Travel Vests

We've had enormous success with our travel vests. On a recent trip to the bush, we learned that our weight allowance was 15kg total. Our 15kg was reserved for clothes and a few pieces of outdoor gear because the travel vest made carrying everything else (mostly personal) a lot easier!

Easing Into Economy Class

Over the last few months we’ve done some traveling – a few times across the Atlantic, still other times across the Indian Ocean. Most of our Atlantic flights have actually been a lot longer than a short hop from London to Washington. Since we’re traveling from the Middle East, we frequently travel directly from the Arabian Gulf to Washington -- a flight of around 14 hours.

Almost all of the flights we took were overnighters in econo class. That means we are entitled to limited carry-on weight allowances, minimum leg room, a higher probability for DVT, and lots of aches and pains from interminably uncomfortable airline seats.

A few trips over the years convinced us to assemble a variety of inflatable sleep aids for the overnights (like seat cushions, leg rests, head rests, and foot rests). Our most interesting piece, however, is the 1st Class Sleeper Seat. It is travel cushion that is as long as an airline seat back, and when properly inflated (not too much), lets you enjoy a much better sleep than you’ll likely get with those itty-bitty airline pillows.

We love our Sleepers for two reasons: The seat cushion makes trying to sleep during travel much more comfortable and thus possible, and it is a great conversational piece. Although we get a few puzzled stares, generally we have at least one person comment and ask questions about the large item we’re inflating upon getting situated.

We have an idea for at least one modification to the pillow – it tends to slip when we get up to walk around the cabin or while we’re trying to get it situated properly. Some sort of way to hold it upright would be great, but that’s a minor issue. Overall it’s a great help in travel.

(And, no, we haven’t received any compensation of any kind to promote this or any other travel item here in this blog or even if you meet us on the plane.) We’re just sharing our own experiences with economy travel and how to make it better. Now, if only the airlines would give us an extra two inches of leg room! Happy travels!

We're reading . . .

We were loaned a copy of Maya Frost's, The New Global Student. It's a great resource for individuals and families thinking about living abroad. Expats can do creative things and still save money! This is, in our opinion, a worthwhile read!

Take a Boat with You . . . Anywhere!

While we debate which large screen e-book reader will be our next purchase, we’ll share one of the ways we can enjoy some of our recreational habits while living and traveling abroad.

We like, love, and imbibe in water sports: we are avid kayakers. However, both carrying and storing a hard shell kayak (or more than one) aren’t easy if one wants to live and travel abroad. We had relied on renting kayaks but often we found that the kayaks (and the accompanying rental paddles) were the novice versions, which means that everything feels heavy, and one of us isn’t a fan of extra weight. We wanted our own kayaks and did not want to be reliant on rentals which may not be available according to our schedules.

We first hit upon the idea of folding (and later inflatable) kayaks while living in an urban apartment. We didn’t have a safe place to store the kayak, nor did we want to pay high rental fees to store a kayak at a nearby boathouse.

We first looked at a collapsible craft of some kind. In fact we were sure that we wanted a folding kayak, but quickly found that they were generally very expensive, often quite heavy, took a long time to set up, and had fragile parts. Then we found the Innova site by chance. We contacted someone there, who was very responsive (responsiveness is really important to us) and we became the proud owners of a Helios.

Our first inflatable kayak, the Helios, was fun. It was an open double and we managed to run class one and two rapids on the Potomac River and once at the end of a heavy rainfall, we ran Rock Creek. Our kayak went to Florida where we paddled with alligators on the Loxahatchee River. We also had a blast on class three rapids in West Virginia.

Having an inflatable kayak completely changed the paradigm of outdoor recreation—suddenly we had something that we could travel with, take on the subway, pack on a bike trailer, and use in rivers, lakes, oceans, surf, and for snorkeling. The Helios went around the world—although after a couple of years of sun (despite UV treatments), it was a faded, pink-colored boat. With the exception of having to replace most of the main valves and having to glue the aft deck seams back to the boat, we had no issues with it and never had a flat. Last year, an internal batten collapsed on one side and then the seams blew out. It might have been possible to repair, but we decided we’d look for a replacement and found an Incept double through The Boat People.

We feel our Incept Pacific is certainly a step up—it’s faster and pricier; it seems to handle UV rays better, it has a much greater cargo-carrying capacity (making overnighters more practical), has a better rudder system, has all the necessary accessories bundled together, and is currently more attractive than our previous boat. However, it’s also a bit more specialized, so we’re not taking it on whitewater! Fortunately, though, we still have a single Innova Safari, which is great for playing in waves and solo paddling.

The advantages of having an inflatable kayak while living overseas: it’s easy to transport, easy to store and it opens new horizons and dimensions to places one lives in or can visit. Now we have all the advantages of owning our own boat and none of the disadvantages. There are all types of inflatable kayaks out there – lightweight, singles, doubles, and even triples. Check them out and enjoy.

e-Books for Expat Readers Part 2

When we started researching e-book readers, we were amazed to find many choices to choose from. We found a Wiki site that has a matrix that helped us prioritize our needs. The site is:
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix. The matrix compares a variety of specifications across the range of available e-book readers. It is a little dated as the Kindle 2 is now available and Fujitsu as well as other companies have new book readers coming on to markets around the world.

We live where we can’t access U.S. mobile networks and we’re very active (read: we move around a lot and often have limited weigh allowances). So we felt the following specifications were important: compact size, lightweight, ability to read books or documents in multiple formats, and SD interface. Price was also a factor for us. After we made a list of the ones on the matrix that we liked, we visited the websites of the companies and looked for information on YouTube about the products.

We decided upon a Cybook Gen 3 for our first e-reader. (Yes, we are looking to purchase another one in the near future for different purposes, and are waiting to see which brands hit the U.S. later this year.) It meets our needs and has relatively few commands to learn—all of them are by push button. Although we have had a few hiccups at the beginning with our unit freezing on occasion, we were easily able to download a service patch upgrade to the operating software and we’re back to downloading and reading a host of the latest bestsellers, some travel guides, PDF reports, and some classics too!

Next post: Working with your photo collection and living abroad

e-Books for Expat Readers

We had a lot of tough decisions to make when we moved from the U.S. to overseas. For us, one of the most difficult had to do with balancing our weight allowance with our love of reading and outdoor activities. We had a relatively small shipping allowance (about 250 pounds). Using our allowance for outdoor and wellness equipment like a bicycle and an inflatable kayak meant little was left for personal effects, especially books. Not being able to bring too many books was compounded by the fact that the country in which we live has no libraries of note.

So what did we do? We tried a variety of third-party solutions until we learned about e-book readers. Initially, we relied first on visitors who were eager to see our new home and encouraged them to bring out books which could be substituted with mementos and gifts from here. Also, each year that we had a chance to travel home, we hauled over books that took valuable space in our limited luggage allowance (over food sometimes). Sometimes we downloaded books on to our computers.

Fortunately, a little over a year ago, I was putting together my wish list on Amazon and noticed a new product called the Kindle, Amazon’s own e-book reader. I was intrigued with the idea and I liked its look. However, one thing led to another and I put aside the thought until about a month later when a friend mentioned that her brother in the U.S. had one. This prompted me to do more research on the Kindle. I then started talking to my husband.

Since September of last year, we are the proud owners of an e-book. It’s changed our lives. We can now download most of our books at home and at any time; I no longer have to worry about how I’m going to haul extra weight either in my carry-on or check-in luggage. The e-book is extremely easy to use and I don't suffer eye strain as with my laptop. In fact I can even read PDF'd reports on my e-reader!

For anyone who is an avid reader and is concerned about luggage space and all the logistics that go with it (even if you have a generous allowance), we strongly recommend purchasing an e-book reader. In our next post, we’ll describe how we identified an e-book that meets our needs and how we’re actually planning to get another one from a different company on our next trip to the U.S. My tip for today: Check out an e-book reader before you move overseas. It will save you time, money and effort!

Getting Started

With almost ten years (this time) under our belts living overseas, we have a few tips to share with you. We also hope to exchange tips and on ways to live abroad, still enjoy the new culture but manage the requirements of your other home.