Itineraries

My Indonesian domestic maid really wants us to visit South Korea. Well, Korea is not a bad choice, but we kept thinking until recently.

The downside with Korea is that my maid's boyfriend works there as an illegal citizen. She'd love to go there and meet her sweetheart - but she can't get the visa without our company.

We finally agreed to go. That made my maid happy. This isn't to say that going to Korea doesn't take any kind of courage. I'd be lying if I swear my maid won't hide in Korea and elope.

I told my daughter we won't travel together with our maid in Seoul. She nodded. This time we bought a travel guidebook (that tells us a great deal about the parks there) and borrowed a Lonely Planet guide. We didn't speak Korean and yet we found ourselves bouncing around in the enormous Children's Grand Park. One of the best things that we found in the park is that she'd never run out of ideas (or energy) in the playground. She ran up and down and made new songs - she really loved the castle with two decks.

It was much more than that. At the zoo in the park, she learned how to distinguish boy mandarin ducks from girl ones by their plumage. She became fixated by the way how cormorants catch and swallow fish.

Two days later, my daughter thought of going to the park again. We did.

We combined the activity with a visit to the Seoul Children's Museum just next to the park, and that turned out to be right decision. As we wandered and wondered through the museum, discovering grasshoppers and tadpoles with magnifying glass, learning to create handmade motion pictures, we almost missed the chance to visit the royal palace - one of the "has to see" items listed in travel books. That's perfectly fine. Trust me, you should consider yourself really lucky to make up and tick your own to-do list within a journey.

We left Seoul (together with our maid, by the way) feeling enlivened and proud that we'd stumbled on an itinerary that celebrated the triumph of the travel with children.