiful. And the structures, the buildings you see there are incredible. We did. We stayed at the Jamera Beach Hotel, which I highly recommend.

Any hotel owned by Jamera Beach on the same strip could not say better things about. Central located. There's a ton of restaurants, very family friends. was great. There were kids everywhere. The service was incredible. They were very welcoming to children in every possible way. The accommodations, the food.

We stayed in a same setup, like a two-bedroom residence. That's what we did in every city, even at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. It was a two-bedroom residence. It was the greatest experience for my life. So this is one of those things. We just got off the plane seven hours ago. Yeah. To end this trip.

I'll feel like this is one of those things where in the moment there's so much going on with hustle on the kids and trying to get everything, you know, organized and make it all happen that I have not reflected on this at all. Yeah. Usually I feel like vacation when you're single, you're reflecting on the vacation. This will take months to digest. That place was nuts. Dubai made up for every stress I personally felt the first two-thirds of the trip.

like all the medical issues by this time jet's arm is great his rash is great bears ears clearing up andrew stye is clearing up you know the medical issues i've stopped but it's also just like the most beautiful place we have ever been we started out with a bang and did this night safari so another viator experience yeah by the way if you've never heard of viator it's an easy place for us to just go and start to find experiences you kind of understand like dubai family you can search whatever and this was through 57 heritage it was like a five-hour long excursion we rode camels we saw falcon show we did uh off-roading in the sand dunes belly dancers a fire dancer had a delicious barbecue meal authentic meal with like babo ganouche and hummus and um

it was just saw an incredible sunset it was arabic uh no arabic coffee yeah stuffed day It was literally my... Oh, those donuts were nuts, too. It was my dream meal. That was a... The kids called it the circus, and they just had... We had dinner barefoot, and they were run around the sand. It was ideal for kids, so if you're in the area,

would highly recommend trying that out. I will say, shockingly, that was something that I didn't put on my list, because the way that it was marketed on Viator and everywhere that I found, it does not look kid friendly it looks very like party raveish but it was the most family friendly thing we did our entire trip oh my gosh it was so fun it was so cool um we then went to like wild wadi wild wadi water park in the jamara area there's a uh water park right there kids had a blast they had a wave pool they had little slides little slides and big slides Sean and I actually got an hour to ourselves to go do water slides, which I didn't know this, but I'm into water slides.

I love water slides while the kids were napping. We're going to get to high him. We went to Abu Dhabi and we got to see the Grand Mosque. We got to go to the suks. We got to go to the date market. The palace. The presidential palace. Again, the structures you see there are amazing.

You just don't get that type of, I don't know, grand. Joie in the U.S. We went to the Dubai Mall, and we went to the aquarium, which was incredible. Did you say that already? Yeah. So the biggest alligator I've ever seen in my life there, it was nuts. It was nuts. We went to a random cafe in the mall, and it was some of the greatest food we'd ever had.

We went to Air Maniacs, which was this indoor bounce house, which was nuts. It was, I don't know, 20,000 square feet of bounce house, slides, and whatever games, obstacle courses. We went to this wild paint Or wild paint house Yeah where they put kids in ponchos And they just get to throw paint and create art That was a blast We played at the beach

We went to the Burj Khalifa Tallest building in the world Went to the top of it That was an experience You could probably do in 20 minutes round trip The elevator takes one minute To get to the top It goes 10 meters a second

Which is wild What else do we do there? I will say when we were in Singapore we are already talking about cutting our trip shorter because we were getting a little antsy. By the time we were in Dubai, we were like, can we stay here an extra of week? Yeah.

We went date shopping. So Sean's favorite dessert is dates. And Dubai is like ground zero of that. Oh my gosh. B-A-T-E-E-E-L. The greatest dates I've ever had in my entire life. I'm going to get on today and I'm going to order a package. Please do.

Delicious. And then we ate at some pretty good restaurants. And then we jumped on the plane, went from Dubai to London, which was seven hours, London to Nashville, which was nine hours. It was seven and a half, nine and a half. And what a time that was. And the kids crushed those flights. They were, I will say by the end of this trip, it felt like our kids had settled in so much. They were so comfortable on the planes.

I even asked you, I said, do you like plane rides or car rides better? And she's like, plane rides. And I said, why? Because on car rides, you can't do anything? And I said, do you like long plane rides or are these too long? And she goes, no, I like them a lot. And I said, okay. Drew, I was so impressed with the kids.

I learned about the kids. I think the kids learned something new about themselves, each other, and the world. Sean and I had incredible memories. This is a phase of life with these kids that is so fleeting. Druid age five is already transitioning out of the rapidly developing everything's new, everyday phase.

And so, yeah, we wanted to capture this phase through this trip. I'm glad we did. Are we incredibly privileged? Yes. But I don't know. I feel like this is something that we will have emotional withdrawals from.

Am I saying that right? It was an emotional deposit that we will reap the benefits of, the rest of our lives. Yes. So thank you for planning it. Thank you for all the hard work, packing, doing all the stuff.

Sorry for being so stressed the front half of the trip. There was a lot going on. A lot going on. And again, if you don't know, Sean and I, every year for Christmas, gift each other experiences.

And so it's transitioned from just experiences for Sean and I to do. Like, we'll take two or three nights just her and I to do a trip and expand it into experiences for the family. So it's our intention to do one big family trip like this a year.

And this was this year's. I can't leave it's over. I know. I know. We're going to have to reflect on this. But what a time it was. Thank you. Thank you.

And thank you to buy a tour. Thank you to Faye. Thank you to all the doctors. Thank you to the hotels. The wonderful waitstaff. The freaking flight attendants for all the patients. It's really fun. Every country we went to, Sean got really.

recognize, which still blows my mind, but you steward that so well. Thank you, baby. So thank you to all of you who said hello to us. That's a blast. Always is fun to say hello. Um, and thanks for listening. So if you have any questions, concerns, thoughts of where we should go next time, please comment. You made it as far. Please subscribe to the channel. Hit the like button or give it a rating. That's all we have. Do you have anything else? No. Sweet. Well, welcome home to Nashville for a quick 48 hours where we turn around and do something else

that's wild that we cannot yet disclose but we will. Anyway, that's how we have. I'm Andrew. Until next time.