Travelling light and smart

SOMETIMES we get slammed with too many things to do and too little time.

We can't seem to clear out our to-do list as our travel dates get closer, leaving us no choice but to bring our work into our vacation.

Packing light and living frugal has always been my travel motto. When packing for my two-week holiday for Thailand, however, I was faced with the challenge of fitting my 13-inch Macbook with my clothes and travel essentials into a backpack with 7kg weight limit, an AirAsia carry-on baggage regulation (It's a self-imposed rule for myself to travel with only carry-on luggage).

Normally, I would opt to leave all gadgets behind, except for a camera for quality pictures and a trusty smartphone as an all-in-one GPS, notebook and mp3 player. However, travelling as a professional for the first time, I was bound to my work (this) even on my vacation, which was due to poor planning, really!

The MacBook alone weighs up to 2.4kg, so that leaves me less to pack for my clothes and other travel essentials. With that, I had to resolve to packing lighter and smarter for my two-week trip.

So, what to do when you have to bring an unexpected bulk of weight with you on a supposedly lightweight travel? Improvise on the three main things when packing:

Clothing

Clothes take up most of the weight in the luggage. To make up of the lost weight capacity taken up by a bulky laptop (or other heavy items), improvise by packing less and washing more. For any trip that goes for two weeks or more, I would pack a week worth of clothes and wash them every few days. However, with the extra weight in my bag, I had to reduce them to five days worth and do more washing. Too lazy to wash? Laundromats are easily available in most cities for a cheap price.

It's also good to have in mind what kind of places you will go to help you pack. For big cities, you'd want to fit in the crowd with smart casual clothes like jeans and blouses; visits to the countryside means comfortable shirts and pants to ease your movement while beach destinations would mean more light and airy shirts and shorts to give you enough sun.

Before dumping everything in the bag, it's best to lay them out and decide whether you need each one enough to be carrying them around for the trip. For example, you have a pair of shoes that you want to wear for one occasion on the trip; ask yourself this: Will I be wearing it enough to want to bring it around for the entire trip? It's easy to get carried away with packing when you have exciting plans for your holiday and you want to look your best for every occasion. Asking yourself that question helps in rationalising your ideas in what to pack.

Also, laying everything out in front of you helps you see that you haven't missed anything out.

Toiletries

The complimentary tiny shampoo and conditioner bottles come in really handy when you need to pack your toiletries for a trip. As I usually stay in hostels, where you need to bring your own toiletries, I reuse the shampoo bottles from previous stays in hostels (Go Green!) to fill up with my own shampoo, soap and facial wash, to be packed in a toiletries bag with my contact lens solution, deodorant and other beauty products.

Of course, when all you have is a carry-on luggage, your liquids are limited to 100ml per bottle. That's a useful guideline for you to go easy on the liquids, i.e. your toiletries.

Electronics

In this high-tech age we live in, it's almost impossible to go anywhere without gadgets. Best you can do is, minimise what electronics you bring because for each gadget, there is also a charger to go with it (especially when there is an equally bulky charger to go with that Macbook). This means extra weight into your bag.

Thanks to an ever-intelligent invention of the smartphone, all gadgets are put into one hand-held device: a GPS, a notebook to keep track of your schedule and expenses, an mp3 player and for that last-minute research or leisure reading while you're stuck in between flights at the airport.

Camera, though is also available on the phone, is a must-bring item. Personally, I like to capture memories of my trip on quality photos. Photography seems to be the in-thing now, but instead having to lug around a bulky SLR camera to add to the weight, a reliable digital camera can do the trick. Speaking of which, my colleague had me quite convinced on the Sony NEX-5 camera the size of a normal digicam, the quality of an SLR. I have yet to check that out fully

There is no standard electrical system throughout the world, in terms of voltage and frequency. Plug shapes, plug holes, plug sizes and sockets are also different in many countries. Though it does not seem like such a big deal, they may have unpleasant consequences of wrecking your three or four-digit priced gadgets.

A universal travel adapter solves all those problems as they are manufactured in a way that they can be used it at any locations around the world (100V-250V-50/60Hz). Universal travel adapters are sold in most electronics stores or online for $20 or less.

At the end of it all, I managed to reduce my packing to the 7kg weight limit, and with room to spare! All the hassles of deciding what to bring for a trip comes with a reward.

There's only two things that could happen when you're taking your bag around with you: Walk around comfortably with a lightweight bag on your back, or wishing you hadn't pack so much unnecessary items.

The Brunei Times