I will update this article during my packing. I start packing in a week or two :)
At home
- Take kitchen stuff. You will definitely miss your cuisine after month or two. Asian food is really different and you will miss favourite taste of meals you are used to. We take baking ingredients as custard powder, ginger bread powder, baking powder, vanilla sugar, instant yeast, some cheese and sausages, chocolate.
- Take seeds of your favourite spices. You will definitely not find these spices around. And it can be problem to find and buy even seeds. We take sweet basil, chive, lemon grass...
- Take things you need for your favourite sports. You will be quite isolated in new environment and sports can easily help you to find community of new friends and become part of some society.
- Get proper medical insurance. Insurance which comes with your credit card is usually sufficient and is valid for half a year. After that you will be able to find local medical insurance. It is also possible to stop paying medical insurance in your country when you are leaving for more than 6 months (CZE). After coming back you have to make good that you were insured in abroad.
- Write down numbers of your bank accounts and credit card numbers with pins and emergency phone numbers (for blocking a card) on a sheet of paper and give it to your parents or other reliable person.
- Go to the city hall and write down general warrant of attorney for reliable person.
- Go to the post office and arrange that reliable person can receive letters addressed to you.
- Do not forget to visit your favourite dentist. This is quite expensive, usually not covered by medical insurance, and unsafe experience in abroad.
- Take a lot of your pictures and check number of blank pages in your passport. Customs are quite cumbersome and put their small stamps to your pretty blank pages. So you can run out of space in your passport easily. Take two passports if you can do so. When one passport is waiting for a visa on some embassy, you can still use the other one. This is the only official reason for having two passports (CZE).
- Take pictures of your family and your city. If you take more than few, you can give them to people you meet as a nice present.
- Take basic pills. We usually take two types of general antibiotics, vitamins C and B complex, ...
- If you have some friends or relatives, take few magazines and newspapers with you. It will help you to survive time in the air and and will help your friends to know everything what happened to their beloved politicians and pop-starts.
- Go and buy slim pocket for passport, cash, and credit cards you can wear under the dress in the trousers on your belly. It is quite discreet and safe place. The most important is that you do not need to worry or think about this stuff. It is on your body and you can not miss or lose it anywhere accidentally.
Tricks for minimizing weight
- Put on haviest pair of boots and jacket you have and pack other in the luggage.
- Your hand bag can be much more than five kilos but can not seem too big. Otherwise you can have problems.
- If your bag is still too heavy, you can use this trick. When checking in, put your bag on the weight, and with tip of your boot press the silver side of the weight. You can get two extra kilos this way :)
- Take empty bottle to your hand bag. You will pass security checks with obviously empty bottle easily. You can fill in the bottle in the lavatory after passing security checks. Flights to Asia are long and there is no fresh air on board so be prepared for thirst.
- Take some food with you as well. Food served on board is at least looking unhealthy.
Good luck!!!
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