Clothes and footwear
This is how we decided on which clothes to bring on our trip around the world. We’ll try and provide updates about how well that actually turned out via the updates link above.
We’ve suffered a few headaches deciding what clothes to take with us. We wanted to travel light, and yet visit climatically diverse places. Since Matthew is determined to use 90% of the available backpack space for electronics, we are left with very little room for clothes and so must choose wisely.
In the end, we bought lots of technical clothes, because they are light-weight and practical (we’ll be doing regular clothes-washes, so something that doesn’t crease is a must). We aim to keep warm by wearing layers.
Jean Jeannie
Is it a sin to travel with denim?
We debated long and hard over jeans. Denim is the most impractical sort of material, being highly water-absorbent but slow to dry, as anyone who has ever worn one in the rain will testify. And yet, we remember past holidays where we’d felt totally out of place because we were wearing a pair of practical (quick drying, non-crease, not so sexy) travel trousers, while the locals were in jeans.
So should we throw out common sense and lug around a pair of jeans in order to better blend in? TBC!
Footwear fiasco
Shoes are bulky, there’s no way we can take more than one proper pair. Our ideal footwear would be robust enough for trekking up to a high altitude in Nepal, light and airy to avoid sweaty feet in Thailand, smart enough to wear to nice restaurants, water-proof in a New Zealand autumn, and give protection against leeches in Madagascar.
Sadly, our dream footwear has not yet been invented.
In the end, we settled on a sturdy pair of non-waterproof hiking shoes. We chose the non-waterproof version, since we know from experience that soggy or sweaty waterproof shoes are the devil to dry, and incredibly smelly too. And the good folk at Itchy Feet let us take them home for a week and wear them around the house – this was phenomenally useful because the first shoes Maureen tried seemed fine in the shop but hurt her feet after only a couple of hours wear.
We are making room for a pair of Teva sandals each for wearing in hot countries, and wading through streams. I will also be taking a pair of pretty flip-flops for that nice restaurant.
Sadly, there is no solution for the leeches.