Welcome Back to Breakfast with Lisa & Josh!

Soundtrack for this newsletter: Chris Stapleton - Traveller

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It’s that time of year again, where, despite living out of our backpacks, we must commence spring cleaning.

It’s time to get rid of all of those things we bought or acquired along the way that we were absolutely sure we were going to use that we never ended up using even once.

I remember packing for my first RTW trip, and I genuinely thought that I needed to be prepared for ANYTHING. I brought a tent even thought I wasn’t going to camp, a doorstop even though I was staying in hostels, malaria medication despite not being within 1000 miles of malaria for the first 6 months of the trip, rechargeable AA batteries even though literally nothing I brought used them. I’ve come a long way since then. I hope.

It got me thinking about how my packing list has changed over the years. Every trip has been a practice in removing the unnecessary, down to our current lists. We always bring less each time we travel, but invariably some travel gear we bring is just straight-up useless.

So, after 4+ trips around the world, here’s the Top 4 Travel Gear that you couldn’t pay me to bring on a trip.

Buyers Remorse: The Top 4 Travel Gear I’ll Never Buy Again

4. Water Purifier

This was the first thing I threw out on my first trip around the world.

Good riddance.

Looking back, it seems so obvious - I wasn’t exactly traveling through rural, remote places or camping by random rivers - I was going from major city to major city. The thing I brought was a steripen—it’s this massive plastic contraption that shines UV lights into a bottle of water to make it drinkable. Amazing for camping. Absolutely useless otherwise.

Many of the places we visited had perfectly safe and tasty tap water to drink and for the places that didn’t, we did as the locals did and bought the bottled or filtered water. We also learned to find the local water purifier machines throughout the towns so we could fill up and reuse our bottles.

Don’t go carrying around a huge useless flashlight-water-stick for 3 months like I did.

Just look at this absurd thing.

3. Money Belt

I could write an entire book about why money belts are the silliest contraption. I get why they were created, but I’ll try to summarize my thoughts here -

1. It just makes you a target for thieves, because they know exactly where all your money is. It’s a clear signal as to where, exactly, your passport, cards, and money is, and how much you have. If you have a money belt, you’re worried about losing something, so you probably have a lot in there.

2. It’s SUPER awkward to pull money out of whenever you have to pay for something. You’re reaching into your pants, likely under your sweaty shirt, or, even worse, into your pants, to grab out your crumpled up wad of wet cash. Put yourselves in the shoes of that street-ice-cream seller. Would you want someone’s sweaty money that they got by reaching down the front of their trousers? No.

3. It’s no more safe than just putting money in your pockets anyway.

The real answer here is to just never bring all your money with you when you go out into a city. Bring just the amount of cash you need for that day, and a little more. Bring 1 credit card and leave the rest in the room. Take a picture of your passport, and leave the real thing in the room. If you’re taking a long overnight bus ride where you’re worried, just keep your backpack in your lap.

Money belts are never, never the answer.

Just, no.

2. Merino Wool / Quick-Dry Everything

Every packing list is like:

MAKE SURE EVERYTHING YOU BRING DRIES INSTANTANEOUSLY OR ELSE YOU WILL LITERALLY DIE THE FIRST TIME IT RAINS. SPEND $200 ON THIS MERINO WOOL SHIRT. YOU HAVE TO HAVE IT. GO TO REI RIGHT NOW AND SPEND ALL YOUR MONEY.

It just ends up looking like you’re on a safari in the middle of Tokyo - wearing a crazy looking quick-dry hiking hat, a quick-dry hiking t-shirt, quick-dry zip-off pants (in case the weather suddenly changes from cold to warm), and a rain jacket that looks and sounds more like a garbage bag. Camping-focused gear is great for just that - camping - but isn’t really necessary 99% of the time.

We just bring the normal clothes that we wear at home. The only specialized travel clothes we bring are our darn tough socks, because they’re the best socks in the world. #notsponsored

It all fits just fine into our little 30L bag.

And if it rains? We just get a little wet, and dry off our clothes at a laundromat, and change into dry ones the next time we get a chance. Like anyone would do when their clothes are wet.

There’s no need to spend thousands of dollars on fancy merino-quick-dry everything just to prevent you sometimes spending $3 at a laundromat.

Plus, you’ll spend your entire vacation looking… well, looking like me 10 years ago. Nobody wants that.

It’s ok to shudder in disgust. I did.

1. Gigantic Hiking Boots

After 70 countries over 15 years - climbing mountains, hiking up muddy and slippery inclines in Southeast Asia, walking all the way across Spain - in every kind of weather you can imagine—not once have I wished that I had hiking boots.

I always saw backpackers with ludicrously large backpacks that had even-more-ludicrously large hiking boots tied to the back of them, and just assumed that was the right way to travel. I always assumed that I would use them, but never actually did. They just took up tons of room in my pack, added 10lbs of extra weight, and constantly got caught on everything.

My setup now? Some trail runners - the Lone Peak Altra 6’s to be specific (#notsponsored, but honestly Altra, hi, we love you) - and some flip flops. That’s it.

If you’re doing something specialized, like going to Everest Base Camp, or attempting a DIY safari in Africa, yeah, probably bring the right shoes for the job.

But for everything else, some nice trail runners will do just fine.

Honestly, even for Everest Base Camp, I’d just bring my trail runners.

He’s not even wearing them, and he’s hiking the Appalachian Trail. See?

Today

Preparing for our next adventure :)

The (Near) Future

Finishing up the Camino series, to release our 2nd Camino documentary. This one is taking a while, but we promise, it will be worth the wait!

Our Latest Videos

Days 9, 10, and 11 got us thinking. A different kind of vlog, a vlogumentary if you will.

We made a Camino packing video in a fancy hotel.

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 3 years ago, 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!

Check it out here: https://skl.sh/lisaandjosh02221

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