Packing for my trip to Vietnam.

 Try to imagine an ex-fashion and textile designer, gallery owner, fashionista, street artist with a love for clothes; new clothes, secondhand clothes, odd clothes, lots of vibrant quirky styled clothes. Well, that would be me! But who doesn’t love options right?! Am I sounding too much like a ditzy girl yet?  So packing for 60 days on the road into a tiny 30L backpack was for me like climbing Mount Everest! 

First, there are all the supplies everyone said I must take; meds, first aid kit, a torch, this, that, well this stuff alone filled up most of my bag. Not allowing much room for clothes. I packed, unpacked, repacked three times and I‘m still certain I‘ve forgotten the most significant item or have way too much underwear. Luckily all the clothes I‘m taking are old, a bit shredded, extremely comfortable so anything I guess I won’t need I can abandon. What makes it so hard to select what to take? It is possibly the fact ill be on a bike for most of my day. Then North Vietnam that time of year can get a little rainy and chilly. I also need items for protection while riding the motorbike. I‘m also pretty certain I‘ll down my motor on some dirt patch so prefer to be protected. Luxuries; I‘ve spoilt my self to an additional book to read, a compass, few gifts from friends to carry with me, sketchbooks, pens, and paintbrushes. What amazed me though is that I just have one tiny toiletry bag and no hairbrush! So it may be interesting to see how a natural I become. I did bring a bar of soap, though.