Packing and Gear

This month’s winner is JAY SNYDER of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania:

Some years ago in Seoul, South Korea, my wife and I bought way too many souvenirs and needed to buy an extra suitcase to hold all our treasures on our trip home.

Lands’ End (800/963-4816, www.landsend.com) has swim tops for women that are called Rash Guard. If you wear them swimming, they act as a UV protectant. However, these wonderful tops are also great as travel clothing.

I took several with me on a Columbia River cruise in fall 2018. The shirts have long sleeves but aren’t too hot. (I took along a light sweater/jacket for when I needed a little more warmth.) The best part is the shirts roll up quite small for packing, and they dry easily overnight when laundered in the sink.

Mark Gallo's article "Traveling ultralight" (Feb. '19, pg. 43) is the type of packing I do anytime I go on a trip (unless my wife is along, and then we have to have a checked bag). I use a different approach, however, in that I don't wash my own clothes on the road.

I've found that laundry places are ubiquitous and cheap in the areas where I travel, which is Latin America and Southeast Asia. On a recent trip to Cozumel, Mexico, I paid MXN35 (about $1.80) for a kilo of laundry, washed and folded.

While visiting Tokyo, you can leave your hand luggage or even full-sized bags in a shop or post office that has partnered with Ecbo Cloak (cloak.ecbo.io/en) and pick them up later. Participating shops are in many locations, including at rail stations.

Using Ecbo Cloak's website or phone app, create an account, then choose a location and date and indicate drop-off and pickup times and the number and types of bags to be stored. At the appointed place and time, leave the bag(s) with a clerk. An email, with pictures of your bags, will confirm the drop-off.

Tony Leisner's letter "Upsides to Luggage Tags" (Nov. '18, pg. 48) echoes my own practice regarding luggage tags. I, too, always enter the name and address of my next hotel and the dates I will be there. And if a cruise follows, the ship's name and the departure date appear on a separate tag, probably one issued by the cruise line.

Wherever I travel, regardless of transportation mode, I try to pack light. I loathe lifting and wheeling heavy bags over and over… in and out of car trunks, up curbs and down train stairs, along rough sidewalks, etc. And I prefer not to have to paw through a lot of garments to get to what I want in my luggage.

Many seasoned travelers agree that traveling light is the only way to go. Here are my suggestions for making that possible.

Choosing luggage

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Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 513th issue of your monthly foreign-travel magazine.

People planning to visit South Korea in winter can leave their coats at home and rent heavy jackets from Seinustar (seinustar.com), picking them up at the Seinustar desk near exit 13 at Incheon Airport in Seoul.

Men's and women's jackets are available for KRW30,000 (near $27), total, for any number of days. A $50 damage deposit is required but is reimbursed if the jacket is returned in good condition. To see available styles and reserve a jacket, visit the website and click on "Rent" and then "Winter Clothes."

When taking a trip with multiple destinations, my wife, Patti, and I want any lost luggage to find us in the destination country.

For example, we flew to Lima, Peru, in May 2015 and inserted our names along with our hotel name and address into our luggage tags. From Lima to Cuzco, we inserted the name of a new hotel, and the same for our flight to La Paz and the trip back home. This way, if our luggage was lost, it was more likely to be delivered to our destination hotel.

On the tags, we included a cell number and email address so we could be called, texted or emailed.