The hotel staff at all the hotels during this trip absolutely adored and doted on Kaia every time they saw her. They chased her around, played endless games of poking and peekaboo, and followed her around everywhere to ensure she didn’t completely wreck havoc or run into anything dangerous. I’ll be honest at times that I kind of just let them run with it. Occasionally, Chris gave me a look that said, “What are you doing? Go after her!” but I thought, meh! What could go wrong?

When you’re on vacation with your young child, you always have to be on high alert to ensure they are safe and well, so you can never really let your guard down. This is especially the case with a rambunctious little toddler like Kaia, who has recently started walking and wants very much to assert her independence. But while at all the hotels we stayed at on this trip, I figured that I’d just let them indulge Kaia, and she’d obviously be safe. This was why at certain times, for a few minutes at a time max, I’d actually just let Kaia go off with a hotel manager or even place her directly in the arms of a security worker while loading up a car for a day trip. There’s no harm in that, right? And I knew she’d be safe with them. But really, I also did this because I knew that the hotel staff would be okay with it and not be taken aback by it. I would absolutely never do something like place my baby in the arms of a security staff worker at a U.S. hotel because they’d probably refuse or think I was totally mad. But that’s the level of hospitality you get when traveling in Asia: people in general are more family oriented, so they understand the importance of keeping a child safe, but they also have a far higher level of dignity in their day to day job that you just don’t see as much of here in the U.S.