Our raw vegan holidays in Bali.
How I minimize my luggage
I used to travel with a huge check in bag when I wen on a 7 days trip, now, I share one bag with my husband traveling for 6 months, here is how we do it.
Video coming this week
The tricks
Only the best, only the necessary
- Most reliable clothes
- Only necessary gear
- Limit the beauty products
Clothes
The most space in my suitcase was always taken up by clothes. Most of which I didn’t even touch. So lots of schlepping for nothing. With time, I figured out how to pack wisely. Now, I’m using 100% of the cloth I bring. My ground rule is 3 outfits. If I have 3 outfits, I have enough time to wash and dry one while wearing the other 2. I usually have 1 dress, 1 pair of pants, short pants and 2 shirts plus a large scarf or a jacket for the plane. Shoe-wise, I only have my running shoes and flip flops, which are solid enough to be worn as shoes outside.
Picking the right cloth isn’t easy at all. There is the weather, the mosquitos, the activities that should be considered. I like to be prepared for the mosquito situation as mosquito prove pants are not so easy to find.
In the tropics, the life is very different from the life back home. It is much easier to get stains on the clothes and washing machines only operate in the cold water mode, wo once you get a stain, you are gonna keep it. I try to find colourful dresses and shirts I like.
The humidity leaves everything wet for days after washing. If we are lucky, we have a dryer, but most of the time sun drying is what we do. It really helps to have thin, fast drying fabrics.
Multiuse is the key. My bathing suit is at the same time yoga pants and my only bra. My dress can be worn as a shirt.
Most of the suitable cloth can be purchased at the destination. We buy couple of items which work great in the environment where we travel and donate them afterwards. Besides of my mosquito prove pants and flip flops, and one dress I love, I would hardly miss anything.
Gear
Gear is a biggest part of my luggage now, but it is still pretty minimalistic. I don’t carry around huge tripods for filming anymore, I do most of the stationary filming with a small camera and a light weight tripod.
Read my post on my gear
Beauty Products
The beauty routine will not be the same in the warmer place. I’ve seen girls wearing false lashes in Bali, but tis is not what I’m gonna do.
This time we travel with minimal beauty products. I’ve been missing couple of things and had hard time finding them in Bali, here what I brought and forgot.
Sunblock
I brought 3 tubes of mineral based sunblock, bud hardly used any. We can avoid sun pretty good. Our schedule is flexible and we can choose when to leave the house and when to stay under the protective roof.
Hair care products
Haare care products are tricky. Good vegan once are hard to find. We have been testing local products, but I wish I would have brought more of our fav shampoo and conditioner.
Make-up
I tried to go minimal and underestimated how pale I look on the camera here. I needed to get a mascara, concealer and powder here and it was pretty much impossible. Wish I had brought it with me. I had just the essentials, like a good under eye concealer, smoky eye easy shadow palette, eyebrow gel and a lip tint. I thought is would be enough, but it wasn’t.
Mosquito Protection
I completely forgot to bring my organic citronella, maybe because it doesn’t help that much. But i need something, even something not 100% reliable. It is hard to find organic oils in Bali. I wish I would have brought mine with me.
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Kuala Lumpur
Durian
Good. But not life-changing. We went to a safe place to have some durian. Durian SS2. Quite a taxi ride from the city. Our plan today was to have durian for breakfast and to see how we feel food wise. We found out that the place opens around 11, so we went to a mall nearby to have some good glass bottled water and left around 11:30. It was actually good as they just started to serve first durians around 12pm. The place looks clean, the service is friendly. The prices range between 18 MYR and 54 MYR ($4.5-$13) per kg of unpeeled durian. It’s pretty pricy given the quality is not terrific.
The good thing is, the servers double check the durians while opening and will not give you the obvousely bad ones,
but I found that 3 out of 4 durians we had were slightly overripe. It’s February and the small durian season, so the quality should be better though. One durian was really on point. I really liked the hygiene of the place. They don’t touch the durian meat and you can wash your hands and even have plastic gloves for eating the durian. They had around 8 kinds of durian, all pretty much the same. Sweet and mild, not much of the distinctive smell and flavor. We had around 6,5 kg of unpeeled durian and spend $50. I didn’t eat anything else that day, Stefan had a hand full cashews. We had 1l of water each and I had water of 1 coconuts, Stefan of 2.
We tried to get durians the next day. We arrived 12.20 and they didin’t have any durians here. We couldn’t wait and went to Donald’s Durian. They didn’t have any durians as well. It was on a Sunday, but still pretty disappointing how pople seem to run their businesses. On the first glimpse, Donald’s Durian place is a dirty garage, you don’t want to eat there. We were so lucky to get a box of organic mandarins outside, they were all over the place just in time for Chinese New Year, they were our food for the day along with some mangosteens.
Organic Produce
Almost non existing on the first sight. We found 3-4 organic veggies at Cold Storage, but no fruit, bananas and greens at Just Life. BMS Organic didn’t have any fresh produce. We found some organic mandarins at a durian selling place, but it was a Chinese New Years thing.
Organic Beauty Products
We’ve been to 4 malls and to 2 organic shops. There are no local products availible but some imported 5 times more expensive beauty products from Europe. You will find all you need, but not the place to shop for beauty products at all.
Places to visit
We went up the tower. Amazing view. Go up to the top. The 1st level is disappointing, but all the people seem to go just to the first level. We stayed for more than an hour and watched the sunset. It is pricy. Pick a good time of the day and bring your camera. The taxi service from the tower is a rip off. They charge twice as much as the meter would be. Take the free shuttle down and haggle with the taxi drivers down there. You might get a better price, or you may not.
Transportation
The first negativ thing about Kuala Lumpur was the poorly organised taxi service at the airport. You need to pay at the counter inside the arrival hall and than wait in a long long cue for an hour or longer outside to get your ride. There seems to be a priority taxi, but we didn’t spot the counter that sold vouchers for these. The train is pretty expensive as well, so not an alternative, locals suggest the bus, which we didn’t try out though.
Next time, we would try to catch an Uber driver. Get the app and try it for a convenient ride back home. Here is your free ride. The taxis are as dirty as people say, our last one smelled so terrible that we had to stop it and to get out, and call an Uber.
Tipps
Plan a little more time for everything. For getting a ride to the city, or for getting trough the security check at the airport on your way in and 1 additional hour on your way out.
You can walk around the city, there are good and safe walkways. Watch the gaps and the intense sun while exploring the city. Ask taxis for meter or better get an Uber driver. Don’t visit free attractions such as Twin Tower Bridge, such a waste of time.