Welp, I Overpacked. Chapter 1.

Going into Megatrip I knew I was going to overpack. I’m a serial overpacker. I have a lot of baggage.

Yes, about half of this journey will be spent in extreme heat and/or on a beach. However, follow me here. What if, just what if, it happens to be chilly for 20 minutes walking home from watching the sunset in Singapore and I don’t have my favorite sweater at the ready? What if, my hair isn’t cooperating with the humidity and pollution in Hanoi so instead of a 2 inch curling iron I need my 1.5 inch curling iron to achieve the perfect beach wave? What if, David cuts open his toe on a giant rock walking to East Railay Beach in the dark and we need a first aid kit? Two of the above are totally hypothetical. But I mean, it snowed in Rome last week, and don’t tell me Caesar didn’t have a long sleeve toga at the ready for situations like that.

I’m honestly not that high maintenance (okay, maybe a little). Yet, when I’m in a foreign, unfamiliar place, there is something oddly comforting about having a full arsenal of clothes, shoes, and far too many sample size beauty products at my disposal (I continuously forget to cancel my Birchbox subscription). What I’ve learned in the first week and a half of Megatrip however, is that I should have A) bought a smaller suitcase to give me no choice but to limit the amount of items above and B) thought more about implications of a heavy bag beyond the scale at the airport check in counter.

When we first checked our bags at O’Hare only to find out mine was overweight, I knew we (David) had to buckle up for a long and heavy several months of luggage carrying. Since then, my laughably massive bag has been strapped to the back of a tuk tuk, rode shot gun in several taxis, hoisted on the top of an overcrowded songthaew, dragged through sand, sat in the passenger section of a double decker bus and carried up many flights of stairs by hospitable Thai bellhops weighing only a few more pounds than the bag itself.

This doesn’t seem THAT bad, right? Wrong. Last week, David carried my atlas stone of a bag on his shoulders for a good 400 meters through 3 feet of water to be loaded on a long boat. Twice.

Is this what having children is like?

I know the trip is young, so this is only the beginning of my baggage saga. Here’s to hoping the next chapter doesn’t cause our (David’s) back to give out…