{"id":476,"date":"2010-05-07T20:23:31","date_gmt":"2010-05-07T09:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/?p=476"},"modified":"2010-05-07T20:23:31","modified_gmt":"2010-05-07T09:23:31","slug":"5-things-i-always-pack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/5-things-i-always-pack\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Things I Always Pack"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Stolen totally from the <a href=\"http:\/\/practicaltravelgear.com\/\">Practical Travel Gear blog<\/a> I&#8217;m doing a quick post on the 5 things I never leave behind when I travel.<\/p>\n<p>I travel a lot. I mean a lot. On the motorbike to Russia and Morocco, on a plane to pretty much every corner of the world, I&#8217;ve spent a great deal of time crushed in economy, a little time in business and a whole heap of time perched on top of my motorbike &#8211; but there are 5 things I always take with me.<\/p>\n<p>1. <a href=\"https:\/\/powertraveller.com\/iwantsome\/primatepower\/powermonkey-explorer\/\">Power Monkey<\/a> &amp; <a href=\"https:\/\/powertraveller.com\/iwantsome\/primatepower\/minigorilla\/\">Mini Gorilla<\/a>. Seriously, power is my biggest concern when I&#8217;m on the road. It doesn&#8217;t matter if your phone needs a boost or your laptop needs some juice at a crucial moment, between these (technically) two items I&#8217;m never far away from power. My phone, camera, laptop thank <a href=\"https:\/\/powertraveller.com\/\">Power Traveller<\/a> for their products.<\/p>\n<p>2. Compact Camera. <a href=\"http:\/\/exilim.casio.com\/\">My Casio Exilm<\/a> has been my trusty side arm for some time. I&#8217;ve always got the larger <a href=\"http:\/\/www.panasonic.co.uk\/html\/en_GB\/Products\/LUMIX+Digital+Cameras\/G+Micro+System\/DMC-G1\/1564791\/index.html\">Panasonic G1<\/a> near to hand, but the Casio is small and tough and goes where it&#8217;s larger brother can&#8217;t. Grabs <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=oOnJfECen5A\">good-enough video<\/a> with sound and slips in my pocket. It&#8217;s due an upgrade so that may be my next purchase.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-477\" style=\"margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;\" title=\"Credit Card\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/Screen-shot-2010-05-07-at-10.16.11-150x109.png?resize=120%2C87\" alt=\"Credit Card\" width=\"120\" height=\"87\" align=\"right\" \/>3. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fairfx.com\/\">Fair-FX back-up credit card<\/a> (pre-pay). I always have one of these to hand, they work all over the world, give you a pretty good exchange rate and are easy to top-up using a mobile or even a direct bank transfer or debit card. It means people at home can get cash to me really easily in an emergency and means I&#8217;m spending in the local currency (in Europe &amp; US). Another tip &#8211; keep out of date cards in your &#8216;day wallet&#8217; and only carry what you need that day.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-thumbnail wp-image-479\" style=\"margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;\" title=\"Screen shot 2010-05-07 at 10.19.44\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/Screen-shot-2010-05-07-at-10.19.44-150x150.png?resize=120%2C120\" alt=\"Screen shot 2010-05-07 at 10.19.44\" width=\"120\" height=\"120\" align=\"left\" \/><\/p>\n<p>4. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/macbookpro\/\">MacBook (13 inch &#8211; now &#8216;pro&#8217;)<\/a>. I did travel for a while with the more compact <a href=\"http:\/\/eeepc.asus.com\/\">Asus EeePC<\/a> &#8211; a machine I absolutely adored &#8211; but ultimately started to feel the limitations even when I wanted to do very basic photo clean-up, and don&#8217;t even suggest video editing. As my requirements increased I bought the MacBook and haven&#8217;t looked back. It&#8217;s solid (it already has dents from drops), fast and does everything out of the box.<\/p>\n<p>5. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.co.uk\/search?client=safari&amp;rls=en&amp;q=travel+laundry+bag&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;oe=UTF-8&amp;redir_esc=&amp;ei=gNnjS9_mI6SIOJPfzOUN\">Dirty clothes sack<\/a>. Simple. If I&#8217;m in a hotel for a week, a B&amp;B for a night or the tent I need somewhere to stash the smelly dirty stuff I&#8217;ve been wearing during the day. Look for something that&#8217;s airy but will keep the smell to itself rather than sharing it with your clean stuff. Sealed bags are not great, but perfect if there&#8217;s a chance you&#8217;ll have wet stuff. Make sure it&#8217;s big enough. I got mine from a random store in San Francisco last time I was in town &#8211; but google is full of suggestions.<\/p>\n<p><em>You can read more tips from me and others at Lonely Planet in the new book &#8216;<\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/shop.lonelyplanet.com\/Primary\/Product\/General_Travel\/Reference\/PRD_PRD_3190\/Lonely+Planets+Best+Ever+Travel+Tips.jsp?bmUID=1273222759160\"><em>Lonely Planet&#8217;s Best Ever Travel Tips<\/em><\/a><em>&#8216;. &lt;\/end plug&gt;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stolen totally from the Practical Travel Gear blog I&#8217;m doing a quick post on the 5 things I never leave behind when I travel. I travel a lot. I mean a lot. On the motorbike to Russia and Morocco, on a plane to pretty much every corner of the world, I&#8217;ve spent a great deal &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/5-things-i-always-pack\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;5 Things I Always Pack&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}