Now that we’re “settled” in Hong Kong, I thought I’d take the time to write a few articles on some of our lessons_learned getting here. I’ve often stopped and wondered “How could we have done this better?” Given the information we had, and the goals we had, I think we’ve done pretty well. But there’s always room for improvement. For this first entry, we’ll deal with our nemesis: luggage.
When we originally planned this journey, we expected our luggage to be:
- Two large suitcases
- One backpack
- One small strollable bag
- One two year old
As we were packing we realized that while we could fit everything in the two big suitcases, they were very heavy. In fact, we knew we’d be hit with overweight charges by the airlines. So we made a choice. We had a third, small suitcase and we decided to take it as well and split the weight across them. Of course, that gave us a little extra room so we ended up packing a few books and things we originally hadn’t indended on taking.
What a difference one suitcase makes.
That suitcase was just one suitcase too many. It meant that we never quite had enough hands to carry everything, particularly when Maeli was a bit uncooperative. While it gave us room to carry things we picked up along the way, it also meant our luggage was constantly getting heavier, despite discarding some things along the way.
So, lesson number one is only take as much luggage as you can easily handle.
While we moved around a lot, the days during which we had to deal with luggage were certainly a small minority. So what’s the big deal, right? Just one day of inconvenience and then once we’re at the hotel or apartment, who cares?
What’s perhaps more interesting to me is how our luggage started dictating where we would go or stay and what we could do. For any move, we had to figure out how to handle the luggage transportation. Were there a lot of steps? Could we keep the luggage somewhere while we went out to get something to eat? Was there room for the luggage in the hotel, car, train, plane, or boat?
One reason we decided to bring all this stuff with us (it didn’s seem like much, we gave away most everything we owned before we left) was to avoid having to ship things to us later. However, in retrospect, the cost of shipping is low versus the cost of carrying the luggage around China. Had we taken a more “backpacking” approach, then we would have considered some smaller hotels and hostels.
There were lots of reasons we didn’t backpack across China: We had no idea what we’d find here. What would the hotels really be like? Would they be suitable for a family with a small child? What did we really need to take with us? What could we reliably find in the cities we were visiting? And there were business decisions too, such as the location and quality of a hotel, or access to internet.
Now we know we could have backpacked through China and left a lot of luggage at home. It would have been a different (cheaper) sort of adventure, not necessarily a better or worse one. But for those wondering if it’s possible, well, I’ll say that it certainly is. That still may not make it the right decision, and it may not have been for us, but family travelers should at least consider it.
