Travel Part II, Equipment

Traveling without disposals is far easier, when you carry the right equipment. Especially as a backpacker you might think twice though, what you want to pack on your back. To make space for the useful gear, the easiest thing to leave behind is clothes. Because experience shows clothes is what you usually have too much of anyway.

The holy grail of equipment is watertight container. The range of uses is endless. Leftovers can be kept in it, you can eat yourself through a street market without packaging, it serves as lunchbox for day trips. And when you have picnic in the country you can even prepare a whole meal and the lid becomes a chopping board.

Suitable to that some tools will turn out to be quite efficient. I brought a multifunctional pocket knife a cutlery combination. Both got lost or broken pretty quickly. So that by now I am carrying a beautiful wooden spoon, that I found on the ground, a fork that I found in a restaurant and a cheap seven eleven knife, that I actually bought. That again shows, that in fact the equipment is important, but it doesn´t need to be perfect. A left over plastic spoon will serve the purpose just as well. Or be creative; A piece of shell also works to scrape out the delicious flesh of the coconut you just drank. And the famous sticky rice is already easy finger food.

I carry the cutlery in a fabric napkin. That way everything stays where it belongs and I have the napkin as well. A spare one is useful though, if it gets messy. If you make a difference between a serviette and a napkin is up to you, as long as you are prepared for both.
In the land of fruit smoothies it particularly recommended to bring you own reusable straw, since it is really not heavy. You really don´t want to miss out on these delicious refreshments. Even a disclaimer in local language often misleads you. Unfortunately I don´t have one as well, but I would bet on success, when you show your straw while you order, or even give it to them.

Same goes for the cup. I usually talk my mouth fuzzy to order an iced coffee in a glass and not in the famous plastic cup

horrible coffee to go

If you´d just give them your coffee cop, the problems vanish into thin air. I at least have my tooth brushing cup, I already mentioned in the previous post.

For the water you might bring a bottle from home, or you just keep one of the million plastic bottle that are lying around and refill them. I wrote the day on mine to spur myself to keep this particular one as long as possible. At first it seems that you have to buy all your water in small bottles, but if you take a closer look, that is just not the case. Locals usually drink from big containers and there is always one around. If you ask for a refill they never say no. Or at least in Thailand just use the water machine.

And at last I want to mention the useful fabric bags again. You don´t want the fruits you buy on the market to fly around in your pocket, or they might not even go in there anymore. And in the end it is also just easier to give them your bag and make them fill it up. Since I don´t have enough of them, and they are not suitable for all the goods, I bought some nuts in little plastic bags. But they will count as an investment, so when they are empty I will refill them again. After all no one makes a fuss about purity laws here.

To close them you either pick up one of the rubber bands that lay around everywhere, or you just bring some clasps.

That’s about all you need to live disposal free on the road. What of all that you actually bring depends of your personal preferences and your ability to improvise. And that is something you can learn particularly well from Southeast Asians. It´ll work somehow, if you just want it bad enough…