We ate out of a toilet on holidays, my kids loved it

My kids love nothing more than planning our holidays together, but their idea of "fun" sometimes takes me by surprise. 

It wasn’t so long ago that I found myself eating steaming stew out of a toilet bowl in Taipei’s Modern Toilet Restaurant. 

Not because there’s nothing else to do in Taiwan’s capital, but because the kids thought it would be “fun”, and not at all traumatic.

This is also how I’ve found myself making two-minute noodles in Yokohama’s Cupnoodles Museum, worn the most ridiculous dress ever known for an Insta photo shoot in Cappadocia, and eaten a shameful number of over-the-top, overpriced ice-creams simply because they were “viral on TikTok”. Rodin museums be damned – this is what life looks like when you let your kids have a say in family holidays and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I grew up in a generation where the general feeling was that if you paid the bills, you made all the decisions about where the family would go and what they would do at said destination. By contrast, today’s parents are increasingly involving their kids in all aspects of family holidays, with the American Express 2025 Global Travel Trends Report revealing 59 per cent of Australian parents indicate their children are involved with travel planning. According to the report, 68 per cent of Millennial and Gen Z parents surveyed say their kids help inform aspects of trips (compared to 56 per cent of Gen X and Baby Boomer parents), with 80 per cent of global respondents saying they prefer family-centric destinations that offer activities for all ages.

Island beach resorts with kids’ clubs and theme park adventures will always have their place, but I wanted my kids to also be interested in other cultures, try unusual cuisines and open up their imaginations to understand that the whole world is theirs to explore, if only for a week or two at a time.

When they were little, my husband and I introduced a concept to the family: the A to Z of the World, where we went through countries alphabetically and booked a restaurant accordingly. The rules? In order for the dinner to go ahead, every member of the family had to research the destination and bring 10 amazing facts about that place to read out to the others at the table for discussion. E is for Ethiopia, P for Peru, S for Sri Lanka... we “visited” them all so any time I floated an exotic location for a potential holiday, they became just as excited as they did about the idea of visiting Disneyland.

This is how I found myself wearing the most ridiculous dress ever known for an Insta photo shoot in Cappadocia. Picture: Dilvin Yasa.

Whether it’s because of these dinners or because of their mother’s job, I don’t know, but today my kids are 16 and 11 and love nothing more than planning our holidays together. We’ve all read the studies which show the act of planning a holiday and the anticipation it sparks boosts happiness to levels which may not even be achieved on the holiday itself.

Not only is it something I see in my own kids as they conduct their research on the hottest rainbow-coloured drinks in Seoul, and the best beauty parlours in Busan, but I know that giving their interests plenty of space in our itinerary will keep them engaged when I drag them to the Seoul Folk Flea Market and Yongma Land Abandoned Theme Park (“We’re going to a theme park, but surprise, it’s closed down”).

I watch my kids as they conduct their research on the hottest rainbow-coloured drinks in Seoul.

The way they research, by watching endless YouTube and TikTok videos, is so different to what I do too, that we end up with an interesting mix of attractions to consider including things I never would have come across on my own.

Sure, sometimes it means I find myself in situations where I’m eating out of a toilet but the memories – and the laughs – attached to those experiences? Priceless.

Originally published as We ate out of a toilet on holidays, my kids loved it