Our Best Travel Items

Toiletries

• I was sad to put away my Sonicare toothbrush before we left for our trip, but it was just too large to come with us. My alternative was a Quip toothbrush.This electric toothbrush isn’t as powerful as a Sonicare, but it’s super slim and didn’t take up much more space than a regular toothbrush, making it an ideal traveling product. (Use referral code “shari27356224491” to get $5 off a refill.)
• We also carried folding toothbrushes in our dopp kits. I loved these because they are their own carrying cases and are super compact.
• There’s different hospitality standards all over the world, and we’re very accustomed to using washcloths in the shower. Unfortunately it seemed like most of the Airbnbs we stayed in didn’t think they were necessary. Luckily, we had last-minute purchased a couple of travel washcloths, which were a little rougher than I prefer, but took up almost no space, dried super fast (you can whip them back and forth a couple of times to speed up the dry time to essentially nothing), and did the trick when needed. Additionally, we noticed a lot of places we stayed also didn’t provide a hand towel. It’s not a huge ordeal to not have one, but I don’t love constantly wiping my hands on our bath towels either, so we also picked up a quick dry hand towel when we got a chance.
• I’m not a big makeup person, and essentially gave up on anything aside from moisturizer, sunscreen, and mascara halfway through the trip. But when I did make an effort to put on foundation, this retractable makeup brush was brilliant. It pushes down into itself, so it’s protected and doesn’t get dirty or beat up among other toiletries.

Personal

• We both invested in high-quality quick dry underwear for the trip. Admittedly, it’s not often very sexy, but it’s super useful when you’re doing sink laundry and don’t want to wait around all day for your underwear to dry. My favorites were Ex Officio and Josh is still enamored with his Uniqlo Airisms, swearing they’re the most comfortable underwear he’s ever owned.
• Another favorite item of mine was my Turkish wrap towel/peshimal. We used it constantly – alternatively a blanket or a scarf in colder locales, for picnics in European parks, on the beach, and as a sarong and temporary leg covering over shorts for temple visits.
• Josh had a bandana with him at almost all times. As soon as the temperatures rose, the bandana went on his head and kept the sweat out of his eyes.

Bags/Organization

• Even though we each had a larger backpack, which carried our computers and cameras among other things on travel days, we also brought a small packable daypack for daily use and lighter weight needs. And we pretty much used it every single day. By the end of the trip, it was toast, but we admittedly abused the shit out of it. Now, I’m super enamored with the Alta 21 Kickstarter daypack, which looks amazing!
• We also brought along a small Baggu reusable shopping bag, which took up no room, but was great for tons of miscellaneous things, like groceries, as many stores around the world charge for plastic grocery bags, and of course, it’s much more eco-friendly to have your own reusable bag anyway. I also recently found out about Stash It Love bags, which have a longer strap, allowing you to wear it as a cross-body, which is appealing too!
• I’ve used packing cubes for a while, but just had a cheap set I get ages ago and only really used one of the cubes in the set because the rest were too large to really make any sense. For this trip, I invested in several smaller cubes, specifically Eagle Creek Specter Cubes and REI Expandable Small Packing Cubes, and they were hands down one of my the best things I could have brought. I made sure to get different colors so that they became organization tools as well, so it was easy to pull out the red REI cube if I needed a shirt, rather than digging through my whole bag. The Eagle Creek ones were my favorite though because they were incredibly easy to stuff and somehow magically kept everything neat and compressed.
• We also decided to pack some Sea to Summit dry bags in various sizes. The smallest one was great for cell phones when water-sporting, and Josh actually used a larger one as a default packing cube that he then emptied and repurposed to hold his big camera when he wanted to take that out in the rain or around water.

Footwear

• We were both super happy with our sporty sandals, especially Josh who talks up his Bedrocks to anyone that glances at his feet questioningly. He loves them because they’re comfortable, light, durable, and super easily adjustable. He even jogs in them! I wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about my Tevas, but they did a great job of being multi-functional, pairing well with my maxi dress, working as water shoes, and also did a decent job on hikes. My only problem with these was that the construction of the backstrap was not ideal, and a few times they rubbed blisters onto the back of my ankle.
• Working from home, I have my feet in comfy slippers all the time. They’re obviously huge and not travel-friendly, but I managed to find a travel-friendly folding flat pair to take with us. They didn’t provide the comfort level I was used to, but they were tiny and kept my feet clean on various floors.
• Another feet-focused item for me was a lacrosse ball. I get a lot of foot pain in my arches especially, and since most of our year traveling involved pounding the pavement, I knew my dogs would be barking. The lacrosse ball was great for rolling my feet over, relieving pressure and pain.

Electronics

• This 4-in-1 adapter works great and packs up small.
• Portable phone chargers are a must for traveling when you’re out and about all day and taking tons of pictures as well as using various other apps to research and navigate. We burned through a couple of options before landing on this Anker power bank and a beefier Anker battery pack, which not only charged our phones but the GoPro as well, neither of which have failed us once.
• We chose to go with the T-Mobile One phone plan since it has unlimited data with no roaming charges throughout the world. The internet speeds weren’t amazing when not connected to WiFi, but they worked, and the only place we went where T-Mobile wasn’t supported and we had to buy SIM cards was Vietnam. (Another good thing is having an “unlocked” phone so you can use SIM cards in other countries when needed.) Overall, we were super happy with the service.

Miscellaneous

• Josh’s mom found these dissolvable travel laundry detergent sheets for us, which were perfect! They’re not liquid, so they don’t affect carry-on status, they barely take up any room, and they’re perfect for sink laundry.
• Water is a big topic for us (50% of proceeds from affiliate links on this site get donated to Charity:Water BTW!), and we knew we didn’t want to constantly be buying plastic water bottles, as it’s both expensive and super bad for, well, everything. So we brought along 1) a Sawyer Water Filter, which allowed us to quickly and easily filter non-potable water to make it safe to drink, and 2) Vapor BPA-free foldable water bottles, which carabiner to your bag and roll up when empty. Josh was super happy with the Vapors, but I didn’t love their odd shape, finding them hard to fit in a cup holder or next to me in the plane seat. If I were to choose an alternative, I’d go for a more typically shape collapsible option like Monument, Nomader or Outderdo.
• We had a couple of extra carabiners on hand at all times, which we used for various things, mainly clipping our hiking shoes to our packs on travel days that didn’t involve a plane.
• Ziplocks in various sizes always came in handy for picnicking, securing small items, dividing out medicine, etc., and are perfect dry bags for cell phones if you don’t have an official one.

There were also a few things that took up valuable space in our bags for seemingly no reason once we realized they couldn’t (or we didn’t need them to) do the job we brought them along for. Here’s a few things we thought we’d use but didn’t:

• Headlamps – We made the critical error of packing them with their batteries inside. As we didn’t have a need for them until we were a few months into our trip, we didn’t realize the batteries had corroded, damaging the headlamps. So the takeaway on that is travel with the batteries separated out!
• Our most disappointing item was the Karma Grip gimbal for the GoPro. This thing 1) was NOT cheap, and 2) almost never worked right. It just caused a ton of frustration, and when Josh finally gave up on trying to use it, it took up a good amount of space in his bag because he wasn’t going to just ditch it since it cost so much.
• Lastly, we diligently got all the recommended vaccines (probably a good thing) and bought all the prescribed (very expensive) major medicine for altitude sickness, malaria, etc. We only ever used the Cipro. But maybe if we hadn’t brought the umbrella, it would have rained? Hard to say.

All images TM & © 2018 Josh Meister Photo and Shari Margolin (unless otherwise stated). Please don’t steal or “borrow” – just be cool, be cool.