China: Day 1 - On the Art of Packing

"I travel light; as light, that is, as a man can travel who will still carry his body around because of its sentimental value."
- Christopher Fry

Packing is a hard job.

In an ideal world we travel light. We toss compact backpacks onto our strong shoulders, and march into exciting new worlds of adventure. But shoulders are easily burdened by reality and an intense desire for random luxuries. It was the ordeal of packing that convinced us to move ourselves from the category of backpackers to a more generic category of travelers.

The exercise of packing was an entertaining dialogue of bargaining, with liberal doses of vitriol. Of wanting to wear the same shirts for days against the need to look good on the camera. Of wanting to survive the cold Chinese winter with a smile against shivering in style.
There were debates where we pitted the best-case scenarios against the worst-case scenarios. Worst-case scenarios ranged from being stuck sans luggage at the Chinese airports to being stuck in sparse vermin-infested hotels. Best case scenarios had us returning home in a single piece.

Some battles were won by me, the others by P. After many hours of animated conversations and failed attempts at optimizing suitcase space, we realized on an eternal truth. Packing is an art that we learn with time, and we still needed a lot of time to get there. This time we landed in Kunming, Yunnan with 2 large strollers, a backpack and a duffel-bag. Not really inconvenient, but we thanked our luck that our hotels were booked before hand. It meant we didn't need to move around a lot, and could safely stow our luggage in our brightly lit rooms while we pretended to be carefree travelers.

In our many pieces of luggage were lessons -

• There will always be a temptation to pack 14 pairs of clothes for a 2 week trip. Don't. While you are traveling, you will end up wearing your best outfits again, and the second-best outfits will come home with you completely unworn.
• Bring toiletries in small bottles or trial sizes. Good hotels give enough toiletries to last you for months. (My personal advice is to forget about toiletries. There is no better adventure than to hunt for local toiletries. But that's just me.)
• You need a collection of medicines. There is no worst case scenario than to be stuck in your hotel room writhing in pain even as the world around you fails to understand your language or pain. (Every man is an island...)
• Do your research on the weather and the terrain. And the allowed baggage sizes.
• Don't bother with books or electronics. Make life convenient. Buy new books, and forget your laptops and Ipods behind. A smart phone should suffice for most of your needs.
• etc, etc.

So anyhow we set out to China with the rather inconvenient fear that our luggage might exceed the maximum weight allowed in planes. We had already rehearsed our speech about how small scrawny people like us deserve more cargo space than the relatively larger rest of humanity. Luckily our luggage stood within the maximum, and Thai Airlines threw in an extra 5 kilo bonus to make life simpler. We smiled. And so it was.