Luggage — Blog — Healy Chen

Buy nothing movement

I’m the type to travel light. I take what I need for everyday stuff and leave everything else behind. Visiting gifts for family? How about I give you money instead. That way I don’t have to explain to the Chinese customs personnel why there’s a dozen bottles of fish oil in my carrier. I’m not a reseller! My father’s side of the family is simply, large.

I also don’t do any shopping when I travel. That way I don’t have to lug things all the way back to the States. In this connected world of ours, what is it that we can’t buy in our home countries anyways? Remember when matcha flavored Kit Kat was something you can only buy in Japan? Not anymore. Cheers to globalization. We can buy almost anything on AliExpress.

In addition to the hassle of extra luggage - if I were the travel shopping sort of person, there’s also the extra stress of going through customs. Not that I would be smuggling in (or out) anything illegal. But it’s just so much mentally freer to not have to declare anything. What I brought into your country is exactly what I am carrying out. What I brought out of my country is exactly what I am bringing back. Easy.

This is why it is stressful to travel with my Asian mom. She likes to buy all sorts of things when we travel, and in vain I try to tame it down as best as I can. She doesn’t need to heed potential hassles of going through customs because if there’s any questions, I’m the one left holding the proverbial bag. You see, these are tea leaves, not plants… Crossing international borders is of zero consequence for my mom because she has zero skin in the game.

I’m at the age where I want life to be least stressful as possible. Purposefully adding stress by buying things on overseas trips is naturally out of the question.

Packing lightly

When you’re doing a four-city tour in the span of 12 days, packing light is a prerogative. Even though half the time we were traveling by train, where there aren’t any TSA checkpoint hassles, weight is weight. Lugging it all in between the cities remains a chore regardless. The less poundage there is, the better.

This is usually a problem for me because I tend to bring my photography kit on my travels. It guarantees I’m unable to fit that and everything else into a one bag - physically impossible. During this recent vacation, I decided to not bring the big camera and lenses. Smartphone photographic capabilities have advanced so greatly that bringing along just my iPhone 12 suffices for casual documentary of the trip.

I didn’t bring my MacBook Pro as well, saving an additional four pounds. No need for the laptop to backup data from the big camera nightly if I didn’t bring the latter! That said, it would have been nice to have a laptop during the chill periods, but that’s what an iPad is for. The tablet also saved space in the bag because I didn’t have to bring physical copies of books along to read (14-hour train ride). The Kindle app is great for traveling.

It also helps to be traveling during the summer months: there’s far less layers to pack. I got away with just a few t-shirts and two pair of pants (one short, one long). All in all, I was able to pack for the two weeks with only my Tortuga weekender bag, 26 liters of carrying capacity. It can fit in an overhead bin or under the seats on a plane easily, which is super convenient and a time-saver.

Packing so lightly does present a problem: you will have to do laundry eventually. Hotels typically has that service, or do what we did: go to an actual coin-operated laundromat.