Real Advice on How to Travel the World

How to carry things; Bags

Eagle Creek Centerline Cross Roads Convertible 25 We rolled it almost all of the time. what most people don't realize is that even as a "Backpacker" you are almost always walking on sidewalks and streets.
Internal Frame Daypacks Very comfortable. Although you are not carrying much weight you end up wearing them all the time. These types of daypacks keep you from sweating and puts the weight on your lower back and not your shoulders.
Pacsafe Travel Wire Security for Luggage A metal web thing that we can lock our backpacks us with.
Eagle Creek Bathroom Bags These are really simple and hardy bags the thing we liked about them is that they can either hang or be put on a counter.
Eye Shades for sleeping Great for taking a nap during the day and for sleeping in crowded hostels.
Nalgene Water Bottles They are simple and can take hot water which will save you a lot of money in Asia. You can just have restaraunts poor tea in the bottle and save on packaged water.
Dry Sack We had one mid size heavy duty one for when we traveled in the rivers or when it was raining and some smaller not so heavy ones for our cameras and other stuff in our bags.
Compression Sacks These things are a neccesity. They not only alow you to crunch down your clothes to make more space in your backpack, they are also usefull for keeping dirty laundry away from the clean clothes. We each had one xtra large bag and one medium. It might have been handy to have another small one.
But-pack Videocamera bag

Recording Our Journey

Video and Photo
Video Camera: Canon GL2 I was happy with the quality of this camera's video, the 20X zoom and the amount of mannual controls. At the time I bought it, it was the smallest 3ccd camera on the market. Now there are much smaller 3ccd Minidv cameras. Although the GL2 is my no means big, carrying the thing around with me for 2 years made me believe that size does matter. But, the price on the GL2 has gone down. It might be worth it.
Sony DSC-V1 Cyber-shot I was satisfied with this camera as well. Like the GL2 it was the smallest camera with manual controls on the market. But the market has changed and you might think about buying two cameras. One super small totally camera like the Sony Cybershot DSCW50 and a SLR camera with a larger zoom like the Sony Alpha A100 10.2MP Digital. Having only a 4X zoom made it hard to get close-up photos of people . . . they would spot me as I got close up.

Computer
Apple G3 iBook

Miscellaneous
Electric Currency Converter
Ipod
Rio Mp3 Player
Small Speakers
CD case
Watches
Plastic Alarm Clock

Books
Check out the resouces section

What we should never have brought
Underwater bag for Video-Camera I'll give you the link to one, but I
Space save plastic bags (Broke)
platypus bottles (Broke)
Audio Equipment for Video
RCA Adaptor cables for still camera

What we wore;
Follow Susana's red shirt

7 Underwear
7 Socks
1 Skirt
3 Shirts
3 Pants
1 Boots
1 Chacos sandals
1Jacket
1 Quickdry sweater

Brian

7 Underwear
7 Socks
4 Shirts
2 Pants
1 Shants
1 Shorts
1 Boots
1 Chacos sandals
1 Jacket
1 Quickdry sweater

MONEY

What to carry

Traveler's Checks
ATM's (It's amazing how many places you can get your money this way.)
Credit Cards (Watch out for the 3 percent you are charged by the credit card companies for exchange, maybe get one that gives you points for travel)
Cash

Keep most of your stash strapped to a money belt, but one credit card in big pack with some cash.

How Much?

For the two of us, we were living off of 1,000 dollars a month in Southeast Asia, 1,500 in China and about 2,200 dollars a month in Europe and Africa. If you add airline tickets to Asia and from Europe back to the U.S. and equipment we bought before the trip, in two years we spent about 35,000 dollars.

TRANSPORTATION

How we got there

We did the first part of our journey with an all Asia pass plane ticket that we bought through Cathay Pacific. It's was round trip from L.A. to Asia stopping at 8 countries in 3 months. We selected the islands (like Japan and The Philippines) and farther flung places like India. We abandoned (as planned) our flight back to the U.S. and just stayed in Asia.

Then we started our land journey in Thailand, spending 5 months seeing Southeast Asia by land. We took the train, bus, pickup truck, riverboat, motorcycle, our feet . . . basically anything we could. We did however need to fly in and out of Burma from Thailand because of travel restrictions.

Into China from Vietnam by Bus. Again, we traveled by land up to Beijing, down to Hong Kong. Then a plane again to Urumqi, Train to the western border of China then back through Inner Mongolia to Mongolia. We took trains through Siberia and Russia to the Baltics where we caught a bus to Germany.

We bought our Volkswagen Bus in Germany, drove and lived in the machine in Europe and North Africa. When we were done we sold it in Germany.

We flew home from Switzerland to San Francisco

VISAS

If you are traveling by land you should pick up a visa in the country you are currently in for the next country you want to visit. Ask other travelers, check on web and travel books to see which consulates or embassies are the kindest to backpackers. Depending on the bureaucrat you could get a longer or even cheaper visa.

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