BAGS

Essential in your bag

These are recommandation and a few explanation of why those item come handy.

Bowls and utensils
We travel with a 2 bowls, ustensile and a multifonction knife (with the knife please make sure that it’s not in your carry-on bag when you take the plane). A lot of street restaurant don’t have plates and serves food in plastic bags for takeout which make the bowls handy. We also use them for breakfast and carry around bread and nutella/peanut butter. And the knife, well it’s always useful even if it’s just to open wel-wrapped item, cut cable-tie or spread nutella on a toast.

Cable-tie (Tie-wrap)
We use them to lock our luggage. It just a “feel safe move” just in case someone is tempted to go through our luggage. (don’t tie-wrap the pocket with the knife… you may have a problem…) We also used tie-wrap to repair a selfie stick, create a laundry line and other DIY to get by without buying a new item.

Sunscreen
YEAH! I know it seem weird to have it here, but you don’t really find affordable sunscreen in Asia…. Places that do sell this item sells it for a very crazy price. And no, you won’t get by with I will stay in the shade and not put sunscreen on you will burn badly. We used 60-50 sunscreen and got sunburned once or twice. So cream yourself if you don’t want to look like a welldone lobster.

Anything to goes on your face or skin
Any product that you use in your daily routine on your face or skin, like face cream, exfoliant or moisturizing cream. You will find some in Asia but the will have whitening product in them…. Even the deodorant have whitening in them. It’s hard to find something without whitening product.

Pills
Yes, you can find pharmacy in Asia that have a variety of pills that are more or less the same from the one you can find in North America. EXCEPT(ADVIL) for ibuprofen, bring some, they are a prescription medication in most Asian country. Also if you have heartburn problem like me, bring a lot of zantac, gaviscon or other brand, they do have some in here, but they are mostly liquid… It not my cup of tea to drink a chalk like beverage. We also pack decongestant, sleeping pills ( helps with the flight and the jet lag) and anti allergy pills. With that, we were able to cover any minor issue we could have. You don’t need a full bottle of each, but a small amount of each is more than enough depending on the length of your stay.

Electronic
Most important, international-adapters! WE use this adapter and then we use a 6-foot long multi plug that serves as our extension too. That way we only need one adapter but we can plug 2-3 charger on it…it’s a bit heavier, but you don’t need a charging schedule… Since we travel with our computer to watch movies, we also brought one HDMI cable to plug the computer in the TV of the hotels, and we bring a wireless bluetooth speaker (that we actually connect with AUX cable to our computer for movies). With that don’t forget your phone charger and your earphone and you are good to go!

Towels
Most of the time hotels will provide you some towels in the room, but if you want to go to the beach or if you go to lesser clean hotels, it’s good to have one. Having your own towels is a life saver. We use microfiber towels, they are compact so they don’t take too much space in your bag and they dry very fast.