Travelling Light

This photo shows you the amount of baggage that Katie and I travelled with for the majority of our six week long Southeast Asia trip.  We each carried a small backpack.  Katie also carried a small purse and I carried my fairly large camera bag.  Early in the planning process we decided that our trip could be simplified if we avoided the dreaded “checked luggage”.  Not only is there the risk of your luggage not arriving with you at your destination but discount airlines such as AirAsia.com actually charge you for checked luggage.  So we packed light and had our laundry done on an “as needed” basis.  It turns out that we needed our laundry done five times.

Here is a list of the bigger items that I packed:

1 sleep sheet (which we didn’t even use because luckily the places we slept were clean enough)

1 sarong (used as a blanket or towel as required)

1 long sleeve dry wick shirt (used twice in cold airports)

1 baseball cap (not really packed because I wore it all the time)

5 pairs of socks (not really needed since I wore flip flops for the entire trip)

1 pair of running socks (definitely necessary)

1 pair of running shoes (I think we ran about 140 km during the trip)

1 pair of flip flops (cheap Thai ones that completely wore out during the trip)

2 pairs of camping pants (one would have been enough)

1 golf shirt (which I wore on our three year wedding anniversary in Vietnam)

5 dry wick T-Shirts

1 dry wick running shirt

2 pairs of cargo shorts (which undertook massive amounts of abuse)

1 bathing suit

1 pair of running shorts

6 pairs of boxers

I’m sure that Katie’s stuff was similar enough to mine with the exception of the sun dresses (I don’t find them flattering on me).  In the end, we are very happy with the amount of “stuff” that we dragged around with us.  Sure we would make some small changes if we were to do it again but overall it worked very well especially when you put three people and all their baggage on a motorcycle in Vietnam (which happened more than once).  For now we’ll have to wait and see where these small bags will take us in the future.