Getting onto the plane was easy; after all, what three-year-old doesn’t get excited about the prospect of riding in an aeroplane? Of course, Sequoia, my daughter fell asleep before we even took off, making our hard-won window seat a bit redundant.
This wasn't our first big travel; Sequoia was born on the road, and we took her from Brazil down to the south of Argentina and then overland all the way to Canada and eventually to Europe and Israel, a journey that took until she was seventeen months old.
Twelve hours later, including a stop in Amman, we arrived in Bangkok, where we found ourselves standing in the oppressive heat and thick brown air, looking for a taxi.
That was when Sequoia decided that she'd had enough of traveling and cried to go back; not to her grandparents' home where we had been staying the past few weeks, not to our apartment in the city, but to the local convenience store in our neighbourhood, to buy a Kinder Surprise.
It seemed that the only thing that would calm her would be a cheap chocolate egg with a toy inside.
I placated her with hugs, gentle understanding of her homesickness, and a promise that once we got into Bangkok I would take her to a shop to find chocolate. We arrived to our guest house, and were given a choice of several rooms.
I took Sequoia to see them all, but she shook her head and whimpered at the sight of each one. Finally, a dingy but breezy room on the third floor containing two single beds brightened her mood; smiling, she ran to one of the beds and proclaimed, "This is my bed! This is our room!"
I left our bags in a jumbled pile and took Sequoia in search of candy, which we found quickly in the cool air-conditioning of a Seven-Eleven on the corner of our laneway.
At dinner that night, with a bunch of our friends, I realized that Sequoia would probably subsist on western-style junk-food for a couple of days, but I figured it was worth it if it would fill her need to have some kind of familiar comfort in this strange new land.
Walking around Bangkok was difficult at best, our progress impeded by virtually every person we passed wanting to touch Sequoia's milky, freckled skin and soft ginger curls. Naturally she shied away from the locals, refusing their offers of fried bananas and sweets, crying if they tried to pick her up.
After we recovered from the jet-lag, we got tickets on a night bus south, heading to the Rainbow Gathering.
Ela and Sequoia at The Rainbow Gathering |
We packed up our stuff and started to load our bags into a taxi to the bus station, but Sequoia became hysterical, refusing to get into the car. The driver was trying frantically to get her in, and a crowd quickly formed, everyone pushing her to get into the car.
I saw straight away that she needed some comfort, so I took her out of the taxi and the crowds and sat with her on the curb a little distance away.
Knowing that her fear of the strangers was rational, and that she just wanted to maintain some kind of control on her rapidly changing environment, I listened to her cry, and validated her feelings, telling her that it's okay to cry and to feel sad.
One of the most important things I've learned about traveling with children is that they need to know where they are going and what they are doing, that their needs are valid and that most of the time, just waiting with loving patience for a few minutes will, most of the time, mean that they are willing to travel with you, rather than be dragged around like unwilling luggage.
I gently explained that we would be going on a bus for the night, and in the morning we would be arriving to the rainbow to see all of our friends, and that we would put up our big tipi and swim at the beach. Sequoia calmed down after about five minutes, and we got back in the car, to enthusiastic applause.
By the time we arrived to the bus station, Sequoia was asleep in my arms, I put her into the sling on my hip and with my backpack on my back managed to get to our bus and lie her down on the seat.
As the sun rose, we found ourselves driving through thick mist in the middle of a jungle, coconut palms entwined in dense vegetation along the winding road. Sequoia woke up and joyfully pointed out everything that we passed, blissfully waking up everyone else on the bus.
The bus dropped us off at around nine in the morning; the sun was already high and unbearably hot, though it felt good to thaw out after a night in the frigid air-conditioning of the bus.
A kind English woman gave us a ride from the bus station to the little village on the beach that was the nearest road to our destination, eight of us with big backpacks piling onto the back of her pick-up, and Sequoia and I sitting up-front in the cab.
From the village it was still a fifteen minute walk along the beach, so we stopped in a restaurant to have breakfast before the hike, which of course, with the big bags and Sequoia scrambling over the rocks at high tide took us the better part of an hour.
We finally got into the camp of the rainbow gathering, welcomed by some of our friends, and Sequoia immediately found another three-year-old; a little boy named Merlin who took her hand and showed her around the beach while we worked on setting up camp.
And so Sequoia quickly settled into her new home, happy to play with everyone around, disappearing with Merlin into the jungle for hours at a time and begging friends to cut coconuts down for her to drink.