Quality time at Club Med Bali
Keeping it real. Just a catchphrase or an idea that bloggers/social media influencers are embracing? In the interest of keeping it real let’s just say I don’t really count as an online influencer. My online stats are modest at best. My blog is a creative outlet as I negotiate a world where my dream that women can have it all has been shattered. I do my best to balance motherhood, home-life and a my career as a doctor – all with varying success. Keeping it real for me means (mainly) shirking any aspiration that I can be an even passable homemaker – I am indeed dodgy at it. I embrace what I love doing with my kids – exploring, learning together, travelling, and yes, sometimes that means carting them around with me for work in my own career woman version of attachment parenting. I also love sharing with you, the reader some of the highlights of our travels. I have however been inspired by an article, featured on Mamamia that introduced to me the concept of “travel shaming“. In it blogger Alex Sizeland writes about travel blogging:
The problem I have with these articles isn’t that they’re necessarily inaccurate – on the whole they have some valid points – it’s that they paint “travel” exclusively as something that is always momentous and moving and only for people on a quest to become enlightened. Which is b—s—.
If you have the money and the physical ability to get on a plane or train or car, you can travel. Whether it’s down the road to a caravan park, or taking selfies with the sphinx in Egypt, it’s all valid. These bloggers are doing people a disservice by suggesting otherwise.
So – in general I do my best to keep it real on this blog. I do accept some sponsored posts (declared) and am gifted entry to some attractions. I’m not really concerned about keeping it real in terms of these relationships with brands although perhaps if some of them started sending the big bucks my way it will become an issue. I detest the idea of travel shaming though. No reader of Bubs on the Move will be travel shamed. That is my new motto! In the interest of kicking travel shaming to the curb I decided to the share the backstory behind some of my family travel photos. I chose the photos in this blog and on my Instagram account based on a few select criteria –
(1) They are a reasonable photo. No heads cut off, lighting okay etc. I’m not the flashest photographer, I actually see it as a bit of visual therapy for my non-visual brain so most of what I take is shoddy.
(2) If I am in the photo I don’t want to look ugly.
(3) If the kids are in the photo I like them to look happy, and as if they genuinely are fond of each other (not always the case).
(4) If it is a photo of a place/scenery/attraction I want it to be an accurate reflection of what we saw.
Simple really. However, it may not be. Here is what I didn’t tell you when I posted these photos on the blog in the past.
The first photo in this post, of me holding my one year old daughter adoringly above my head while we visited Club Med Bali is a prime example. There is a reason no other family members are in this photo – I fired them from the photo shoot. It wasn’t really their fault. I had hired a photographer from the resort to take some professional photos of the family. He was dreadful, not interacting with the children and positioning us in front of various items around the resort for formal family shots. At one stage he photographed us in front of a sign that said “menstrual flow” in big letters (it was in front of temple women are not allowed to visit during their special time of the month). About the only photo of the whole family that we look reasonable in is in front of that menstrual flow sign – completely unusable. The boys rebelled and my husband became surly so I booted them off the shoot. With only one child to work with I instructed the photographer just to take some of us playing and the result was this one (out of about one hundred) nice photo.
Visiting Ettalong on the Central Coast
This photo was taken at gorgeous Ettalong on the NSW Central Coast. We stayed in an equally gorgeous family resort and had a stunning time. I had dressed the kids in their bathers this afternoon to go for a swim in our gorgeous resort’s gorgeous pool. It was however closed – because of a poo. Someone had pooped in the pool. I took the children for a swim at the beach instead which is when this photo was taken. It got worse – the next day the pool was closed again, because of another poo. And the day after, because of yes, you guessed it, another poo. We were staying in a resort with a serial pool pooper. Do you think I mentioned the pool pooper when I wrote up my review of the gorgeous resort and beautiful Ettalong? No way.
Walking in the Tasmanian canopy. The Tahune Airwalk
I love this photo of my son walking on the Tahune Airwalk in southern Tasmania. It conveys what I would love our family to be – a cool, outdoorsy family. It implies that I breed tough boys. On this occasion however my daughter was just three months old and I had taken a stroller. Just to get to the Airwalk from the office involved far too many stairs for us to negotiate. We were instructed to instead access the Airwalk via a fire trail which was (it seemed) kilometres long. Before we even reached the Airwalk both my little boys were exhausted and complaining that this wasn’t an activity for kids. They were not tough, I felt like a failure as an outdoorsy mum for bringing the stroller, and beautiful as the nature was it was all tainted by grumpy kids.
Looking down toward’s Half Moon Bay and the Cerberus shipwreck
This picture is of Half Moon Bay in Melbourne’s Bayside – one of my favourites. On our most recent visit to Half Moon Bay our accommodation was not as I had expected. When I called the manager to enquire as to why (politely) I was met by a onslaught of verbal abuse that had me in tears, in the main part because he was insisting on coming round to the accommodation to abuse me in person – in front of my kids. I managed to keep him away, ate some humble pie and dealt with our less than satisfactory accommodation and while I almost packed up and left I thankfully stayed on as we did have a wonderful weekend.
Cooking noodles at the “Hot Pot” restaurant with grandma.
The caption should have read “No noodles were eaten by this child at any time in China”. I posted this photo in an article about travelling with a picky eater, so I was keeping it real from the outset, partially. It is taken in China – again at a Club Med. The backstory to this photo is that the said picky eater existed entirely for his two weeks in China on hot chips and KFC. I could have written a post on the Chinese KFC menu because we became so familiar with it. Taking my kids to KFC, particularly on an overseas trip when they are supposed to be learning, experiencing and widening their culinary horizons is akin to hereasy in the world of family travel bloggers. Keeping it real – this was about keeping my child healthy. With an already undersized son as a result of recurrent illness and picky eating my husband and I were more than happy to keep him nourished, whatever it took.
In conclusion – while I don’t plan on sharing the complete backstory behind every single travel photo I share I would hate for any of my images to give a false impression that travelling with kids is blissfully easy. Parenting is messy and traveling with kids equally so, even when it isn’t your own kids that poop in the pool. I would happily revisit each destination depicted in this post.
More keeping it real – I need to declare that I completely stumbled on the idea for this post after seeing one like it on another family travel blog. Alas – I can’t remember who the blogger was. If anyone reads this post and thinks “I’ve seen something like this before” please let me know so I can dutifully acknowledge them and link to their site.
That is right you don’t need to share everything on your blog. I try and be as honest as possible especially when I am doing a review.
Yep Anne- it’s important to be honest without over-sharing. I do wonder though, as bloggers become more successful in the monetary sense if they are held up to scrutiny more regarding what they tell.
Hi Danielle, Thanks for addressing the tough issues. I think these are all funny events – except for the poo in the pool – three days in a row! That sounds like deliberate sabotage to me. Even if it was a child with a problem, surely the parents should have withdrawn them from the pool on subsequent days. I feel for the resort concerned.
Deliberate sabotage! I must admit I hadn’t thought of that. The pool was very crowded. My kids have never done that in a pool and they always wore swimming nappies before they were toilet trained. Ugh!
Loved this post. I can completely relate. I try to be as honest as possible about our travels but it can be hard. Sometimes my issue is that I don’t want to portray my children in a bad light. A spot might be lovely, but if my child is having a bad day it will be much less enjoyable. But kids are kids and they have bad days.
Thanks Erin – isn’t it a pity when those bad days occur on a day you are really, really looking forward to? We tend to travel using our own money (no press trips yet) but I imagine it is trickier when you have been invited somewhere.
I love the photo of your son walking on the Tahune Airwalk. We love the outdoors too.
Thanks Lesley, If I could train my kids to do more walks I’d be a very happy mother.
Great post. As a fellow family travel blogger I have often struggled to get nice photos of my family (and I am almost never represented in those photos ). I finally bit the bullet and hired Flytographer while in Barbados 2 weeks ago. I also bribed my children to behave (giving them each $10 after the shoot for managing to hold it together for 30 minutes). Honestly, they are some of the best photos I have ever had and it was well worth it. My kids were happy to “work” for the money, and I was happy that I didn’t have to spend 30 minutes hurling threats at them and pretending we were one happy family. 🙂
Oh Tara – I didn’t think of bribing them with money – but I should have! I think that would have worked. Next time I will try it.
I love the honesty and candor of this post. It isn’t always easy to travel with our brood – bravo for telling it like it is, sometimes. 😉
Thanks very much Claudia.
I absolutely agree that it doesn’t matter where you go, but the kind of memories you make along the way that matters. Every place, including your home town, has something special to see and do. Even families who travel a lot have their share of bad travel days. But, memories from that trip can improve over time and a few good pictures can make all the difference.
I think you’re right Allison. Particularly when the bad days are a result of young kids age/development. My seven year old has already gotten to the stage where we can laugh together about some of his outrageous behavior from the past.
I can completely relate to this post (even the pool pooper story!). Travelling with children is often wonderful and sometimes so difficult you wish you’d just stayed at home – I love these stories behind the pictures, thanks for sharing!
Oh Katja – you ran into a pool popper too! I’m glad you like the photos. My own feeling is that life with little ones is potentially tough even just going to the supermarket. I tend to find home stress with kids the worse. At least when we are traveling I seem able to keep smiling more despite the challenges.
Great post, and I can totally relate to how there is sometimes a back story to great photos! Love the ‘menstrual flow’ photo story, hilarious! And yes, my daughter survived on bowls of rice for four days when we were in China earlier this year!
Hi Marianne – I wondered if I should have posted the menstrual flow photo but that was too much for me! We’ve decided unfortunately that two weeks of traveling at a time are as much as we can do (overseas) at the moment due to our own current picky eater (now it is son 2 that won’t eat) he just gets skinnier and skinnier…
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