One Tiny Bag and Eleven Countries

After traveling multiple climates, some 11 countries and 30 plus cities. I thought I’d give some tips on gear and bags. The things that I couldn’t live without and the things I wished I had.

What Travel Bag should I use?

So I read so many posts about how to pack and what to bring on my trip. Oh and what bag to bring? How big? How small? A backpack? A roller bag?

I’ve decided there are a few styles of travel. Mine? I’m a minimalist; I always travel lightly.

A BIG point of discussion was whether or not to use a wheeled bag. Multiple friends told me I should get a 70L backpack. BUT Gary Arndt of EverythingEverywhere uses a roller bag, and he’s literally traveled the planet.

I ended up borrowing an Ospery Meridian 22” ­–a roller bag– since the Ospery Ozone 22” wasn’t available. The Ozone is slightly smaller, and weighs slightly less. In the end I’m pretty sure the Meridian was the perfect choice for me. Danielle bought the Ospery Porter 46 backpack. Here are the two bags, forgive the poor photo. Notice the similar size of the bags (the Meridian 22 is the blue bag)…

A roller just seems to make more sense to me. In the end my back was hurting anyway, but only because I’d haul Elle’s bag on my back when she got tired of wielding the thing.

Ultimately, I am happy about my bag choice. There may have been one time for ten minutes that I had to carry it. Not long enough to consider getting out its backpack straps.

In any case here is a quick comparison.

*Dimensions are shown as length (height) x width x depth

I never had the Ozone Convertible in my hands but based on using the Meridian and the Porter these two appear to be pretty comparable in size. I think the bigger size of the Meridian comes from its zip-off backpack/daypack.

This zip-off backpack is brilliant. The pack is far from perfect but we actually used the zip-on trick to combine the pack at one point to make it through the airport.

Remember I changed climates and went to a wedding out of the Meridian. In fact after leaving the cold I considered trimming down my bag by shipping some of the cold weather clothes back home. I like being light and nibble.

So what do I pack for multiple climates?

Clothes

• 4 pairs of pants. A pair of dress slacks (wore only to the wedding two days) A pair of cotton pants (also wore only to the wedding) and 2 pairs of jeans (which I wore through all of Europe).
• 3 pairs of shorts includes swim trunks
• 6 t-shirts,
• a pull over zipper collar light sweater,
• one dress shirt (again just wore to the wedding),
• an ultra-light 800 fill down jacket (packable, it later became a pillow, perhaps the most expensive pillow I’ve ever used),
• 1 beanie,
• 4 pairs of socks (next time ill pack 7 pairs),
• leather gloves (never used),
• 7 underwear,
• shoes & flip flops

Other Gear

• GoPro and its misc. parts,
• TV output cable (to watch movies from laptop),
• External harddrive,
• Travel Power Strip by Belkin,
• Universal World plug adapter,
• Water bottle,
• S-Biner,
• Travel Towel,
• 1 can of white tuna (never eaten),
• Headphone splitter (so two people can watch and hear a movie on a laptop, etc)

I wish I had packed more socks when I was wearing shoes in Europe and still they take up so little room.

The things that we couldn’t live without

1. The S-Biner is a stupid little double sided carabiner. I first saw it hanging on a bag in an online review video. The guy was a traveller and seemed to know what he was doing. I trusted his choice. And got one at REI (locally).The idea is you can clip your bag to a bus or a bench or whatever. This little S-Biner is amazing. I used it to clip my jacket on, I used it to clip Elle’s bag to my bag then to a bench (prevents snatch-and-run theft –most common kind), we clipped our sandals to it when hiking waterfalls.Really I wish I had brought TWO. It’s super versatile and cheap! And then I ended up giving it to Mick. This cute little Thai man on Krabi, he asked for it…
2. This Large Travel Towel was a mixed purchase.. but again, I cant count the times when towels weren’t readily available. Perhaps its late or you’re just plain tired of asking for everything.Traveling does that, you spend loads of time asking for things, directions, food, where’s the bathroom, where can i get an avocado, etc. Just having a rapid dry towel is nice. AND you know its clean.
3. The Skross World Plug Adapter is awesome. Especially if you are traveling multiple countries. I like that it’s one item. It easily fits in my bag. It’s not cheap but after 10 countries Malaysia was a different plug. No problem. Actually, I had bought this Adapter Plug for about $4 but at some point in Germany we lost it, maybe it was too small. And then we couldn’t charge anything. A visit to a local electronic store is how we ended up with the World Adapter. I might add this took several hours out of our travel plans. Loosing specialty shit makes for work. Think about it… we are in Germany shopping for a US plug that adapts to Europe. Not a Europe plug that adapts to US.
4. Oh, this Travel Power Strip by Belkin I COULD NOT LIVE WITHOUT IT. Often there is only one outlet whether in a flat, a coffee shop. Traveling with Elle we plug in two laptops and can still charge via USB.
5. Schumacher XI14 Power Inverter was a random purchase… we were about to drive up the east coast from West Palm Beach Florida to St. Michaels Maryland… some 18 hours. I had a deadline to meet and decided to look into powering my laptop from the car. For less than $20 this thing was so worth every penny! We ended up using it all through Europe to charge camera batteries, power laptops and charge whatever via USB.
6. Backup power bar for iPhones is super useful. We used our phones for photos and GPS the battery gets chewed up fast. In Europe we had USB on Power Inverter and could charge in the car. But it was comforting to have backup power to keep taking iPhone photos in Asia this item was a must.
7. Toilet paper and wet wipes.
8. Citronella Oil for bugs.