Attempt #1 to Pack the Bag...Not a COMPLETE Failure...

I was so excited to finally have my pack that when I was home tonight not really doing anything I decided to attempt to pack my bag with the packing list that Lauren and I had already devised.  Now, I'm not claiming to be traveling as a minimalist and I know that some of the items that I plan to (or would ideally like to) bring are controversial in some backpacking circles (like my memory foam travel pillow -- it's compactible I swear!) but I do want to try and be as minimalist as possible.

We made our list keeping in mind that we were only planning on bringing one backpack and we wanted to keep it as little and as light as possible but I knew that we were going to have to make changes to the list once we actually tried to pack.  I just didn't know if we were going to have to sacrifice some items or if we would have the luxury of maybe taking a few extra things...we definitely don't have that luxury.

Lauren is borrowing our friend Jane's backpack that she bought when they went to the 2012 London Olympics.  On that trip Lauren had borrowed her cousin's backpack which is apparently quite big though Chris has decided that he's going to bring it for his pack during his 4 weeks so I'm not concerned about his packing list hahah.  I don't know too much about Jane's bag except that it's 35L so it's even smaller than mine (good luck Lauren!!).

I already had purchased some packing cubes when I saw them on sale about a month ago and I have the majority of the items that I will be bringing with me so all I had to do was go through my drawers and closet and pick out what clothing items I would bring with me if I was forced to pack right now.  It was pretty easy to follow the list and put my clothes into the packing cubes but then it was like a game of intense Tetris to get my two packing cubes (one full-sized and one half-sized) along with all the other items I plan on bringing (my pillow, shoes, hat, toiletries, book, journal, day bag, rain cover, rain coat, you get the idea...) into my pack.  

I eventually got everything to fit BUT it was jam packed and there is absolutely not wiggle room.  I would basically have to pack my bag the exact same way every time just to get things to fit and I know there's going to be times that I'm just honestly going to be too lazy to do that.  PLUS I haven't bought everything I plan on bringing with me (I don't have my sunscreen or bugspray yet and I didn't include all of my toiletries either, among other things).  So, I'm definitely going to have to make some sacrifices.

I'm not going to include my entire packing list right now but I will when I have it more finalized.  However, the first things that I have decided to sacrifice are:

• My long sleeve shirt (I also have a lightweight sweater to serve the same purpose)
• My long pants (I packed yoga pants but their relatively heavy and bulky and I have yoga capris too)
• A pair of shorts (I packed 4; 2 regular and 2 sport shorts...not sure which one I'll ditch yet)
• A different book (my plan was to finish the 3rd Game of Thrones book this summer and bring the 4th one with me on the trip but it's a huge book and it's not one that I would want to leave behind once I'm finished...I may take a run into Value Village or a used bookstore and get a cheap book from there that I won't mind trading or giving to someone once I'm done reading it)

Those are the only things that I can commit to ditching right now...good thing I tried this now because it may take me the remaining 69 days to decide on what to bring (or not to bring)!

Below is a picture of everything that I got in the bag this time, it will be interesting to see how much this picture changes in the next 10 weeks!

THIS TRIP IS BECOMING REAL!!

Lauren's back home from Toronto this week and we decided it would be a good time to get some trip planning done (since it's in less than 70 days now!!!).

First we went to MEC and I GOT MY BACKPACK!! *happy dance* I've posted a picture of it on my Instagram if anyone is interested in looking at it (http://instagram.com/p/poKHmYNNyS/).  It's a MEC Aria 40L backpack in the Beet Red/Firecracker colours and I love it!  I've had my eye on it for awhile and I've looked around at other places for other ones but I never found one that I liked as much and cost as little as this one.  My Aunt gave me $100 to put towards my backpack as a birthday/graduation gift and the bag was $99 so it was perfect (thanks Auntie Rie!!)!

Lauren also got some stuff at MEC but I won't go into details about that because most of it was for Chris's birthday and if I'm being honest I have no idea who reads this and if he sees this before his birthday then I don't want to ruin any surprises hahah!

After we were finished at MEC we went to Starbucks to talk about some trip specifics.  First, we looked into booking a hotel for our first night in Ho Chi Minh City.  We fly into HCM at 12:45am local time so we wanted to make sure we got somewhere close to the airport that we can just get to quickly so we can just absolutely crash after spending 26 hours (36 with the time difference) in airplanes to get there!

We ended up going with the Family Inn Saigon Hotel.  Our room is regularly $71 a night and we got it for $38 on Expedia! It looks absolutely gorgeous and it will (theoretically) be an amazing place to get our feet under us since it's only 8km from the airport but only a 15min taxi ride to the core of HCM!  We ended up deciding to book 3 nights there so we'll stay until Saturday and then head on to Cambodia (if we love HCM we can spend more time there at the end of the trip since we're flying out of there to get back home as well)!

We then moved on to talking about travel insurance.  It's so complicated!!  The policies are all in "legalese" and they're all so similar but also so different!  My Lonely Planet book recommended World Nomads Travel Insurance so we looked into that one first and it definitely looks like a good one (at $250ish for 2 months).  Then I looked at the President's Choice Travel Insurance because I already bank with them and figured it would be easy to just go into my local bank and get it through them in person and have them explain it to me.  Theirs is almost $100 cheaper and looks pretty similar to the World Nomads policy but I really need to look at them side by side and compare every point.  I definitely don't want to get into a situation and then realize I should have gone with a different plan, especially on the other side of the globe!

If anyone has any recommendations on travel insurance or the best way to get from HCM to Phnom Penh I'm all ears! :)

Martial Law?!

This is a bit delayed but Thailand has been under Martial Law for a couple weeks now and it's making me nervous that we're going to have to change our route.

It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, I've talked to Lauren about it in the past couple weeks and we think that if the Martial Law isn't over by the time we go we're going to skip Thailand all together (better safe than sorry right?) and head over to Sri Lanka instead.

The flight to Sri Lanka from Malaysia is pretty dang cheap if you fly with Air Asia and if you google image search Sri Lanka (go on, I'll wait...) it seems like a gorgeous place to visit.  Also, when else am I ever going to get a chance to go to Sri Lanka??

I'm not going to lie, I would be pretty bummed if we can't go to Thailand since that would mean no Bangkok, no Full Moon Party, no Phi Phi Islands...but there's so many other gorgeous and amazing things to see in and around South East Asia that I wouldn't be crushed.

If anyone has suggestions about where else we should go please let me know because nothing has been set in stone!  We've also contemplated Japan, China, Indonesia and the Philippines or just spending extra time in the countries we're already going to.