What to bring on a long-term trip abroad

Before I left on my four-month trip, I read a lot of articles and message boards and wrote to a lot of people who had done travel like this before.  There were some really valuable things I gathered from that research, especially about how to pack for so many climates.  But there inevitably were some things that I didn’t realize I needed to pack until it was too late.  Part of the problem was that I never found a list on someone’s website or blog with a real list of “must haves.”  Well, here is my top ten list of things I am so glad I had, plus things I wish I would have brought with me.

1. Mini flashlight: If you are planning on doing any camping, a flashlight will be a no-brainer.  But even if you are staying in guesthouses and hostels, a small flashlight is a must.  We found all kinds of uses for it, like when you’re staying in a hostel dorm with strangers and you need to find your glasses in the dark.  The time we needed it most, however, was when the shaky electricity of Nanjing, China, went out on an entire block, including in our hostel.  There are a lot of countries where you cannot depend on electricity.

2. Playing cards: I had actually read this one before, but I didn’t listen.  But after a week on the road in Southeast Asia, Jon and I had to buy a pack of cards.  Cards are a great thing to have not only for the downtime of traveling from one place to another, but they also come in handy at bars and restaurants.  No matter who you are traveling with, you will not always have things to talk about.  So an instant, portable game is a great addition to a dinner table.  Also, cards don’t speak a language, so teaching and playing games with people you meet on the road can be a great way to make friends.

3. Laptop: One of my biggest questions before my trip was whether or not to take a laptop.  And then the question was if Jon and I should BOTH take a laptop.  I cannot emphasize enough how happy I am that we both took our laptops.  I use a very small netbook that fits in every bag, and Jon has a pretty small laptop as well.  All throughout Asia, especially, we enjoyed free wireless internet.  That means never paying for internet use and always having skype at our fingertips.  Plus, all of our photos could be instantly uploaded to our computers.  It was never a hassle to have them with us; we always found a safe place to keep them when we were out and about.  And sometimes, when we just wanted to chill out and remember something good from America, we turned on some of West Wing (Season 2) on Jon’s laptop.  Without laptops, we would have spent a lot of money sitting in sweaty internet cafes and burning discs of photos.

4. Flip flops for showers: It’s kind of obvious for anyone who shared dorm bathrooms in college.  But seriously, bring shower shoes.  Most of the hostel bathrooms in Europe are yucky.  You will find many other appropriate times to use them, like when visiting temples in Asia.  You have to take off your shoes when entering temples, so pushing off flip flops is much easier than untying shoes every time.

5. Nintendo DS: This one sounds kind of stupid, but trust me, it was awesome.  I always had plenty of stuff to read, and I had a journal to write in, but sometimes you just want to play a game while on a 14-hour flight or an overnight bus ride.

6. Quick-dry towel: Hostels and guesthouses usually provide sheets and rarely provide towels.  My favorite travel item is my quick-dry towel from REI.  It doesn’t take up much room, it soaks up tons of water, and it dries much quicker than a normal towel.

7. Thermometer: We knew we had to bring a thermometer because we are both pretty big hypochondriacs.  It’s an important item because if you do run a fever in certain countries, you should go to a hospital (malaria, dengue, blah blah blah).  And for us, it helped the other way around, too; if we were scared that we were getting sick, the thermometer could tell us we were perfectly fine and to stop being paranoid.

8. Anti-itch and anti-allergy meds: We didn’t want to go overboard with our first aid kits, because chances were that most of the stuff would go unused.  Well, most of it did go unused.  But we didn’t bring two really critical things.  When I broke out in a horrendous rash on my chest, arms and legs, I had no anti-itch cream or anti-allergy pills to ease my suffering.  This happened in a village in Laos, where I was closer to a traditional medicine man than a pharmacy.

9. Rechargable batteries: This also may be a no-brainer for some people, but I was considering just bringing regular batteries on the trip, so I wouldn’t have to buy the fancy pants rechargable ones.  But Jon convinced me to get the rechargable, and I’m so glad I did.  It would have been a big pain to buy new batteries every few days!

10. A good travel partner: Yes, here is the cheese factor.  Some people go on trips like these by themselves, some with family, and some with friends.  I went with Jon, who is a fantastic balance of adventurous, street smart, friendly, and open-minded.  He was a great comfort when things got weird and a constant source of fun when things got dull.  And most importantly, he knew how to be quiet when the sights and the experiences spoke for themselves.

All the cool kids are doing it

One benefit of driving is that I get to listen to NPR a lot more than usual.  On my way home from work the other day, I heard a segment about studying abroad — not only for a semester or a year, but taking all of high school or college to live abroad.  This is not a new concept or anything, but the listener comments make it fun:

Read and listen here

Back to the easy life

We made it! I have now completely circled the globe, and I am currently in the place where everything began for me: St. Louis.  I will be in my hometown for a few months until I move to Pittsburgh to start graduate school.  Everyone asks me how it feels to be back, and honestly it feels stranger than I would have thought.  Not only have I been to places completely different from the US, but I have lived a life of movement for four months.  My favorite part of the trip was waking up every day and doing whatever I felt like doing — which is a gift something few people ever give themselves.  My only responsibility while traveling was to make a train or a plane at the scheduled time; and even if I missed those, it wouldn’t have been a big deal.  I now have to find a job, I need health insurance, and I have a closet.  These things are boggling my mind.

Yes, the trip was everything I wanted it to be and more.  And yes, the trip changed me, but I’m not totally sure how.  I do know that I now do a lot more thinking and a bit less talking, which a lot of people would say is an improvement!  I have been mulling about an idea in my brain that I am going to try to spell out now.  It has to do with national narratives and how they shape the lives of most people in the world.  Over the past four months, I visited 15 countries.  We started in Asia and worked our way to Europe; with this route, I figured the trip would get easier as time went on.  Sure, it was easier to communicate and we could drink the tap water in Europe.  But I think I was mistaken by my characterizations of easy and hard.

Everywhere we went, I heard stories that brought to life the history of the place. We visited Thailand during a momentarily cool period of their political turmoil, which has gone on since the birth of their democracy.  Our tuk-tuk driver in Cambodia took us to the Killing Fields and told us with sad eyes and limited English that just before he was born, the evil government murdered many people.  In Vietnam, talkative men would remind us that even though the Vietnamese have not forgotten, they are no longer angry at Americans.  In China, we would wake up one morning to find that youtube had been shut down, and my Chinese friends would just shrug it off as another right the government denies to the people.  In the monarchy of the United Arab Emirates, a law was passed one day stating that it is illegal to fire an Emirati — the small class of people that make up the native, oil-rich population.  On a train from Athens to Thessaloniki, a young Greek Cypriot told us about his fear that the Turkish language will become mandatory in schools in Cyprus.  At a birthday party in Germany, my friend’s mother mentioned that she had to learn Russian when she was little, because she was from the East.  In Prague, we stayed in a beautiful apartment owned by my friend’s parents, who were in New York City at the time — they were partially moving to New York, a process they began in 1989 to escape Communism.  At a dinner party in Dublin, a table full of Irish and English shared stories about times they had faced guns on roads near the border of Northern Ireland, or faced territorial men at pubs that belonged to one side or the other.

If previously asked to suggest commonalities between the Czech Republic and Cambodia, I would not have known how to answer.  But now, I have seen the way both people talk about their history: not as a time that has past, but as a feeling that lives.  A Vietnamese person, born however far into the future, will always hear stories of the time America took away the South; just as every German child will be taught about the Nazis and the disgusting outcomes of fascism.  This idea of living history struck me the most in Greece, a place most known in the US for its perfect beaches and dazzling ruins.  But ask anyone from Turkey or Macedonia about Greece, and they will have much different ideas that have a lot less to do with sun and fun.  Greece, one of the most coveted vacation destinations to Americans, is also a hotbed of deep-rooted ethnic conflict and territorial dispute.

When I try to find something similar to this in my life, I cannot.  I think for me, and for most Americans, a narrative of struggle or conflict is missing from our lives.  Any of our significant wars are too long ago to affect how I feel about my country and my identity.  The exception to this, I think, is for black Americans, who do carry on a story of struggle, of who they are and where they came from, and how that affects their place in this country.  But for me, history does not affect how I live my life.  I am extremely disconnected from it.  And in some ways, I think this is what makes Americans seem naive to the rest of the world.  We think that Europe is just like America, but with pretty castles and more languages.  But it’s absolutely not.  It’s a continent with hundreds of ethnic groups and centuries of conflict over borders.  Even today there is disagreement on who owns what, from the British Isles to the Balkans.

But in the good old USA, we don’t have to deal with that.  Sure, we have immigrants, but so does Europe.  What we don’t have is the complexity of relationships, of rivalries and hatred, of oppression and struggle, to the extent that the rest of the world does.  And for that, we are at the same time lucky and disadvantaged. We are lucky because the United States is a really easy country to live in. But we are disadvantaged because we have to work extra hard to try to comprehend the problems in the rest of the world. Why did a bunch of people shut down the airport in Bangkok? Why does the Chinese government block websites on June 4? Why is the island of Ireland split into two countries? Complicated histories cover this planet.

Except for here. And most of us never even realize how easy we have it.

Jon and I at the Acropolis in Athens, Greece

I’m a freelancer?

Obama gave a big speach in Cairo yesterday, and I got to write about it for the St. Louis Beacon, an online, local, non-profit news source.  It was pretty fun getting back into the writing thing, so I hope to be doing it more in the future!