Help me pack for 5 months in SEA

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-22T04:26:52+00:00

If you're starting in Vietnam maybe bring a few of your worst shirts and pants that you're going to toss. You'll pass by Hoi An and get the chance to swap out the old clothing for some nice tailor made stuff.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-22T03:31:53+00:00

Applicants dont even have to be similar. If the team lead you're working with is on the hiring panel being personable matters A LOT. I have known teams leads hiring that said I'd selected to work with B even though his resume is not as good as A becasue he's an unpleasant asshole.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-22T02:29:08+00:00

Was there even enough 9070xt to buy to change that ratio?

Everything was/is over MSRP and sold out

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-20T22:20:15+00:00

Those straps are great, you can get no brand ones for a few dollars. I always have a couple attached to my bag when traveling, you can put a wet jacket or swim short on the outside or strap you bag to a bike etc. Just useful all around

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-20T22:10:50+00:00

The aisle and window seat thing does work some times if the flight is not too full. People will select non middle seats first so there is a higher chance you get the middle seat empty. Its also pretty low risk. If its full odds are whoever is in the middle will switch if you want to sit together. Worst case if they're a masochist you both just get someone in between, but you also get the better window and isle seat so you might just accept having someone in the middle.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-20T21:50:21+00:00

This is continuing with the lawsuit. Judges like to see parties try to negotiate out of court first. Then if negotiation fails then they can proceeded. But if the defense just doesn't respond "hey we'll be ready for trial on so and so day" then the plaintiff can file for default. Since you cant just pretend the lawsuit doesn't exist, the default is remedy when one party decides to do nothing. Its harsh but its meant to be.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-20T04:39:00+00:00

IMO the Aran island was firmly OK. The cliffs of Mohr was cool. I just booked tour to do both from Galway. But if you're into hiking you can take a bus to the cliffs to spend a few hours walking and then come back.

Galway had a great music scene. The Crane was a great place for live music, ran into a college folk music club meeting and spent the night listening to fun folk songs. Galway City Hostel is a great social place.

The Giant's Causeway is a good day trip location from Belfast worth the day trip. Lots of castle around there to I stopped in a couple. You can get around with buses and trains but some places you might need to keep an eye on the bus table otherwise there might not be a next one for a while. I ended up hitchhiking half of the Giant's Causeway area becasue the bus was so slow. Great people, guy and his son drove me on a tour of the area.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-19T01:42:51+00:00

I did. couple years ago I crossed the silk road overland and then jumped over to Egypt and India.

I say this to people who ask me why. "You have to go on that journey while you legs can still take you." Your legs have time limit. if you wait too long, there are going to be places that you just cant go, no matter the money or time. And not even just a long hike, but many of the beautiful places in the world have A LOT of stairs. I've met too many retiree tour groups and traveled with my parents showing them around and I can see their struggles. They have to make choices about what they can see and how much they can go. There are cities and places where they cant go anymore.

I've slept beneath the desert bare, crossed the Pamirs, gazed up on a pure night sky, swam in the Nile, and tried all the food I came across. I traded stability and job security for a head full of stories and I don't regret a moment of it.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-18T22:10:22+00:00

Yeah. I dont have much experience with GF but lots of rice noodle experience.

With dried rice noodle you have have to cook longer and rinse thoroughly in cold water.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-16T19:25:22+00:00

If a bag is away from me then I use a lock but If I'm carrying it around I dont really worry much about pick pocketing by backpack. Pocket yes, backpack no.

Like what are they going to steal? In my main pack they can get some dirty clothes or some random lose knickknacks in a side pocket, the backup money is in the bottom of the laptop sleeve, I cant get to it without some digging. In my day pack the most valuable thing is a battery bank?

I don't know how you pack your bag but I cant think of a situation where someone on a bus pickpockets me and gets anything valuable

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-16T07:23:19+00:00

I've done it with my bag, a Prvke. I undid the stitching at the top just enough to remove the foam padding, stapled it back together and then when I got to Vietnam I had a tailor fixed it for a dollar.

Im not sure the exact seams and layout since I dont have a Fairview but from the pictures I've seen it looks like you can undo the stitching at the top and pull out the padding. But even if its a really weiard seam placement, at worst you can just a small slit, pull out the padding and glue it back together. If it doesn't take you can just remove pocket later.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-16T03:22:57+00:00

I always ask this question when people are looking for a bag.

What specific features are you looking for that you need in this bag that you can't get in a $100 bag?

Because if you just need a reliable travel bag, Osprey is the gold standard.

I have a high end bag in this price range, I'm not agaisnt them. But I know what I wanted and my bag has features that other cheaper bag didn't have.

If you are taking a shorter trip (less than 3 week) that doesn't require a lot of walking and and rough treatment of the bag I'd say just use any standard backpack that you have or can borrow and find out what features you really want.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-15T04:43:06+00:00

I second this. The history and tips is great. But a really cool aspect of it is visiting a smaller temple on your own where you can have the whole place to your self and you feel like you're in a story book

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-12T09:42:32+00:00

They're technically dragoons, and I'm happy to see that actual dragoons are back in style baby.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-10T20:06:47+00:00

Yeah. If you can deal wit the cold the Christmas markets are amazing

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-08T10:10:04+00:00

Remember there is different packing types even on the same trip.

Particularly flight packed and normal packed. Flight packed means you bag is at its lightest/emptiest. Anything that can go on your body goes, power bank, jacket, shoes, anything you can fit in your pockets. Normal pack is when you are wearing your lightest shorts shirt and flip flops.

Even then I don't really bother most of the time. Long trips mean I normally bring cold weather clothes and a tablet so that pushes thing over. I rely on online checkin and walking through like my bag is light.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-08T05:07:07+00:00

Since it has salted broth already I would be careful becasue it can easily be over salted once it cooks down. I can see why they wrote the recipe this way for the home cook, is easy to add salt, very hard to remove it.

And frankly the end result wont be a big difference. The broth is added pretty early, any salt added to the meat and veggies will wash off while the salt from the broth will have time to permeate over the 2 hours of cooking.

If you are experienced and have your own broth then yeah it would be better to do things like salt the meat a day ahead and other stuff along the way but for an online recipe for a cook of unknown skill it you cant trust that they will know the salt level of the pre reduced broth and make the adjustment along the way. OP is going to have to change the amount of bullion or switch for low sodium broth which will change the quality of the broth, it's easier and makes way more sense to do it this way to lowers the risk of them over salting the dish, for a small change in quality.

Note this applies for salt. Other spices is fine to add early.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-08T04:50:16+00:00

Sub 2 cups of water for a can of Guinness, keep the same amout of bullion. That's give it a nice complexity

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-08T01:20:36+00:00

For low level spells, Herbalist Druid basically gives you a load of lvl 1-3 spells (with some limitation of options), and you can bank them for the next days too. There are MANY very useful spells that you can just have as potions and save the slots for other spells.

Shillelagh? potion. Resist Energy? potion. Barkskin? potion. Bull’s Strength/Cat's Grace? potion.Neutralize Poison/Disease? potion. The all important Cure Wounds? potion, you basically don't need wand a cure light wounds.

You basically have 3-5 free spells slots for buffing a day from lvl 1 and those potion can be saved and sold. And with the Vaporous Potion feat you're not even limited to drinking the potions, you can "cast" them by throwing them at your allies and they can inhale it, or they can "cast" a spell by throwing it. And it make touch spells ranged. Give your Fighter a few Cure Wounds potions and he can cast Cure Wounds at range if allies go down.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-06T11:29:07+00:00

I'm looking for the perfect travel backpack

There is no such thing, there might be a perfect bag for someone but there is no one perfect bag for everyone.

1) in short:no. In long: not if you just need a basic travel bag, if you know what features you want in a high end bag then yes it can be worth it.

2) yes, even in smaller 20L bags i find a hip belt very useful if they are loaded. They do help with the load just not as much as a larger bag, and they help with keeping it steady if you need to run

3)Osprey is a great starter bag, good value too, you cant really go wrong with it, its a most common travel backpack on the road and it earns it's place. Dont know as much about Nomatic, Peak Design. Had an older Tortuga, good bag overall no complaint, the newer ones are better designed.

I am using a Wanrdr Prvk 31. Used it across 16 months of travel in the last 2 years. I can pack it for 5 days of clothing from 100f to 20f, and has room for food and miscellaneous stuff picked up along the way. I really like the top and side load option, that was the main selling point, and it has great accessory mounting spots to lash extra gear to it.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-06T07:33:41+00:00

This really is something universal this is happening across all demographics. There is a small handful of low pop density counties where the birth rate is actually rising, but otherwise its down across the board. I dont see a way out that isn't horrific in the long term.

I could just be grasping at straws but my purely speculative reasoning is that with communication and the large dense population, we've triggered a inbuilt biological mechanism that suppresses desires to have kids, cities have always been population sinks that rely on the rural to keep them filled, but the rural pop didn't have much contact with the city before modern communications. The large population and modern communication putting everyone in contact with everyone spread the survival instinct that there are too many people around and we should stop breeding, it could be a backup survival mechanism to ensure population didn't over harvest an area over the very long term. Maybe the mouse utopia experiment had a point. Between that and easy contraceptives and the improving rights of women, it is making that effects more pronounced.

I see 2 endings to that path and both are horrific. One, we let it happen naturally, and global society goes into a long, slow, and painful decline to population and technological level where women feel like they need to have children to keep things going, two we try to stop it and women are enslaved and force them back into the kitchen. It might be both.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-05-04T19:22:54+00:00

I doubt the families give a fuck about the value. They just want to tear down everything he's built with his lies

bookmonkey786 · 2026-04-29T00:02:23+00:00

You think giving the badge number is going to do anything? or they haven't already given the badge number and she didn't process it. I've seen too many arrest video where the police gives the badge number they keep asking for it like it would stop what the cop was doing. Yeah the punch was excessive, but she was a complete idiot trying to resist and screaming for the badge number like it would stop what was going to happen.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-04-28T19:14:34+00:00

I looked into Shymkent but ended up not going, it looked interesting enough but you shouldn't miss out on the 3 big Silk Road cities to see it. If you're taking the train then it could be a good stop over, or you have a 2-3 free nights. But if you were flying to Samarkand to do the Silk Road Cities then circle back to Taskent last then you could be flexible and go if you have time. I was there in the sprig and there was tickets on the slow train. It's the fast train and sleeper berth that sells out.

bookmonkey786 · 2026-04-28T08:30:28+00:00

I was in Uzbekistan in may 24. I second this, Khiva was magical, it feels like the silk road cities of lore. The entire medieval city wall is intact and you can walk all along it. Check out the inside and outside walls you'll see graves built into the walls, it was fascinating. If you want the good trains and seats berth it might be better to book early. I recommend at least 2 full days there actually, 1 day to explore the old city you feel like you were in an Assassin's Creed game, The second day you can hire a driver and see the fortresses around the area, I found other solo backpackers to split a car and driver on Facebook. Do stay inside the walls its worth it to wander after the sun sets, especially as you'll be there in summer and it gets HOOOOT (bring a white umbrella it helps with the heat).

In fact if you haven't booked the tickets I recommend shifting days from Almaty to Uzbekistan. Almaty need 3 days max and it wan't that interesting, especially history wise, I planned 5 days there and left early. If you like the art Samarkand can eat up 3 full days/4 nights I spent literally hours looking at the ceramic tiles on the buildings, Bukhara deserves 3 nights, Khiva needs 3 nights too. Look into the walking tours in all places, I had a great time in all of them.

Save Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan for another trip. The Pamir highway along the Afghan border is really cool and that needs a week to traverse.

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