What's made it into the backpack?

So here we are, less than a week to go, we're 'mobilised' and it's time to bring together all of the items that have made the cut that will actually go into our backpacks for our travels.

There are a few items that have a big significance to me so I'll take you through why they're so important as well as giving you a run down of what else I'm bringing that I think will be vitally important on our travels.

Running shoes

My trusty Nike Lunarglide+5 running shoes - the comfiest I've ever had and these babies have already seen some fair mileage, but they have a lot more to do yet!

To me these are a must to take on my travels. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I absolutely love to run. Back home I run as part of a running club (I'll miss you Westbourne RC!), plus I run for pure enjoyment as it makes me feel better instantly no matter what mood I'm in. Running gives me the remarkable capacity to both help me think about things going through my head and to also help me drift away from the things that are on my mind. So to imagine my life in a whole new environment as well as a new career without the escape that running gives me is almost an impossibility.

Above all else I think I'm going to absolutely love running around new places, using it as a way to explore. Even this week as I've moved to my mother-in-law's in Creekmoor, Poole - an area I do have a good bearing of but not 100% - I went for a long run to get re-acquainted and explore local routes I didn't know existed, and I loved constantly changing my route to go where I want and using my own sense of navigation to make sure I remembered my route home. Fair to say I won't always have the best self-navigation on my travels, but as long as these hold up I'll get home in one piece!

Tablet

The Hudl tablet from Tesco - rave reviews already and you can add me to the list!

For all my wanting to live a technology-free life, these days it just isn't possible (plus how would I blog?!), so an important decision was made to try and find one device that could meet both mine and Claire's needs on the road - and taking a bulky laptop wasn't going to work. So we decided we'd 'get with the times' and get ourselves a tablet, but being on a budget meant we couldn't go for an iPad. After much research and deliberation we settled on the Hudl from Tesco as it was supposed to be the best low budget tablet out there at the moment and I'm already hard to part from it! It's slim, light, works really fast, and above all else it's able to contain all of the apps we're going to need on our travels such as Skype, Facebook, Kindle, email and of course - Football manager!

iPod

As we decided to go for the android based system of the Hudl tablet, we knew that we wouldn't be able to sync our music we already had on iTunes, so making sure we had good iPods that were fully loaded with all the music we're going to be able to put on it for the next 2 years of so was massively important.
Both of us have spent ages collaborating playlists, buying more music, asking friends for music and then re-collaborating our playlists again so that we have playlists that we can simply have on us for a couple of years and not get bored of!

I've had a big help in getting music from one of my best friends Adam (who is in the amazing band called 'Lost in the riots'), and he has taken time to create personal playlists he thinks I'll like so I just wanted to take this opportunity to say thanks bud for all your help!

Clothing:

• New teaching attire (chinos, khakis, shirts, tie etc)
• Running gear
• swimshorts
• x1 hoodie
• x1 waterproof jacket (emblazoned with the mighty Southampton FC - representing of course!)
• x1 Saints shirt

Other than these, I won't be taking hardly any other clothing other than the bare essentials and t-shirts. I've been told that clothes are dirt cheap out in South East Asia and that I should travel light and just buy more out there - a plan I'm sticking to! The Top Gear Vietnam special where they bought tailored suits for about £60 also gives me encouragement that this will be easy to do and if they can find enough clothing to cover Clarkson, they'll have enough for me! Although, I've also heard that there are issues with getting the right sizes out there as a man as I might just find that I'm either too tall or broad for their standard sizes (me? broad? I know, I laughed too).

Shoes:

• Multi-terrain trainers (for all occasions!)
• Espadrills (for lounging)
• Wetshoes (for swimming without fear of something biting my feet) 
• shoes (for teaching)
• Fliflops (for.... flipflopping)

Gadgets:

• Bridge camera
• Mobile phones
• Rechargeable battery station + batteries
• Pacsafe (to tie up our backpack and keep it safe from thieves)
• Underwater camera
• iPod speaker

And the pick of the rest:

• All items required for my eyes - prescription sunglasses, contact lenses, ray-bans etc..
• Malaria tablets
• Emergency medical pack + medicines
• Diary + fancy pen (for writing in style)
• Essential documents (certificates, visas, passports and so on.... probably THE most important bunch of items!)

Of course there's more, as well as things I could've bought but have decided to wait and buy out there, all because at the moment I have to try and somehow fit everything I already have into the backpack as it is!

So if you're at the airport next week and you think you see a giant Turtle collapsed on it's back unable to get up, it'll probably be me weighed down by my bag - give me a hand up if you pass by eh?