Survival Kit, Asia

After five months of traveling through Asia we wanted to share a few tips and tricks that we discovered along the way… Here is a list of our top 5 most frequently used items in Asia:

0. The (not so dark) Crystal

Changing from antiperspirant to regular deodorant is scary, but changing from deodorant to an all-natural hippie crystal is even scarier. We normally don’t like to promote brands but we have to go ahead and say that the ‘Crystal body deodorant stick’ was the best discovery we have yet to make on this trip. It seriously works, does not melt in the hot weather, and lasts forever (it’s been 9 months now and still going strong).

1. Clothes Cleaning Kit: drain stopper, cloths line, and pegs in a stuff sack

Traveling light meant traveling with only a few clothes, and making sure to keep on top of our laundry. After a full day of sightseeing our clothes are dirty stinky and done for! Sinks don’t always have working stoppers, so we use a universal flat rubber one (thanks Mom!) almost every day. The laundry line we use to hang dry our clothes has also doubled for us as a way to hang food from critters (we did this in Bardia).

2. Pack Protection Kit: small combo padlocks, cable with combo padlock, and rain fly

We use the small combo locks for our zippers for obvious reasons, and it turns out they are also a requirement for storing luggage in India (i.e. train station cloak rooms won’t store your bags for the day if they don’t have the zippers locked). We use a cable and padlock to secure our big packs to something study in our bed room, or in luggage racks, cloak rooms and when sleeping on trains (or in train stations). We use the rain fly every time we travel to keep out pickpockets on crowded trains or lower compartments of buses.

3. Small day pack

With our main packs locked up in our bedroom, we use a top loading lightweight compactable 18L daypack with a drawstring to easily carry around our essentials. The benefit of a frameless bag without zippers or pockets is that it is fully secure on a crowded train or on a beach. We are currently using a REI Flash (thanks Beau!) and it’s a perfect fit for those mini 5L kegs!

4. Sarong

By far one of the biggest surprises on this list is the sarong (thanks Sue!). It is super lightweight and dries faster than any microfiber towel. We have used this on many occasions doubling as a beach and camping towel, picnic blanket, scarf, religious head cover, bed sheet, beach dress, and even as a seat cover on uncomfortable plastic bus/train seats.

5. Small scrubber or exfoliating pad

Another shocker to us was how important having some sort of exfoliation tool would be. When visiting temples and mosques (and most people’s homes) it is custom and usually required to remove your shoes. Asia is smoggy, dusty, humid and dirty. Just going for a walk around the block is enough to clog our pores. The best way for us to remove the gobs of sunblock and combat heat rash, ingrown hairs and acne was to literally scrub the shiat out of our pores.