Bangkok To Krakow » Gear

Gadgets On The Go

Karon — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:35:37 +0000

When we decided to head off on our adventure, Madzia and I were both heavily ensconced in our jobs in “The Matrix”, more commonly referred to as the IT industry. Although Madzia was somewhat of an anomaly as a software developer who had no interest in technology in general, I have been enamored with electronics since Wizard of Wor on the Commodore 64 in the early 80’s. So it is only natural I was assigned the task of technifying our journey.

Our Gadgets
Armed with the mantra “light and necessary, light and necessary”, I set forth into the world of international electricity standards, internet cafes and ultra light gadgets. Our primary purpose for our equipment is to be able to take a visual and written record of our trip, and it would be nice to chill out and watch a movie or listen to some tunes every now and then too We also have a few audio books as well as e-books to listen to and read.
After much deliberation I decided on the following gadgets to take on our adventure;

IBM T42 Notebook
Asus EEE 4GB
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 Digital Camera
2GB ipod and 20GB Creative Zen mp3 players
120 GB Seagate External HDD
160GB Western Digital External HDD
Corsair 4GB USB Key x 2

I felt that this mix allows us to maximise storage space to record our adventure without weighing us down too much. It also gives us the freedom to connect to any wifi hotspots that we stumble upon. If wifi is not available we can use our USB keys with Portable Applications so we can utilise our own bookmarks and even download email from our gmail account to peruse on our notebooks at our leisure, and respond in our own time rather than having to spend hours in an internet cafe.

Bangkok to Krakow Dot Com
And then of course there is our blog, which we have set up to keep as a journal of our adventure, and also to help maintain contact between our little munchkin and her grandparents We went with Wordpress for the blogging platform and a theme by Chris Pearson, Cutline 3-Column Split. I tweaked the headers a little and added a few Wordpress plugins, however Chris’s themes are fantastic ‘out of the box’. They can be personalised a bit more but we love the clear simplicity of his themes so left it pretty much as is. I purchase our domains through Go Daddy and chose to go to DreamHost for our hosting. We appreciate their effort to offset their carbon emissions, they are competitive price wise and the control panel is very user friendly.

Social Networking
We are slowly setting up our profiles on various social networking sites, and should be up and running by the time we leave. Is it just me or do these new fandangled websites make you feel, well, ancient?

These sites are great for networking with fellow travellers, as well as keeping in touch with friends and family that we will be leaving behind in Australia and New Zealand.

Now we are all teched up and ready to go, I feel that we are prepared to take Morpheus’s red pill and embark on our adventure of a life time, keeping a record for posterity along the way.

Travelling with Baby Zofia

Madzia — Sat, 10 May 2008 10:34:56 +0000

When Zofia asked us to chaperone her on her Wizards tour at first we were taken aback. We didn’t realise that there were wizards of the female sort. She assured us that there were with talks lined up in Luang Prabang, Angkor Wat, Dubai, Shiraz and Gaziantep. How could we refuse our little wizard and these exotic locations!

But seriously, taking a 7 month old baby on a 7 month trip must make some wonder whether we’re just a little bit crazy. Made us wonder that too… for a little bit. When the first thing the midwife said was ‘She’s got travellers feet!’ we knew were on the right path in following our dreams!

Although our precious little chicken may not understand the journey we are about to embark upon, the impressions and moments she will experience will definitely be unique. In contrast to the hustle and bustle of travelling for an extended period, we understand we need to maintain familiarity and routine to keep stress to a minimum. With all the growing, learning and teething she’ll already have going on, travelling will need to be as run-of-the-mill as possible, if that is possible She’ll obviously have her Mama and Papa, and in order to provide a familiar environment we’ll be taking a few of Zofia’s favourite things;

her play mat
her blanket
wooly
wizard sticks
and her monkey clan

Wherever we set up camp one of our first tasks will be to set up Zofia’s play area and sleeping quarters

At home our daily moments are mandated by Zofia’s needs. Our trip will be no different. This is a family trip and compromise will be made for every member. Our journey days will be dictated by nap time, feeding time, play time and down time for us all. Travel will be slow so we will remain stationary as long as possible keeping travel between destinations to one or two days, maximum. Although keeping to the main tourist route for the advantage of more convenient health care, we plan to engage in activities that are relaxing and non intensive. I think this will suit all members and be favourable to daily rituals.

Hygiene will be a challenge, from all accounts especially in South East Asia. Although we have started introducing Zofia to solids, she will primarily be breast fed. Hopefully this will alleviate any food problems she could encounter. The humidity will bring plenty of germs so the First Aid kit will be kitted out with disinfectants for those curious little hands. On the flip side it will probably do wonders for her dry skin. As she will probably be just learning to walk towards the end of the trip, she’ll be a little easier to watch and keep close. Zofia has also completed her first 6 months of vaccinations protecting her from nasties like Hep B, Diphtheria, Polio and Pneumococcal.

Now for the logistics. We purchased a new umbrella McLaren pram for the trip which is only 5kg. Papa (aka The Pack Horse) will be carrying this when we are not using it or can’t use it. We also have a sling although this may be better suited for the cooler climates rather than the humidity of South East Asia. Nappies may be difficult to purchase in some areas so we’ll make sure we’ve always got several days worth. We’ll also be taking 7 cloth nappies and we have been infant potty training Zofia which will minimise nappy use. We’re taking several changes of clothes in her current size plus one size up. Not too worried as we can buy things on the road if she needs them. The First Aid kit will include Zofia specific preparations for teething, skin irritations, colds and tummy aches.

Preparations and organisations are obviously even more critical and laborious with a baby. The ‘what ifs’ are endless. Although we’re feeling as comfortable as we can be we’re not in denial that its all going to be smooth sailing or that we won’t be caught off guard. These thoughts are very scary. There have been moments in the last 6 months that have really terrified us. Being a new parent can give you some powerless situations that call on courage you never thought you had. We trust in that courage and that no matter what the circumstance, we would do what it takes to keep our baby safe, at home and abroad.

We only hope that this is the beginning of many such adventures for our little family. We are not trying to get travel out of the way before the next event in our lives. We want travel to be a part of our lives and of our childrens life for a long time to come.

Enough Small Stuff Lets Stuff The Stuff

Madzia — Mon, 05 May 2008 02:34:00 +0000

Where to begin? In the kitchen or the office? With stuff to keep or stuff to sell? Reduce, reuse or recycle? Let’s start at the beginning… Six months ago we started the process of deciding what to do with all our stuff. Being on the move for the last 10 years we didn’t really have that much. However there was enough to have us question our attachment to things and the clichéd sustainability of a consumer society, which naturally progressed to thoughts on the source of our happiness. Books and blogs are dedicated to these subjects so we’ll skip the brain dump and cut straight to our experience.

Enter the master alchemist – the mindset. This trip is not only a journey in itself it is also a means to an end, the end being a new beginning in our lives somewhere overseas. With the European borders open and a Polish passport on hand we are grateful for the opportunity to experience some of our life living in the northern hemisphere. So what of our stuff? We could have it sent over once we found our little slice of heaven or, we could keep it in storage waiting out its cold days in a Victorian self-storage facility or, we could get rid of everything and start fresh.

Initially we thought how freeing it would be to rid ourselves of all our belongings and go into this trip with what was on our backs, a fresh start, after all these are just ‘things’. However, as we started going through everything, sentimentality and future usefulness crept in. So began the painstaking process of what we actually thought about our stuff and what we would ultimately do.

In the end we realized several things. Firstly true to our gypsy ways, only about half the things we possessed we actually owned so it was very easy just to give these things back. Secondly, stuff has no real worth on its own. Value comes from within us. Whether it’s monetary, sentimental, status or happiness. And because happiness does not exist in things but in you, you can choose to be happy through things or experiences or through nothing at all. And lastly that getting rid of stuff for the sake of getting rid of stuff is still being attached to things. So here we are today in a mindset of being separate from our things and able to filter painlessly into the following categories.

Things that we are keeping for later because they are either beautiful or practical. Beautiful includes sentimental. Practical includes things that we are definitely going to use within the next couple of years.
Things that we are selling to help fund our trip.
Things that we are taking on our trip and for Europe.
Things that we are donating.
Things that we are throwing away. Makes us cringe to have this category – our trash is not Mother Nature’s treasure. On the positive there are people that are actively trying to change this.

Now with a few weeks to go and several items left to pack and sell we just now realize that our adventure has already begun… six months ago.