From Dulles to Doha to Denpasar. We moved from Virginia to Bali and here is how we got here with a toddler! Strap in, folks, its a long one. 

We have been living in Bali for a few weeks now, and even though I haven’t yet written a blog post about WHY we moved to Bali, I wanted to write this one first while it is still fresh in my mind. 

SO, here is *logistically* how the four of us traveled from Virginia to Bali. Spoiler alert: it took us 3 days.

We priced out our options with our friend & travel agent, Ally from Lensvue Travel, and decided that it was best to drive up to Dulles and fly to Bali by way of Doha on Qatar Airways.  The flight times worked better this way than flying through Dubai, which was the other option when flying East to Bali. My mom traveled with us in order to help us get settled, and we had my dad drive us up to Dulles to help us with Olive and all of our luggage. We each had an allotted 2 bags plus a carry-on and personal item. So here is the baggage breakdown:

Checked luggage:
3 Large Suitcases – we love our AWAY BIG suitcases.
3 Tyvek Bags (do not recommend, the straps ripped when being handled by airline staff)
2 Black & Yellow Bins
1 Thule Running stroller in a bag stuffed with assorted other items (FREE!)

Carry-on:
2 Roller Bags
1 Backpack
1 Small Duffle (Olive’s “diaper bag”)
1 Small purse (kept passports and tickets in here for easy access)
1 Travel Stroller bag (free!)
1 Car seat (Olive used it in her seat…some)

We left Dulles around 9pm, which is the perfect time to leave with a toddler. They do this on purpose, of course, so that you are able to catch some ZZZs on the flight. The flight was 11 and half hours to Doha, and since we took advantage of getting on during pre-boarding that meant we were on the plane for 12 and a half hours. I would say that the flight went about as well as to be expected.

Olive slept on and off in her car seat and on me for about half of the flight. We bought THE travel car seat, the Cosco Senera Next, which is super lightweight and easy to install on planes and in cars. We carried it through the airport in a car seat travel bag and hooked it with these giant clips to the stroller, which made it easy for carrying.

They serve dinner on the flight a few hours after take-off which is nice but also annoying because they keep the cabin lights on for quite some time.  This really bothered me on our 7 hour flight to Europe because it took almost half the flight, but I realized that’s just how it goes. I think John and I got around 5 hours of sleep, but my mom had a really tough time sleeping. They served breakfast a few hours before landing and by then we were anxious to GET OFF the flight.

I brought all kinds of books and games and what not on the flight, but I’m not going to lie, there was a lot of screentime. And don’t be fooled by the above photo. Olive does NOT like headphones. She would watch the TV screen on the plane with no sound (LOL) and either my phone or her tablet at a volume only she could hear.

We landed in the beautiful Doha airport around 430pm that time, which was a bit tricky, but not impossible! We decided to take a 24 hours stop over, leave the airport and go to a hotel so that we could all recharge (and run around) before catching the next 9+ hour flight. Ally booked us at the Park Hyatt which was about a 15 minute car ride from the airport.  It was LUXE and just what we needed. My mom is staying at the Oryx hotel at the airport on the way back and I will report back on if that option is just as good. No doubt it will be more convenient for her purpose.

It was a bazillion degrees in Doha, so we didn’t get to do as much exploring as we had hoped, but it was still reaaaaally neat to see a place so different from home. AND from Bali.

The Doha airport is one of the most beautiful in the world! It had these awesome play places for kids all over the airport.

We left Doha around 5pm the next day. This flight was a little trickier, because we were all so anxious to get to Bali. Olive was awake for the first 3ish hours and then slept most of the rest of the way. I would say I only got a few hours on this flight, but luckily it was only 9 hours, which really made a difference in comparison to the 11 and half the day before.

Once we got to Bali, we had a lot of logistics to figure out as we were moving here! You have to do this thing with declaring and registering your phones which was a real pain in the you-know-what because we were all ready to just BE HERE.

But we made it through, found the driver that the school had set up for us and most importantly all of our baggage made it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We stayed the first night in a hotel in Bali, which was really nice. After we checked in, we slept for a few hours, went and took a walk on the beach, had dinner and CRASHED. Most importantly, woke up the next day and were ready to get to our new home!!  We had been *un-homed* since May, so getting settled in was first on the agenda.

If you read this entire post, WAY TO GO! Believe it or not, I left out quite a bit about our journey in order to be succinct so please leave a comment if you have any questions about our travel journey. A YouTube video about the journey is coming, too so subscribe to our channel to stay updated there. AND Be sure to go give us a follow on our new instagram account for all the current updates!

@OUR.BALI.LIFE

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