What goes in the pack?

To continue my post on what you pack for a round the world trip....

Bon Voyage BBQ with Friends at Greg & Stacey's

Bon Voyage BBQ with Friends at Greg & Stacey's, originally uploaded by fromthevillage.

Stacey and Greg threw an awesome Bon Voyage BBQ this weekend. Thanks to everyone who came, the hosts and grill master Tim.

3 days and counting until we our out of here.

What to pack for a round the world trip

So what do you pack when you will be living out of your backpack for 6 months. Well, I don't know, but I can tell what others have said. In planning for our trip I have been reading a number of travel blogs of other couples doing the same thing, and that is how I got to the list below:

• Passport and Visas
• Money Belt
• Day Pack
• Travel Alarm Clock (not a watch or cell phone, you don't want to miss that early flight or train)
• Flashlight (The type you wear on your head is good for when you are walking in the dark or staying in a rural area with no electricity)
• Water Bottle (Always stay hydrated)
• Plastic Mug (How else are you going to drink coffee on a Felluca sailing down the nile?)
• Ear Plugs (So you can get a good nights sleep in a multi-bunk hostel dorm)
• Board Shorts (Can double as a swimsuit and extra pair of shorts)
• Sleeping Sheet (I recommend the dream sack)
• Sleeping Bag (We only need them when hiking in New Zealand so we will rent them when we get there)
• Thermal Underwear
• Gloves
• Fleece
• Rain Jacket
• Waterproof Pants
• Hat (Very important!)
• Sunglasses (Your eyes will thank you)
• Real Walking Shoes (I have a pair of Merrell Cross Trainers that are designed for hiking, light, goretex/waterproof)
• Camera
• Camera Charger/ cables
• Long Trousers for Temples etc.
• 1 Pair of Convertible Pants (can be shorts or pants)
• Eye Covers (So you can get to sleep on trains, in hostels etc.)
• Locks for your Bag
• Lock for Locker (Most hostels have a locker in the room to store your bag in during the day, but you must have your own lock)
• Cable to lock your bags to a bed if necessary.
  
• Travel Towel (fast drying, small, and light weight)
• Travel Pillow
• Long sleeved shirt for temples/ formal
• Shorts
• iPod (lots of flights, means lots of time you will want your music to listen to)
• Bose Noise Canceling Headphones. (Not critical, but given that we are doing 38 flights, these things are awesome)
• Flipflops
• Crocs (Can be used as shoes if you need to, and weigh nothing)
• A few T-Shirts and a golf shirt
• Few pairs of travel underwear (antimicrobial, fast drying, helps you survive when it will be 2 weeks until you can do a wash)
• Socks (again try get the anti oder, moister wicking kind)
• 1 Belt
• Backpack Turtel Shell (Waterproof cover for your backpack, so when you are walking and you get caught in the rain, all your cloths don't get soaked)
• 1 Pair of Jeans
• Stuff sacks for wet and dirty cloths
• Photo of your travel companion and copy of their passport
• International Drivers License
• Watch
• First aid kit
• Some water tight zip lock bags (the big ones)
• Toilet paper (with a neck strap :-))
• Toiletries (Soap in a plastic container)
• Sunscreen
• Some paper, pens, pencils
• And a bag no larger than 65 liters to put everything above into

Always have a backup!

If there is one thing I have learned in my travels, it is that you should always have a copy of your important documents. This can include:

• Your Passport
• Drivers License
  
• Credit Cards
• Paper Airline Tickets
• Medical/ Travel Insurance
• Reservations
• Bank/ credit card phone #s
• Etc.
  

Trust me you will loose something along the way, especially if you are taking an extended trip internationally. Having a copy allows you to quickly deal with the situation, so you can get back to enjoying your trip. I always used to do this by photocopying these documents and carrying the copies in a separate bag from my originals.

So for this trip I had an issue, if I were to copy every reservation, airline ticket, insurance doc etc.. and carry all of them with me, it would be like carrying a huge text book in my backpack. The solution was right in front of me, GOOGLE DOCS. If you have a free gmail account, you can easily sign in a create a Google docs log in. This allows you a place to store all your important documents in word, excel, PowerPoint and yes adobe PDF. The last is the most useful format in that on most computers these days you can print or save to PDF format. So when completing a reservation on a website, just save the receipt/booking page to PDF and you will be able to open it on pretty much any computer in the world.

Check out the "Google docs in plain english" video below to learn more:

The search for the perfect bag is over

When you will be traveling for 6 months, using every manner of transport from trains to planes to bicycles, you want your backpack to be just right. Not to big, not to small, have features like being lockable, stowaway straps for those pesky airport conveyor belts etc. Well, 3 bags later we have finally selected the bag for our journey, its 65 liters, so we should be able to carry it on most planes, is lockable, has straps that are both functional and stow away, is very easy to pack/ access and is very light. It is the Osprey Porter 65.

http://www.ospreypacks.com/

Time will tell if it is actually as good on the road as we think it will be, but it sure does have the right balance of everything we were looking for in a bag.

The finest walk in the world

Last night I was successful in securing Danielle and I two of the very limited allowances to hike the Milford Trek in New Zealand. As soon as the bookings opened online I saw the spots disappearing as I struggled to get the website to allow me to book our spots. Finally success! So we are approved to start the walk on December 17th, and 3 nights and 4 days later we will be in the Milford Sound. We plan to spend the night cruising the sound on a yatch.

What makes this the "finest walk in the world", well read for yourself:

http://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/tracks-and-walks/fiordland/northern-fiordland/milford-track/

Flights All Booked

Finally, every single flight is booked. 38 flights in total will get you around the world visiting 5 continents.

More trains... this time in New Zealand

So how are we going to get around New Zealand you ask? Well there is a cool train network called the TRANZ SCENIC RAIL NETWORK. We will take a train from Auckland to Wellington, a Ferry from Wellington to Picton on the South Island, followed by a train to Christchurch. Finally we hop on the The TranzAlpine – Christchurch to Greymouth, rated one of the world’s great scenic railway journeys!

Check it out: http://www.tranzscenic.co.nz/

And by the way, super easy to book, no one trying to rip you off, and electronic tickets!!!!

Trains, so many trains

So, you will not believe how difficult it is to buy train tickets in Russia. Its not so much difficult as it is frustrating. Every service out there is basically ripping you off with prices 100 - 150% more than the cost of the actual ticket and that does not include the price of shipping the tickets to you. If not you will need to hop a taxi in Moscow and try and find this agents office. Finally after trying to book directly on the official rail website with no luck (website: www.rzd.ru note, the site is in Russian so you will need a friend that can read/speak Russian, I fortunately did), I found the following woman who helps out struggling travelers for a fee. http://www.russiangirlfriday.com/, she is charging $65 for her trouble. We wired her the money, and she has purchased our tickets. Now lets just wait and see if we get them when we get to Moscow.... if not that was an expensive experiment :-)

Visa Drama

Man, I am hell annoyed. I paid a visa service to handle my Chinese visa and filled out all their forms. Well turns out the Chinese Gov will only issue a visa for 3 months from the date of issue, so I have a visa that gets me into China thru September, but I am only going in October. Not a lot of use to me. Would have been nice for the service to tell me that before they took my money and gave it to the Chinese. URGGGG!!!

The good news is Danielle got here Visa no problem. I guess they don't like the British and all. I am going to take a breath, apply for the Vietnam Visas and then rethink the approach to China.