Gadling

Ultralight packing is the constant quest for perfection. Each item put away in the bag must be outrageously useful, versatile, small, and light. That rules out almost everything.

And for a while, the ultimate shoes escaped me. Sandals are light and small, but not versatile. I couldn't run or hike with them.

I had some gore tex trail running shoes that I liked, but they weren't light and small. They were fairly versatile, but were a disaster at the beach.

For a long time I carried two pairs of shoes. One in the backpack and one on my feet. Not perfect, but not bad.

Then I stumbled across the perfect pair of shoes by accident. My travel mate bought a pair during a brief stopover in LA.

Vibram Five Fingers.

Welcome back. Last time I talked about how and why to pack light. Today I present to you a list of my best packing tips that I've developed while living out of a 28 liter bag for the past seven months going around the globe.

1. Keep the things you'll need first or most often near the tops of the bag. If you use the Deuter 28 you have two openings for this.
2. Leave spare batteries in their chargers.
3. Use the side water bottle holders to hold more than water bottles. I keep my computer charger bag (which also has a tiny Nokia USB phone charger and tiny universal plug adapter) in one side and my TSA approved bag full of liquids in the other. That way in the airport I can go through the scan quickly and plug in my computer without digging through the bag.
4. If your bag has two compartments like the Deuter, stuff one of them as full as possible with stuff you don't use often and leave the other one partially empty to make it easy to find stuff and to fit stuff you get along the way.
5. Get a Kiva collapsible backpack and clip it to the front of your bag. It's perfect for carrying around a camera or jacket.
6. Use every last bit of space. Put everything you want to pack on your bed, and pack big things first. Then look for an appropriately sized little thing to jam into every nook and cranny created by the big thing.
7. Take a look at your 3-4 biggest space eaters and see if there's a significantly smaller version that will get the job done. Jackets and sleeping bags are easy candidates (modern good sleeping bags can fit in your water bottle holder if a silk liner isn't going to be thorough enough for you).
8. Don't bring a pillow. Inflate an Aloksak partially and put it inside your fleece instead.
9. Wear your bulkiest stuff on travel days.
10. If you have a lot of room left over in your bag, get a smaller bag! Don't fill yours up just to use it.
11. Don't bring a sleeping pad. A Luxury Lite cot is smaller, much more comfortable, and more versatile.
12. Fold jackets to the width of your bag and then roll them as tightly as possible.
13. Never bring cotton clothes. They aren't warm, they dry slowly, they get dirty quickly, and they absorb odor. Wool is the exact opposite, but is still cool enough to run or workout in.
14. Bring as few clothes as possible. No one will notice or care that you wear the same shirts every few days. That's not what traveling is about.
15. If you're going to poor countries, bring balloons as souveniers to give away to kids. They're tiny and kids love them.
16. Don't lose stuff like I do. Double check for all your stuff before you go.

As a bonus, here's a video of me packing my bag:

I draw suspicion when I pass through customs sometimes.

"Where are your bags?"

"I don't have any."

"How long are you staying here?"

"Two months."

My friend Todd and I travel with just two tiny carry-on backpacks. Twenty eight liters. Not only is that all you need, it's all you should ever want. I'm going to explain how to pack everything you could possibly need and still have room for souveniers.

In fact, I carry a laptop, a professional camera, a bed, full rain gear and exercise equipment with me. If you don't need that stuff, you could easily pack even lighter.

Cambodia has only one passenger train that still runs, and I'm on it right now.

Calling it a passenger train is a bit of a misnomer, though. Most of the few seats still attached to the floor are piled high with exotic fruits: durians, pineapples, and several others that I've eaten before but can't name. I think one's a jackfruit, and another might be a soursop.

Half of the back car is full of lumber which I helped load a few stops ago. I almost crushed my foot.

The train is slow, probably the slowest train in the world. The fastest I clocked it with my GPS was 17kph. That's fast enough that if you want to take a jog you can just hop out the back and run along.

The journey from Battambang, a city reasonably close to the Thai border, to Phnom Penh takes four hours by air conditioned bus. I've been on the train for 17 hours now and there's been no word on when we'll finally arrive. The official timetable claimed it would be 5 hours ago.

In the (very near) future I'm going to write a comprehensive article about why and how to pack light, so make sure you're RSSed up and ready for that in the next week or two.

Consider this the prequel. The most important part of packing light is the bag, and I'm proud to say that I've found the ultimate bag for packing light, the Deuter Futura 28.

I found the Deuter Futura 28 by accident. I was at Whole Earth Provisions in Austin, Texas, getting ready for my 10 month trip around the world. I needed a bag.

I looked at the North Face bags, the Osprey bags, the Arcteryx bags, and all of the other usual suspects. None of them stood out.

As I was about to leave I saw a bag tucked away in the far corner. It was pushed back into the rack so that only someone obsessively evaluating every single bag would find it. That's me.

I had never heard of Deuter, so I assumed they must be some no name budget brand. After just a few minutes of examination, though, I realized just how wrong I was. This was the ultimate bag for the light packer.

With a title like that, it may surprise you that this article has absolutely nothing to do with ladyboys. I'm a little bit ashamed to say that when I first headed to Bangkok, I didn't expect much beyond backpacker bars and a ubiquitous haze of sleaze covering everything.

Boy, was I wrong. Bangkok is an incredible place to visit, and possibly even to live. I've only carved two weeks out to visit this year, but next year I'll be back for a month or two.

Here are some hidden gems that I discovered in Bangkok that really made my stay a whole lot better.

I'm all for fancy gizmos and high tech electronics. It's my bread and butter. But what really makes the difference when traveling, a lot of the time, are the simple essentials that you deal with every day.

Clothes, for example. The right clothes can lighten your pack, keep you dryer, warmer, cooler, and happier. Believe me.

Today's Mega Gadling Gear Extravaganza is going to cover all of the clothes I own, which are actually so few that they fit in a single Aloksak plastic bag.

... Okay, I just got a tux made here in Bangkok too (who can resist?), but I'm having it shipped back, so it doesn't count.

All of this gear has been tested personally by me on a crazy around the world trip that I'm five months into, and most of it was being pre-tested in Austin, Texas before I left.

It was a crazy couple of days. We returned from trekking in Yakushima, Japan with just under 18 hours to find a condo for the next month in Taipei, pack, and get on the plane to go there.

And that's how mistakes happen.

My friend and I booked a great little condo in downtown Taipei. I could have sworn that it said there was a bed AND a sleeper sofa in the condo.

After two nights on the 3 foot long sofa, I caved. I'd been eyeing the Luxury Lite cot for years now but just couldn't justify buying it. I didn't do much (any) camping, and I lived downtown.

Time to pull the trigger. My friend was so impressed with the pictures and stats of the cot that he decided to order one as well.

There's a lot to be impressed with. The cot is full length, keeps your entire body off the ground, yet it packs up to a tiny 2 pound 2 ounce package that you can fit in your backpack.

When the packages came (remarkably quickly, especially considering we were on the other side of the globe), we tore into them. We'd been waiting around all day because we knew that if we didn't answer the door for the delivery guy, we may never get the package (this already happened in Panama).

In my excitement I tried to build the cot without the instructions. No dice.

Thirty seconds after reading the one page instructions, my light-as-a-feather cot was fully assembled.

A little under a year ago I decided to get serious about working out and keeping my body in peak shape. After a ton of research (the kind that finds all these cool things that I write about every week), I decided that Crossfit was the best possible choice.

Not only is it great for strength, endurance, dexterity, power, and a number of other metrics, but it's also efficient. That means that instead of spending an hour in the gym I can spend just 20-40 minutes and still get huge results.

This is acheived by combining huge compound movements which work out several muscles at once with old fashioned weights.

The favorite tool in the Crossfitter's arsenal is the formidable kettlebell.

To fully experience Taiwan's natural beauty, there's one destination that is universally praised: Sun Moon Lake.

It's the largest lake in Taiwan, and is so beautiful that Chang Kai Shek, Taiwan's first president, built a house there to vacation.

In 1997, after an earthquake destroyed his house, the lot was purchased and after five years of construction Taiwan's only six star hotel, The Lalu Hotel, was built. Shortly after it joined the ranks of Design Hotels, a premiere group of international boutique and luxury hotels.

I recently had the chance to stay there for a few nights and meet with the manager of the hotel to get the full tour.

When, after waiting a full six months, the chairman received the blueprints from the architect, he was furious. They showed a very simple design with long straight lines and no curves at all. For what would become the best hotel in Taiwan, it didn't seem very fancy.

The chairman was calmed down and after some convincing agreed to build the hotel according to the blueprints. The result, as it stands today, is a building which relies on high quality materials and workmanship, rather than gimmicks or fancy veneers.

This attitude doesn't stop with the architecture, but rather is echoed throughout the entire experience of staying at The Lalu.