Breakfast with Lisa & Josh #70 - Top 3 Travel Things We Can't Live Without

Breakfast with Lisa & Josh #70 - Top 3 Travel Things We Can't Live Without

December 14, 2022

Welcome Back to Breakfast with Lisa & Josh!

Our packing list has changed more times over the past 2 years than I can count.

At first, we overpacked. Stuffed our backpacks as full as they could go, and then some.

Then, we underpacked. We brought absolutely no warm clothing or real shoes and decided to race across Europe to the northern most city in the world and camp there for 4 days. It went exactly how you think it did.

We even, occasionally, committed the single worst sin of backpacking. The unspeakable. The inconceivable.

Bringing so much stuff that you have to have a front and back pack.

The horror

We’ve been thinking a lot about what we bring with us for our mostly-full-time-travel lives (especially with the insane black friday sales just a few weeks back), and wanted to share a few of our favorite travel necessities .

The things we simply cannot live without. The stuff we always remember when heading out on a new adventure.

The best of the best of the best. The game changers. That’s what we’re here for. Hopefully you are too.

Here’s our Top 3 Travel Things We Can’t Live Without.

Josh’s List

I’m going to list some of the less obvious things, and tell you why they’re so crucial to my life on the road.

Let me start by saying that I HATE wearing pants with a passion. Shorts and flip flops are my native language, so anything outside of that just feels sweaty, impossible to move in, and generally awful. Lately, though, the situation did call for more fully-covering legwear, and every time it did, I had to put on some god-awful overly-tight leg tubes, usually made of unforgiving denim, and slowly lose my sanity until I could get back into shorts again.

That was, until I found these bad boys.

They’re stretchy, comfortable, thin, breathable, and, most importantly, fancy enough to be worn to just about any occasion. Not only that, they’re pretty affordable.

These have renewed my shaken faith in pants once again. I’m even wearing them right now, when I could be wearing shorts. That’s how good they are.

They feel just like pajama pants, except you can wear them hiking, yoga-ing, fancy dinner-ing, or just about any other -ing you can think of.

They even dry fast.

The best travel pants I’ve ever worn, hands down.

Being the meme-salespeople YouTubers that are, we bring a generally comical amount of electronics with us everywhere we go. And not just your usual phone + laptop combo, we’re talking expensive cameras, massive power banks, iPads, microphones that are almost impossible to charge, even electronic toothbrushes.

Over 50% of the things in our bag need to be plugged in every night after a day of filming, and without a reliable power source to charge all of them safely in the dodgy budget hotels, hostels, and coffeeshops that we spend our time in, we would have very likely fried more than a few very expensive items.

I usually go through a travel adapter in about 3 months with our typical usage. They always go out in a concerningly loud-and-smoke-filled bang, and take out one of our toothbrushes with them on their way to the grave. Then, we have to wander around to electronics stores where we generally can’t read any of the product names, and locate another one that’s just destined to die in a handful of weeks.

This travel adapter has been the exact opposite experience. It’s been with us for 3 years now, charging everything we own every single night, in every country we’ve been to. It’s still running strong.

It’s pretty low profile, doesn’t have one of those annoying mega-bright LEDs that keeps me up at night, has USB-C, and can handle a hair curler + 5 USB ports of charging simultaneously without breaking a sweat. If this thing died, I would buy another one immediately.

But, I really don’t think it’s going to. We’ve really run this thing through the wringer, and it’s come out strong. Built to last, this is. Highly, highly recommended.

Another thing that just kept breaking on me. Well, either breaking me by way of my heels constantly cracking by being overly dry, or the flip flops falling apart within the space of a month or two.

I’ve tried literally hundreds, so when I say these are the ones, I mean it.

Not much else to say. The best. I literally can’t leave home without them.

Bonus Items

Electrical Tape.

Yep, you heard me right. Electrical tape is an absolutely critical travel item for us.

Why you may ask? Reasonable question. We’re not doing much in the way of rewiring outlets or dodgily-crimping low voltage wires together while on the road. So, what’s it for?

This. The bane of any travelers ability to sleep. The dreaded mega-bright LED that cannot be turned off and seems to come equipped with every appliance in every hotel and hostel around the world.

I find it extraordinarily difficult to sleep when there’s 10 different colors of LEDs making the room feel like a nighttime Christmas light display.

To solve the problem - I just take out my trusty roll of electrical tape, rip off a small piece, put some right over the offending light, and sleep like a baby.

We use this at every single place we sleep. I couldn’t imagine leaving home without it anymore. It is also useful for fixing small problems like ripped shoes or the broken mini blinds at the place where we are staying right now.

This hilariously massive power bank.

For full transparency, yes, we received this product at first in exchange for an Instagram reel. And when we received it, at first, I must admit, I definitely thought that this was going to be too heavy, too absurd, too unwieldy to bring with us on our trips.

But then, the first time that we used it to charge not only our laptops, but also our phones from dead all the way back to full on an all-day hike (which prevented us from getting lost in the middle of nowhere), I knew it was going to be in our bags for good. This thing is the literal biggest size allowed on airlines, and it’s been a lifesaver more times than I can count. (Like when we had zero power while camping in Longyearbyen, the northern most town in the world.)

Lisa’s List

This one feels like the most obvious one, but I really love this backpack. I never thought I’d say that about a backpack, but this is the closest thing to a closet I’ve had in over 2 years.

Perhaps the best feature is that it is a wombo combo of a backpack and packing cubes—I can easily pack all my (rolled up) clothes, fit in two pairs of shoes, sweaters, toiletries, and all the electronics in this single bag. And it’s clamshell! No need to take out all the things just to re-pack (unless you’re into that, which I totally am.)

It’s modular, water-resistant, and even has a laptop sleeve. I’ve also been surprised by the number of times I’ve been able to sneak onto the plane without having to weigh or check it (I’ve probably now jinxed myself for our next budget airline flight, which is Spirit… uh oh.)

My only qualm with this bag? It doesn’t have a dedicated water bottle holder (don’t worry, I heard they’re working on it.)

I always keep a tote bag rolled up in my backpack, just in case(s).

They’ve been so clutch in countless situations—grocery shopping, any kind of shopping, packing some extra stuff in a hurry (like those fancy hotel slippers.)

This is the closest thing to a purse that I’ve had in a while and when I’m not carrying around my spam musubi or Manoa tote bag, I love finding a second hand or local bag to tote around. :)

I struggled to find good all-around sandals forever. My usual favorite are the Hawaiian brand Locals, but they just weren’t up for the task of walking the entire way around Seoul, or across Spain on the Camino, or 14 miles per day for 20 days straight in Japan. I wear these when it’s too hot for shoes (or I’m too lazy to find socks and tie my shoes lol), but I know I still need to walk a lot that day.

These are perfect, they never rub or hurt my feet, they’re lightweight and packable, and last forever.

Today

Spending time with family in Los Angeles.

The (Near) Future

San Francisco, then… maybe the Philippines? What do y’all think?

Videos This Week

We Tried This Japanese Capsule Hotel Ferry

This capsule ferry was one to remember. An onsen, on a boat? Yes please!

3 Days in Tokyo on a Budget 🇯🇵 JAPAN 2022

It’s so good to be back. You’re gonna love this one.

Our First Time in Sapporo 🇯🇵 Hokkaido Food Tour

Sapporo was just a treat.

See you next Sunday…ish :)

- josh (and lisa)

Oh, and if you want to learn how we afford to take all these trips after quitting our jobs last year, you’ll likely be interested in our Skillshare course on Travel Hacking and Frequent Flier Miles. It’s been really taking off lately, but we still have a few uses of this link left for those of you who want to see the class for free. It comes with a free month of Skillshare, which is more than enough to watch our class and any of the other great courses on there!