What to pack: some choice travel gear

As our departure date draws closer, we've just about got everything that we want to take with us together now. Here's a quick rundown of a few things we bought after researching things online. Everything is pictured above—for scale, the money belt (top left) is roughly the size of a wallet.

Money belt

• Money belt. Bought for a few hundred yen at Tokyu Hands, a local store in Tokyo. Those ones that go all the way around your waist aren't very comfortable and get pretty hot if worn all day, so I went with this clip model. It clips inside your pants to keep important items like our passports and larger sums of money out of site.

Platypus water bottle

• Platypus soft bottle. Water is essential, especially on long hikes. A standard water bottle takes up all kinds of space when not loaded with water though. Meanwhile, this guy folds flat and will take up next to no space at all. Found at your favorite outdoors retailer. But is local water safe to drink, you ask? That leads us to our next purchase...

Steripen

• Steripen. Full disclosure: I have no experience using this thing yet. From the reviews I've read, however, it's a wonder that more people don't decide to tote one of these along. One wave of this wand in your drink for a few seconds, and it automagically neutralizes the bacteria. Bye-bye Delhi Belly! Adios Montezuma's Revenge! Or so the story goes, at least. It won't help with less than hygienic chefs, but it will mean a better solution than iodine for drinking whatever water is available. I'll be trying this out in Thailand before Akemi will trust the thing. Review to come.

• Travel towel (left). Another couple items that I've heard lots about and can't wait to try out for myself. The first is a travel towel, made from a quick-drying microfiber. Besides the obvious, we might try wetting and wrapping these around our necks to stay cool in obnoxiously hot weather. I've also heard of some people draping these over themselves in hot rooms with no AC to stay cool while sleeping.
  
  

  

  Travel towel and sleeping liner

• Sleeping bag liner (right). The sleeping bag liner is basically like a one-man silk pair of sheets that you take with. As you can see, it takes up much less space than a sleeping bag. No sleeping bags for us; we're not really planning on doing much camping and expect there to be equipment for rent on the rare occasions that we do. You can't always expect the bedding provided or conditions on the road to be of the best quality though, so this should help make sleeping in squalor a little more palatable. 

Most of these items were pretty inexpensive and shouldn't take up much space at all in our packs. At the end of the trip, we'll revisit this and see which of these actually were essential and which we could have done without. Oh, and not pictured (mainly because it was taking the picture in this case) was the iPhone, but that'll have to wait for another post.

Is the Steripen truly the greatest thing since sliced bread? Have an opinion on any of the other stuff we're taking? Are there any items you consider essential on your trips?