SINGAPORE - Ask anyone who’s the de facto family-holiday planner whether he or she enjoys being in charge. I’m pretty sure it’s a love-hate relationship.

In my family, I’m usually that person, mainly because of the nature of what I do for a living. It can be frustrating and time-consuming to draw up an itinerary that balances everyone’s needs — and also subtly including your personal agenda.

Insert a 15-month-old baby to this equation and you get a whole new set of problems.

I’ve had to rework my hassle-free travel habits. Nobody told me to practically pack the whole Mothercare store into a suitcase. “Sometimes kids won’t eat in a foreign country or they’ll be jet-lagged for weeks,” warned a fellow mummy, who gave up trying to feed her one-year-old in England and had to wait for months before her baby readjusted her body clock. Well, that effectively ruled out going to a different time zone for a holiday.

But there are certain things you can do when you have to play travel guide. Here’s what I discovered.

Rule #1: Nobody wins the destination game

Firstly, you need to get everyone on board with the destination. When you have a shopaholic mum, a sister who’s a culture buff, a dad who’s a homebody, a husband whose idea of a vacation is doing nothing and a 15-month old with hobbies ranging from throwing her toys to being fixated with bags and shoes (man, they start so young), it takes some discussion. Will it be Tokyo, Taipei or Tioman? For my family’s recent getaway, we decided to keep it really simple: Penang, specifically, Georgetown which makes travelling around with the baby relatively convenient. There is enough in terms of culture and malls and because I got to plan everything, I made sure I could check out the city’s growing hipster scene and the awesome food.

Rule #2: Make sure your vacation rental has pretty much everything - and I mean everything

I’m a fan of vacation rentals for family holidays. What’s the point of staying in different hotel rooms if your parents can’t babysit? With some luck and intense surfing on Airbnb, I found a nice three-bedroom condo apartment in Georgetown with a great swimming pool and playground within its compound. What was even better — the owner provided a cot complete with a blanket and pillow, a baby bathtub and cooking pots for preparing the baby’s food. (No way was I going to pack a porridge maker!) The great location also meant that a supermarket was five minutes away if we needed fresh produce; I could get my street- food fix because New Lane was just across the road; and the malls 1st Avenue and Komtar were a seven-minute cab ride away.

Rule #3: Splitting up is good for the family

It’s obvious you can’t do everything together all the time. As much as I wanted to fob off the baby on the grandparents and aunt whenever I could, it wasn’t practical, especially since I had been to Penang and had done the tourist thing. It made a lot more sense for us to go our separate ways for sightseeing. That way, I also needn’t explain to a bewildered father why I had to eat four different types of cake at Chinahouse.

Rule #4: Aim low

I usually have a list of places, restaurants, cafes, bars and speciality stores I want to check out when I’m overseas. Scratch that when you’re travelling with a baby. I had to say goodbye to Air Itam assam laksa, cocktails at Mish Mash and a visit to the Butterfly Farm. We stopped more frequently, and had to wait for the baby to eat and wake up from her naps. It turned out to be not so bad to take it slow, although I still wish I saw more of Ernest Zacharevic’s murals dotting Georgetown. But I guess that’s what tourist postcards are for.

Rule #5: Make contingency plans on the fly

When flying, that is. So what if all the toys you painstakingly packed along in the heavy diaper bag didn’t work? Just wear an apologetic expression throughout the flight as your toddler insists on inspecting other passengers’ seat handles or walking up and down the aisle. And you’ll be surprised how entertaining the barf bag is to a one-year-old compared with a boxed set of Dr Seuss books.

Rule #6: There are no rules

While we tried our best to stick to the baby’s routine for meals, naps and bedtimes, hey, she sensed it was a holiday, too. Sleep can wait. For just a little while.