So the time has finally come! We are leaving this Friday for Bangkok! We start off flying to Chicago where we get to hang out for about six hours before taking our first big flight to Doha, Qatar. This flight will be about 13 hours and 20 minutes long. Then we have a three-hour layover and then board our final flight to Bangkok that will take seven hours. This will have us arriving at 5:30 AM Bangkok time. There is an 11 hour time difference there compared to home so we will be on the struggle bus for the first couple of days. The quicker we can get our bodies to adjust to the time difference the better off we will be. All in all we will have traveled for a little over 24 hours total. Usually when I arrive somewhere like this the goal is to stay up all day and try to go to bed at a normal bedtime like 9 or 10 but arriving at 5 AM is going to make that a challenge. The goal is to try to check in early and if that is not possible at least put our bags at the hotel and go out and see some sites.

As mentioned before in a previous post we are traveling light. We are traveling light because of all the domestic flights that we are taking in Southeast Asia have very strict carry-on luggage requirements. The strictest requirement is a total of 15 lbs. This is including the weight of our suitcase and our personal bag. After weighing our current carry-on bags and finding out that they weighed in at over 8 lbs each when empty. We decided that we would have to find some new bags so that more of the 15 lb total could be used for our actual items that we are taking. Both Lyn and my sister Julie bought new bags. Both of the bags weighed in at under 4 lbs. Lyn’s bag actually only weighs 3.6 lbs. This means they can both take about roughly 11 lbs of stuff. I on the other hand decided to take my gym bag which only weighs about 1 lb. To keep things light we have been very careful picking items that get to go in the bag. Julie even went and looked on each hotel that we were staying at to see the amenities that they had just so she would not duplicate anything. Most have hair dryers and she said for the ones that don’t she will just do a “hat” day! We do plan on doing laundry when needed so we are only taking about 5 days worth of clothes. (actually a friend of ours gave us a kit that lets us do some wash in the room.) While I probably struggle less with what to take I will be taking my computer and one additional camera so I will really have to be careful not to exceed the 15 lb limit even with my gym bag. Of course there are 7-Elevens everywhere so we can buy stuff as needed but we still will need to remain under weight or risk paying to check bags on our next flight. Another challenge we have is complying with the amount of liquids that each of us can take as carry on. Each of us are allowed to take whatever will fit into a quart glad type bag as long as each item in the bag has no more than 3.4 ounces of liquids in each bottle we can take as many as will fit in the quart bag. The two things that really will test this is sunscreen lotion and mosquito repellant. For some reason these two things are expensive and Thailand and we were also told that the products they did have might not be as effective as the ones we can buy here. I decided to buy some empty travel size bottles and am currently filling them with sunscreen and mosquito repellant. Julie found some mosquito repellant wipes that look like they will not only be handy to apply but also will not count as a liquid. Win Win!

Preliminary weigh in. (Looking good!)

After watching a few ultra light packing videos on YouTube I am actually getting excited to be packing so light. It will be great not having to check luggage and not having to carry it around as we travel from place to place. So to make sure we were on track we did a trial run to the Fresh Market to do a weigh in and it looks like we are going to have a little bit of room to spare.

I am excited to say that my next post should be posted from Bangkok. If you want to follow along please subscribe to the blog so that you will get an email anytime a new post is posted. Also if you have any comments on things we should do while on this trip please feel free to comment on any blog post. We would love to hear from you.