Travel with kids: 7 steps from dream to reality

Do you dream of travel with kids to Asia? Exploring the world as a family? Here are the 7 most important steps we took to plan our long-term journey—from budgeting to visas and homeschooling on the road.

Have you ever dreamed of quitting your job, selling your car, taking your kids out of school, packing your bags, and setting off on a long adventure? That’s exactly what we did. But turning the dream into reality wasn’t easy—it required planning, tough choices, and the courage to jump into the unknown.

In August 2024, we set off on the adventure of a lifetime: one full year in Asia with our three kids. We sold our car, quit our jobs, and left behind everything safe and familiar. Now, after months of travel with kids, we know just how important good preparation was for making it a success.

In this guide, we share the 7 most important steps we took before departure – from finances and visas to mental preparation. Whether you’re planning to travel with kids or embark on a solo journey, these steps will help you turn your dream into reality.

💡 Are you ready to take the leap? Let’s get started!

The first step is always the hardest. Quitting my job, renting out our house, leaving friends and family for a year—just the thought of any one of these things scared me.

For us, this started as a dream. Siv had always wanted to travel for a year, and I had just gone along with it. We had talked about spending a year in the U.S., a year doing charity work in Africa—but it never went beyond talk. Until suddenly, it did. By the end of 2022, Siv started narrowing her focus to Asia.

In August 2023, we set a deadline: We had to decide before Christmas. And one day, I came home to something I never expected:

“I’ve booked it. Five one-way tickets to Bangkok. Non-refundable.”

Panic came first. Then excitement. And finally, I realized: We’re actually doing this. Travel with kids to Asia!

We have been together for 22 years, and Siv has always had a restless travel dream. We’ve talked about living in the USA for a year or working for a charity in Africa. But it was always just ideas—until we traveled to the USA in 2022.

For five weeks, we explored the West Coast together, and something sparked in Siv. Three kids, two adults, and everything went surprisingly smoothly—beyond expectations. She started planning, while I was still on autopilot.

When summer 2023 arrived, friends and family kept asking me: “Is it really happening?”, “You can’t just take the kids out of school!”, “You can’t just quit your job!”, “Travel with kids for so long—you’ll drive each other crazy!”
I laughed and replied: “Well, Siv wants to,” “We’ll see,” “Maybe,” “Depends if we can afford it.”

But deep down, I knew she was far ahead of me in her thinking.

Siv had already spoken with the principal at the secondary school where she teaches, researched homeschooling regulations for the kids, and spent hours on Booking.com and Agoda.com. But my job?

I had just started in a new, good position in June 2023. It felt unthinkable to ask for leave. A sales manager in a private sales organization can’t even ask that question.

So I sat on the fence. Waiting.
Siv, on the other hand, went shopping.

In August 2023, Siv had prepared well for a call.

“It has to happen now,” she said.
“Next year Mia will be 16. If we’re going to take everyone with us, we have to leave in a year.”

She argued well. The youngest would be 10, the oldest 16 – the perfect age to remember everything, but not too big to not listen to us.

Months passed. Siv was planning, I was still skeptical. She wanted a loud and enthusiastic “LET’S GO!” from me, but she began to realize that it never came.

But slowly, the idea began to grow in me too.

And when she booked the tickets, it became real.

We set a date: Christmas Eve 2023.

By then, we had to have decided.
“We can buy plane tickets as a Christmas present,” Siv suggested.
“Maybe,” I replied.

It still felt distant to me. I hadn’t even familiarized myself with the budget she had created. A classic “sit on the fence” tactic from me.

But when the kids unwrapped their Christmas presents, there was no turning back.

Each of them received an Osprey bag. A gift with one clear message:

“We’re leaving.”

• The first step is often the hardest, especially when one is ready before the other.
• Set a deadline for the decision – otherwise it will remain a dream.
• Sometimes you have to jump before you’re ready and trust that everything will fall into place.

💡 Tip: If you’re contemplating a big change but feel uncertain – set a concrete deadline. Without a date, it will never be more than a dream.

The most common question we get is:
“How much does this actually cost?” or “How can you afford this?”

The answer is as simple as it is difficult. We didn’t start this adventure with a big financial buffer, but through targeted savings, careful planning and some tough choices, we made it possible.

We weren’t in a particularly good position when we started dreaming about this trip. After running my own event company for several years, the pandemic came and ruined everything. Two long years of uncertainty ended with me having to give up the dream and declare bankruptcy in 2022.

I was laid off most of the time and got a job as a store manager in the summer of 2021.

The summer of 2021 was the low point. After a week in a new job, my boss called from Oslo and asked if we could have a chat. She’d received a letter from the bailiff about salary deductions and wondered how I was doing. It was a tough message to get, but at the same time a turning point.

Siv and I sat down and made a savings plan.

We decided to cut out all unnecessary expenses and save between 1000 and 2000 USD a month.

The first step was to reduce our food costs – we replaced expensive bread at Rema with bread for less than 1 USD at Xtra. The weekend fun was cut drastically, and the money we saved went straight to the travel dream.

This strategy made it possible to go on a nearly 5-week vacation in California in 2022 – a trip that gave us a taste of long-term travel.

From 2022 to 2024, we continued to save aggressively. All extra income was set aside, and we dropped costly activities like ski vacations to afford travel with kids.

At the beginning of 2023, Siv started creating detailed budgets. As with the US trip, tens of thousands of Excel rows were filled in – monthly budgets were divided into weekly and daily budgets. She planned down to the smallest detail:

• Daily cost of food
• Average price per night
• Estimated spend on transportation and activities

The goal was to have a full overview of how much money we needed, while having a solid buffer in hand.

Just before we left, we sold the car. Why pay to let it sit and decay?

We’ve put together a detailed guide with our top tips and advice on how to save for a long trip.

Read it here: [Hvordan få råd til dette?] (coming soon)

Quitting felt like throwing my career out the window. What would the boss say? My colleagues? Even after the plane tickets were bought and Christmas packed away, I was working harder than ever. The more I heard that I was “the company man”, the harder it became to tell the truth.

Should I say it now and risk being sidelined, or wait tactically? I did what I always do – put on my blinders and delivered. At the same time, I had my skeptical father in the back of my mind, who couldn’t understand how we could come up with something so stupid, travel with kids for so long. Several friends also asked critical questions.

But as the spring progressed, they started to come around. Maybe this wasn’t so bad after all? Maybe I influenced them too, as I allowed myself to enjoy myself a little. Let go of the hamster wheel. Take a year with the family. Experience things together. Get closer to each other. Travel with children.

In May, I plucked up the courage to tell them. My boss was disappointed, but took it well. So were my colleagues, some more shocked than others. I was waiting for someone to shout “What’s wrong with you?”, but it never came. On the contrary, everyone supported us.

My father, the biggest skeptic of them all, has now become our biggest fan.

Two of the children were excited from the start. The third was more skeptical. “Isn’t three months enough?” But over time, he too grew on the idea. Before we left, he was completely on board.

We have an advantage in that Siv is a secondary school teacher, but the most important thing is the structure. When you home-school for a year, the municipality has a duty of supervision – but only if you live in Norway. Abroad, they have “no responsibility”.

When we return, the boys go straight into their year group, regardless of what they have learned or not. But let’s be honest – one-to-one teaching doesn’t require 4-5 hours a day like in a classroom of 25 students.

For Mia, who started upper secondary school, it was a little different. She had to get permission to take a year as a private student. Since she can’t take her exams until we’re back, she’ll have to take her private exams in November next year – in parallel with VG2.

She has access to resources and follows the curriculum along the way. Siv has prepared assignments for each of the learning objectives in the various subjects. He guides and pushes her to get the work done, but much of it is designed so that she has to work on her own. Responsibility for her own learning. That’s an important learning experience in itself.

Siv has put together a detailed plan for home schooling while traveling – what needs to be arranged in advance, and suggestions for teaching arrangements along the way. Siv is a trained lecturer and works daily as a secondary school teacher.

👉 Read more here: Homeschooling while traveling – a practical guide (coming soon).

Planning is half the journey, especially when travel with kids. Siv took responsibility for creating a detailed plan for the first three months, including booking all accommodation via Booking.com.

She set a realistic budget for each destination, knowing that some places would cost more than others – both in terms of accommodation and experiences.

To avoid travel fatigue on our trip with children, she set up a varied rhythm, where intensive periods of sightseeing were followed by quiet periods with time to digest the impressions. This proved to be crucial, especially for the children, but also for us adults. Experiencing something big every single day can quickly become exhausting.

The quiet periods gave us the opportunity to get closer to the culture, local people and daily life in the different countries.

An important part of the planninVisas: Pitfalls and important preparationsg was visa rules. There are big differences from country to country, and many practical details the websites don’t tell you. Some visas can be easily renewed, while others require a planned visa run or border run. We learned this the hard way.

👉 Read more about visa rules and how to avoid common pitfalls here (coming soon)

Transportation in Asia is another challenge. There are countless options, but systems vary from country to country – and even from city to city. How do you find the best and cheapest way to get from A to B?

👉 Read our guide to transportation in Asia here (coming soon)

We’ve created detailed travel guides for each country, with suggested day plans, budget-friendly tips and smart solutions for families.

👉 Read the travel guides here (coming soon)

If you have a detached house like us, you have to start early. I started to get stressed as early as Christmas – a bit like when you’re selling a house, it felt like everything that should have been done a long time ago suddenly had to be fixed. Skirting boards had to be put in place, handles had to be fixed and the terrace had to be stained. The night before the handover, I was even painting a room I thought needed to be repaired. Everything had to be handed over immaculately.

We hired Utleiemegleren, and as with house sales, photos had to be taken as early as April so that the ad was ready in May. Once the photos had been taken, the next big job started: packing up everything we own. All personal belongings had to go – even the beds! At the same time, Siv had to hand in her master’s thesis in May, so it was an extra hectic period. Packing up an entire home is a colossal task, and we share our best tips and experiences in this post: (link to post about packing up and renting).

Regular travel insurance doesn’t cover you when you’re away for as long as we were, so we had to take out long-term travel insurance. This works as a lump sum that is paid in advance and covers the whole year, much like extended travel insurance.

In addition, we had to get vaccinated. We went through a comprehensive vaccination plan at Vaksinehuset, where we received recommendations adapted to our travel destinations.

👉 Read more about necessary vaccines for long-distance travel with children.

An important piece of advice: Bring multiple cards! We only took one Mastercard with us and it worked perfectly – until one day we got a call from the bank. The card had been blocked due to suspicious activity. The amounts involved were small and fortunately stopped, but the consequence was that the bank canceled the card.

The problem? Applying for a new Mastercard from abroad, without a recent paycheck, was an impossibility. Fortunately, the bank was understanding and issued a new electronic card, so we could continue to book flights and stays by credit card.

In addition, we brought four Visa cards with us, which has been invaluable. Cash is still king in Asia, and Visa has proven to be far more reliable than Mastercard in our destination.

Want to know more about choosing insurance, bank cards and how we manage your travel finances?

👉Read our guide here: How to afford this?!

We packed in 75-liter bags from Osprey, which have a handy carry-on bag attached to the outside. It was important to us that everyone could carry their own bag, and full they weighed around 15 kg each. When traveling for a year, you have to pack light – but we could perhaps have packed even less, as there has been some shopping along the way. When travel with kids, everyone must be able to carry their own luggage.

Think carefully about where you’re going and what the weather is like. We quickly realized that we wanted to avoid places below 20 degrees in the shade. This meant that the two pairs of trousers and sweaters we packed were unnecessary. I still have two pairs of trousers, but I lost one sweater early on. A thin sweater can still be useful on planes with powerful air conditioning.

Some things have proved indispensable:
✔ Emergency charger – at least one good power bank per person.
✔ Noise-cancelling headset – worth its weight in gold on planes and buses.
✔ Chargers, travel adapters and power strips – we didn’t need an adapter for five months, but the power strip has been invaluable. Not all places have enough sockets.
✔ Card games and first aid kits – it’s good to have a starter kit so you can replenish along the way.

💡 Mosquito oil: We thought the mosquito repellent from home was superior. Wrong. In Asia, it costs a fraction and is at least as good.
💡 Sunscreen: Good to have something with you for the start. Sunscreen is available here, but the selection varies. Prices are about the same as in Norway, and most are SPF 50.
💡 Clothes and sandals: Don’t buy new clothes before you leave. Clothes are cheap in Asia, and you’ll be shopping along the way anyway.

👉 Read our complete packing list here (coming soon)

The reality has exceeded our expectations – especially when it comes to family dynamics. The relationship between the children, and between us as a family, has reached a new level. We’ve experienced amazing places together – beaches, mountain peaks, cities, temples and boat trips – but it’s the evenings that differ most from everyday life in Norway.

Netflix has been replaced by game nights, and we’re more accessible to each other. When Theo asks: “Shall we go and play football?” I now answer: “Why not?” At home, the answer would often be: “I’m a bit tired, how about tomorrow?” Without work and fixed commitments, we have time for each other – time we didn’t know how much we missed until we got it. Travel with kids was the best decision we ever made.

Before departure, we talked a lot about the trip. We asked open-ended questions like:
✔ “What do you think it will be like to share a room with your little brother for a month?”
✔ “What do you want to experience?”

This helped us to adjust expectations and find compromises in advance. It was important to us that the children were able to influence both the itinerary and the experiences along the way.

After months of planning, we were more than ready. The bags were packed well in advance and everyone had said goodbye to friends. But the final farewell, when Haakon’s parents drove us to the airport, was heavy. Saying goodbye for a whole year is not easy. Travel with kids for such a long time is also hard for family and friends who don’t get to be with us and grandchildren for a year.

Luckily, there’s video calling and even though we’re far away, family and friends never feel too far away.

Breaking away from everyday life, letting go of what’s safe and throwing yourself into the unknown is terrifying. We know – we’ve been there. We’ve experienced the doubts, the fears and the what-ifs. But we’ve also felt the freedom, the adventure and the immense joy of living a life we previously only dreamed of.

This journey has shown us that time is our most valuable resource. Not money. Not things. Time – to be together, to experience, to grow. Start your journey with children too!

So ask yourself: What do you dream of?
Is it travel with kids around the world? Living in another country? Take a break from the hamster wheel? Whatever it is, maybe it’s time to stop waiting for the perfect time and create it yourself?

What if you started today – with one small action that takes you closer to your dream?

✈️ Share your travel plans with us in the comments section!
📌 Follow us for more inspiration, travel tips and experiences from our long journey with children!
🌍 Want to know more about how we did it? Explore our guides here!

Dream big. Travel far. Live fully.

We’re the Mjaatvedt family, an adventurous group of five who followed our dream, quit our jobs, packed our bags and embarked on a year of backpacking through Asia. With us on the journey are three children aged 10 to 16, home schooling and a passion for exploring new cultures, flavors and places off the beaten track.

Through Asia4five, we share our experiences, travel tips and insights to inspire others to travel more – whether it’s on shorter vacations or bigger adventures. We create personalized travel guides, practical tips and honest blog posts to make your journey easier and more memorable.

Join us on the journey! 🚀🌍

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