I think we are pretty much sorted for gear to bring now. We didn’t go overboard, since we both want a light pack, but we got a few essentials that will hopefully make life easier along the way.

Travel Packing Modules

Travel Packing Modules

After the recommendations of a lot of people, I recently bought us some earplugs for use on the plane and possibly for sleeping while we are in the hostels. They don’t block out all of the noise, so we’ll still wake up if there’s an emergency, but they are meant to get rid of just enough to give us a better nights’ sleep. Maybe a waste of money, but it’s not much money and it might make life a lot easier for us too.

After packing my backpack for a test run a while back, I quickly realised the hassle of getting something out of the pack. I can see how frustrating it would be trying to open your bag up and quickly go through it at customs – socks and underwear and everything else falling out of the bag and getting disorganised. Then you’d be forcing the zip closed because it’s all come out of it’s nicely compacted shape. I had one packing module at home already, and was able to fit all of my socks in it. Even with just one, I already could see just how handy they would be. We now have a set each which are a Christmas present from Jess’ parents. We ordered them from gogogear.com.

We bought some combination cable locks which should be pretty handy too. The idea is that they can lock more than just one zip. No doubt they wouldn’t be THAT strong, but they should be enough of a deterrent to keep our gear safe when we’re not around.

We bought some Menda Ultimate quick dry towels from gogogear.com too. I looked at some of the local travel stores for quick dry towels there but they were ridiculously priced. We ended up with a “mega” size towel and a “sports” size. Basically a full body towel and a hand towel. We’ll share the two between us to keep the weight down once again. After giving them a wash I gave one a trial run. They are pretty amazing really. The towel barely felt like it had been used by the time I was done it was so absorbent, so I think we can both manage between the two towels, even if Jess does need the sports one just for her hair!

Finally, we bought some silk sleep sacks from rei-outlet.com. The silk ones are usually quite expensive – around the AUD$75 mark, but I managed to score some for AUD$35 each. It’s a bit of a pain from ordering from overseas sometimes but from time to time it can really be worth it. We bought some other clothes from REI and it ended up really worthwhile, even if the shipping was $100 or so!