Essentials

Skip this post if you are not interested in what a traveler should carry around every day. I've developed my own system after trips of two weeks or more to Central America (Cuba, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica), Morocco, Spain, and Japan and China. Here's what I carry every day in my mini-backpack, which I use instead of a purse when traveling: Starting at the bottom, a wallet with the important cards: dorm keycard, mealcard, international calling card (haven't used it yet), namecards from restaurants I want to return to (in Chinese characters, often with a map, so a taxi driver can find it), wallet; next row up: emergency phone # card from NCC, passport copy, case for business cards (called namecards in China), pen, Mandarin phrasebook; next row up: reading glasses, Beiwai ID card (looks like a little passport), camera; next row up: "Foodguide" (more about that later), chewable imodium (you never know), mini-bottle of Purell hand sanitizer, Tide-to-go instant stain remover, iPod, addressbook, including all students' phone #s; along the top: 220 yuan (a little more than $25), a few Band Aids, and tissues. All the important cards and the passport copy go in the wallet; the Beiwai ID and business card case fold into the address book; restaurant cards go into a little pouch in the front of the backpack; health and clean-up aids into the small zipped pouch; everything else fits neatly into the larger compartment. The camera case also holds extra memory cards and can fit a USB cable. And most important is the backdrop here: the large folding map of Beijing that has all the locations written both in Chinese characters and pinyin, so that both people who read and speak only English or only Chinese can read it. What's in your wallet?