“Don’t wait to travel with your kids until they’re the ‘perfect age’! You never know what’s around the corner to mess up your plans; I think the pandemic has taught everyone that. And really, does the ‘perfect age’ even exist?”
(Jenny Lynn, Mum and Editor of TraveLynn Family)
Want to travel with your kids?
You’ve come to the right place for inspiration. Here we share our family travel tips, personal reviews, and itineraries for global travel adventures!
We’re the Lynn Family, aka ‘TraveLynn Family’ – Jenny (Mum), Jay (Dad), Arthur (age 11) and Ezra (age 9). We’re from the UK, but live in Malaysia (we moved here in 2024), and we’ve been travelling as a family to off-the-beaten track destinations ever since the boys were born.
Our ‘big’ trips include:
- 45 days backpacking Vietnam (2024)
- 10 weeks backpacking Southeast Asia (2023)
- slow travelling and living in Morocco for 4 months (2022)
- a full summer of Bongo vanlife in France (2021)
- 101 days traversing Africa in a Land Rover (2018)
- trekking the Himalayas (2018)
- living in India for a year (2017)
But whilst we love off-the-beaten-track adventures, we also love European city breaks and occasionally treating ourselves to a bit of luxury (check out our review of our recent stay at Rixos Marina Abu Dhabi).
TraveLynn Family was established in 2016 and has grown to be one of the top family travel blogs in the UK, receiving over 125k page views per month to this website and with an engaged following of over 25k on Instagram.
TraveLynn Chats
Book in for a TraveLynn Chat! This is 1 hour video call over Google Meet to discuss your family travel plans and goals with us.
🌍 Perhaps you want to take the kids out of school for a term and travel.
🌍 Perhaps you want to travel Southeast Asia for an extended length of time and want to chat about your itinerary.
🌍 Perhaps you want to take a family gap year and don’t know how to go about it or where to start.
🌍 Perhaps you feel like you’re in a rut with life at home, and need an inspirational chat to make steps towards a digital nomad life.
Our style of travel
Travel for us isn’t a once-in-a-lifetime experience, nor have we sold up and hit the road fulltime, homeschooling our kids. In fact, our boys love their school, their friends and their clubs, and us parents need the childcare of school to be able to work. But travel is a huge part of our lives and we embrace the philosophy of worldschooling.
Since the boys were born, we have found ways to travel as much as possible; living overseas, saving funds and quitting jobs, deregistering our boys from UK school, creating remote work, and of course, learning the tricks and rewards of budget family travel… we’ve learned to be quite creative!
Do we homeschool when we travel? Oh no. Lockdowns sucked any ability we ever had to homeschool our kids. Online learning works brilliantly for us! You can read about our approach to online schooling here.
Our longer adventures allow us to embrace slow family travel. Rather than jumping from one place to another to cram as much as possible in, we are happy to spend weeks (and sometimes months) in the one country. This is a deeper travel, a more rewarding travel, where the natural daily routines of staying in the one place for a big chunk of time allows you to feel part of the local community. It’s also a much cheaper way to travel as you’re money goes further.
Our current travel plans
2024 shaped up to be a year of big changes for our family with us leaving the UK and starting a new life in Penang! Living in Southeast Asia has given us more opportunities to explore our favourite region on the planet, including backpacking Vietnam for 45 days and falling in love with Kuching.
You can read more about our 2024 adventures in our 2024 travel roundup.
As for 2025, we have already had a fantastic week off-the-beaten-track in Sumatra where we embarked on a 2-day overnight jungle trek and climbed to a volcanic crater, and we’ve also fallen in love with a new-for-us Malaysian city, Ipoh, on a 4-day weekend break. More Southeast Asia travels are definitely on the cards this year.
And we’re planning to stay in Penang for another year! Our Malaysia visa (De Rantau) expires in April and we’re currently in the process of extending this another twelve months. We love our time in Penang and don’t feel ready to leave just yet.
Follow us on Instagram for regular updates of our travels.
Inspiration for how to travel as a family:
Online schooling for family travel
TIPS FOR BACKPACKING WITH KIDS
WHAT IS WORLDSCHOOLING?
packing light for family travel
HOW WE AFFORD TO TRAVEL
taking parental leave to travel
Latest from the blog:
- White water rafting near Ipoh with River Bug Asia
River-based activities are big business on the Geroh River near to Ipoh and white water rafting in particular long been a popular activity for visitors to the region. We were visiting the beautiful city of … - Ipoh with kids: a 3 day itinerary
Malaysia has plenty of world-famous places to visit and if you’re travelling to Malaysia with kids, you probably already have the likes of Penang, Kuala Lumpur and Borneo on your radar. However, if the small … - 2D/1N Bukit Lawang family jungle trek with Green Hill
Bukit Lawang is a popular destination for rainforest treks but it can get busy in peak periods. If you’re looking for a family-friendly overnight hike that takes you away from the crowds and into pristine … - Hiking Mount Sibayak: climb to a volcanic crater in Berastagi
Everything you need to know about hiking Mount Sibayak, including how to get to the start point, registering for the hike, what to wear, and what to expect from the adventure. Volcanoes have always fascinated … - Sumatra with kids travel guide (2025): including a one week itinerary
For a taste of a wild and untamed version of Southeast Asia, Sumatra certainly takes some beating. Jungle treks, volcano hikes, stunning scenery and family-friendly activities all lie in wait. You’re heading somewhere unlike anywhere … - Sanity-saving tips for flying with kids
For most families, flying is a means to an end, something to be endured rather than enjoyed. But that doesn’t mean it has to be a nightmare: by following these tips for flying with kids, …
