The kids' health and safety in China

By far the biggest challenge during our trip to China was ensuring that the kids (the two outside ones and the one inside, too) stayed healthy and safe. To be honest, I didn't even really research much about this topic ahead of time. In retrospect, this was probably a good thing, because it turns out there were a lot of considerations, and I might have gotten scared off from doing the trip at all :) I will say that I'm very glad that we went and would do it again in a heartbeat, even knowing what I know now. So keep that in mind as you read the rest of this post…

Water
Drinking tap water in China is not recommended. We used bottled water for drinking, cooking (the service apartment that we stayed in for most of our time in China had a small kitchen), and teeth brushing. We did use tap water for bathing, hand washing, and dish washing.

Bottled water is cheap to buy, and hotels also provide bottled water. In the service apartment, the room had a water dispenser (like a water cooler that you might see in an office in the USA). A big bottle of water for the dispenser cost about $2 and lasted for 3-4 days.

Littles is old enough now to get her own cup of water, so we had to make sure that she knew to always get water from the dispenser, not the sink like she does at home.

Food
I've never been so thankful for the FDA. Say what you will about it and its regulatory teeth (or lack thereof), but at least in the USA, I have some degree of confidence that 1) food is generally produced in a safe manner and 2) if there is a food safety problem, it will be publicized (in a language I can understand) and addressed appropriately.

I had no such reassurances in China. Milk has been tainted with chemicals, produce has been grown using human feces as fertilizer, etc. Since we were doing a lot of our own cooking, we did most of our food shopping at Western grocery stores, rather than Chinese markets. Much of the food there was imported, which meant that the prices were (significantly) higher, but we had more reassurance that the food had been produced under safe conditions. When eating out, we just used common sense, and stuck to restaurants that came recommended or otherwise seemed reputable.

As in most places where you can't drink the water, eating raw fruits/vegetables isn't recommended either, since they may have been washed in tap water. Even if you wash them yourself, they could have come into contact with bacteria that water won't get off. I was really careful about this, since I had Q to worry about -- some bacteria can have little/no effect on a healthy person, but can greatly affect a fetus. The others were slightly more lax, and were fine (for the most part). As much as possible, I did try to get fruits/vegetables with a peel for the kids to snack on (bananas, kiwi, oranges, even stuff like apples or carrots) so that I could take the peel, and hopefully any bacteria, off before eating it.

Unlike many places where you can't drink the water, ice in restaurants isn't a concern. For starters, it's rare to get water in restaurants (tea is offered as the drink of choice), and if you do, it's usually warm (apparently, the Chinese believe that cold water is not good for you). But restaurants that do offer ice usually make it out of boiled or filtered water.

Food allergies
Noob is allergic to peanuts, and Chinese dishes often have peanuts in them. We steered clear of restaurants that didn't have English translations for their menus, to avoid accidentally ordering a peanut-containing dish. Sometimes, this meant choosing a less-desirable restaurant option, like the time that we needed a quick meal and we chose McDonald's over a Chinese fast food place that had a Chinese-only menu. But I'd take a McDonald's meal any day over a trip to the hospital to treat anaphylactic shock.

Car safety
Things I learned about cars and driving in China:

• American driver licenses are not valid in China, so we needed to take a taxi or hire a car/driver whenever we needed to drive somewhere.
• LATCH (or ISOFIX) seems to be completely non-existent. This meant that Littles’ Go Hybrid Booster could only be used as a booster, not as a harnessed seat.
• The seat belts I saw did not have the auto lockoff capability that is common on cars sold in America. This meant that I had to use the built-in lockoffs on Noob’s convertible seat when installing it using the seatbelt (which was, of course, my only option, since LATCH wasn’t available).
• Many taxis have a cover over the back seat that prevents you from accessing the seatbelt entirely, making it impossible to secure a car seat.
• There are no car seat laws in China, so you won’t get arrested for not putting your child in a car seat. Of course, if you get in an accident, the laws of physics (specifically how they relate to unrestrained children in cars) still apply…
• And just FYI, emergency services are not as reliable in China as they are in the USA. We went out to dinner one night with some of my husband’s Chinese co-workers and passed an accident on the way. I asked the Chinese about how long an ambulance would take to arrive. They laughed. “Oh, maybe an hour? Maybe more?”

Due to all of this, we took public transportation whenever possible. We found the subway systems in both Shanghai and Beijing to be very cheap, convenient, reliable, and safe. And no concerns about waiting an hour for an ambulance after my unrestrained child went flying through the windshield.

Pedestrian safety
As scary as driving was, sometimes walking around didn’t seem much better :)

• We had to be heads-up at all times while walking on the sidewalk. There were tons of little motorized scooters that drove at relatively high speeds on the sidewalks, and sometimes the random car decided to hop up on the sidewalk as well. We had to keep a close eye on Littles, in particular. (Noob was usually on my back in the Ergo, so he was less apt to wander into the path of an oncoming scooter.
• Red traffic lights seemed to be treated as a gentle suggestion to stop :) Even with pedestrians waiting to cross the street – or actually in the process of crossing the street. This was especially true of the motorized scooters, as well as bicycles. I usually tried to hide behind a couple of other pedestrians crossing the road, figuring the cars/scooters/bikes would hit them first!
• The subways could be very crowded at times, with lots of pushing, and people weren’t always aware of the kids. The Ergo really came in handy, as it prevented us from having to deal with a stroller, and put Noob more at adult eye level. But we had to make sure one of us always kept a firm grip on Littles’ hand when boarding/disembarking, to prevent her from getting lost in the crowds, and sometimes we had to keep her from getting totally squished.

Despite all that… we all survived! We just had to be a little more careful about things than we do back home.

Trip log: Camping

I know I haven't been posting a ton on this blog, but we haven't really traveled with the kids over the past few months, aside from our short road trip back in January. But now, finally, we've kicked off four-month stretch with three great trips planned! I want to do a "trip log" for each trip, to explain how we approached the trip and how it worked out. (I may go back and do trip logs for prior trips, too.)

Here goes!

We kicked off summer with a camping trip over Memorial Day weekend. Two of our friends organize this trip every year, and it's grown to include about 10 families, including some others with young kids.

We travel a lot with the kids, but this is probably the most challenging trip of all. Traveling with kids always requires a little bit of letting go, of understanding that sleep routines may be upset, that dinner may consist of just bread and water for a few days -- and that it's OK, the memories made are well worth the temporary upheaval. Camping requires a tremendous amount of letting go. The kids play in dirt all day long, and so the tents are filthy within hours of being set up. Bedtime is whenever the campsite gets quiet enough to allow for sleep or whenever the kids pass out from sheer exhaustion, whichever comes first, and usually, both occur well past bedtime back home. Meals frequently consist of 4 parts dessert to 1 part actual food. From a personal hygiene perspective, the kids are lucky if they wash their hands once a day; baths and teeth brushing are virtually unheard of. And you know what? It's OK. They survive. They have a blast. And we come home and take long baths and do lots of laundry and get a good night's sleep and all is right with the world again :)

Location: New Braunfels, Texas

Dates: May 27-30, 2011

Ages: Littles = almost 4 years, Noob = 15 months

Method(s) of transportation: Driving. We left after breakfast on Friday, stopped for lunch in Austin (about 3 hours from home and 1 hour from our destination), and arrived at the campsite early afternoon. For the return trip, we left after breakfast on Monday and drove virtually straight through, arriving home at around lunchtime.

Accommodations: Tents! We used a Coleman 8-person Instant Tent. Very easy to set up, and plenty of room for a family of 4 + associated clothes and gear.

Sleeping arrangements: Littles slept on her nap mat on top of a twin size air mattress. Noob slept in a Peapod Plus.

Eating arrangements: Littles usually sat in a kid-size folding camp chair. Noob used a Fisher Price Healthy Care Booster Seat. Since there were no chairs suitable for attaching the booster seat, we simply put it on the ground:

Activities:
Keeping cool in the Guadalupe River.

Playing in dirt.

Eating S'mores by the campfire.

Hanging out with friends in camp.

Key piece of travel gear: Air conditioner! "Real" campers might laugh, but with temperatures soaring to over 100 degrees inside the tent by Noob's afternoon nap time, I consider some form of cooling-off device to be a necessity. Most of our fellow campers brought fans. Hubby opted to hook up an old portable air conditioner of ours, so that it vented out a window of our tent. It worked very well, although I'm sure it wasn't very environmentally friendly! I could see ditching it in a few years when the kids are done with naps, but for now -- yeah, it's coming along.

Biggest challenges: Keeping Noob from walking off the cliff on the edge of our campsite. Keeping Littles from consuming too much sugar.

What worked well and what didn't: We brought along a number of items that made the trip easier. And we forgot a lot of stuff that would have made it even easier. I'll do a separate blog post with a packing list, since I think it would be handy to refer back to when packing for next year's trip!

Road trip gear

As you may have gathered from my previous posts, most of our travels with tots involve flying. But we do take the occasional road trip. This past weekend, we went to visit Hubby's best friend, who is about a 4-hour drive away.

Driving is so much easier than flying because you don't have to jam everything into a suitcase. We have a whole set of baby gear that we use when flying (which I'll get around to reviewing here eventually) -- for that stuff, we look for things that are as compact as possible. When driving, we don't have to place such a premium on small size, so we bring along a different set of gear that is less compact but more functional.

Eating: We don't bring anything for Littles. She does fine in a regular seat for a few days. For Noob, we bring a Fisher Price Healthy Care booster seat. This is one of our all-time favorite pieces of baby gear. It's only about $25 and it's super easy to clean (a very important feature of any high chair!). We use it daily with both kids at home -- Noob still uses the harness and the tray, while we've removed the harness for Littles and push her up to the kitchen table instead of using the tray.

So it's a great seat in general, but as a bonus, it also folds up for travel. It's a little big to fit in a suitcase for plane trips (although we have done that in the past!), but it's just perfect for eating out around town and for road trips.

Sleeping: Noob sleeps in a pack-n-play. It is way too bulky for plane travel, but works well for road trips. Ours is a very basic Graco model. It cost about $35 on clearance at Babies R Us.

When visiting Hubby's best friend, Littles has typically slept in bed with me. (I sleep in his friend's son's twin bed, while Hubby sleeps on the couch in the living room.) But for this trip, we decided to bring along the nap mat that she uses at preschool. It worked out well! I sewed this myself (details are on my sewing blog), but you can also buy similar nap mats.

Playing: For road trips, we have room for plenty of toys! We usually bring a pretty wide variety for both kids. Hubby's friend also has kids of her own -- they're a little bit older, but Littles, in particular, loves following them around and playing with all of their toys. That means we don't have to worry too much about what we pack for her.

One absolute essential piece of gear for Littles is the DVD player. She'll happily watch DVDs for the entire drive. Noob doesn't do DVDs yet, so he's a lot harder to entertain on long drives. He's not a real fan of the car seat for extended periods of time. On this trip, I found myself counting the days till he's old enough to watch DVDs, too... :)