Do your washing/drying when you're out of the house, it shouldn't take much time at all

In Thailand they had laundry service places everywhere I went. Most places were 50 Baht ($2.20CAD)/kg of clothing for a wash/dry/fold so that was a no brainer. Hot climates definitely soil your clothes quickly!

Thailand is on my bucket list so maybe I'll give it a whirl while I'm there

Yeah in SE Asia you can get your laundry done for you for peanuts. Plus no one really owns a dryer at home so you need their services to get your clothes dry quckly.

I'm talking about places in Europe and North America mostly so unless you want to waste your time at a laundromat just get a Airbnb type place with a washer/dryer

i travel as light as possible, we carried just a 40L backpack each for 2 weeks and that included my camera gear. definitely had to do laundry 3x while there but when moving around a lot carrying a suitcase is not even an option for me. if im staying put for 2 weeks then that's different.

yeah checkedin bags bring another headache if the airline loses it and it's harder to ride public transit so you gotta splurge for taxi. If you wanna buy a ton of shit you can always buy a case there and bring it back.

thats exactly what we did... 11 boxes of pineapple cakes, tea, coffee... almost none of it for ourselves. bought it all in taipei which was our last city and bought a carry on bag for it.

Last trip to Japan I packed my belongings into my carry on luggage and then put the carry on into my empty check in baggage lol. I did this knowing we would be buying stuff there to bring back.

I think it depends on what's "tourism?'

For many, it's about visiting a place. Asian in particular are so deeply troubled by this IMO. They hop from sites to sites, only to spend 10-20min at each place unless the actual visit needs longer and would do something crazy like 13 Euro countries in 10days kinda tour.

@unit

I think you need to try to slow it down. Say if you go to TW, just pick a city... say Taipei/Taichung, find an airbnb or rental for a week and just stay. Go to the traditional markets the locals go to. Buy some shit, and get back home. Basically do what a local would do on their off days. Maybe visiting a tourist attraction one day out of a week, but truly experience the life as a local on a cultural perspective.

I was taught this way by my former collegue who's Parisian born and bred. And when I asked him for guide/suggestion when I was going to visit Paris, he just said... go buy a baguette and some authentic French bakery (which wouldn't be at a premium), some cold cuts, a bottle of cheap wine (sub 10Euro was the guideline), go to the many parks and just read, relax or chitchat with people. Just never football as it gets complicated. :fuckthatshit:

Absolutely loved it. Sure, I am lazy to begin with. But it gives one so much more depth and understanding about a place and its people than whatever amount of tourist attraction you can manage to visit would ever give you.

Why take bag with you anyway?

The way I travel now is 1 carry on/bag for personal stuff. Just buy thick cardboard boxes locally for anything you do buy. Heck, in places like Taiwan or Japan, you can even ask them to pack it up for you in a cardboard box.

If traveling as a family, we still do the same but pack a folded duffle bag.

Basically in the worse case scenario, we'd pack all our dirty cloth in that duffle bag, check it in and freeing all our carry-ons to carry stuff if really needed.

Lately though, we have been packing old cloth/undies when going on trips and just discard them as we use them. We do still wash them during the trip. But we ensure that we have minimal cloth to carry back during the last few days which are usually "shopping days"

We did this in Avignon, fucking amazing. Went to a local market and bought some meats and cheese, a baguette, and a bottle of wine we picked up from a winery nearby. And winery hopping in the French countryside is very fun because we didn't speak French and they didn't speak English but yet we managed to communicate

We drove through the romantic road in Germany. Yes we had a place to be every night but left enough slack to be able to just randomly stop at whatever city, have a beer, have some mini pancakes, have a wine, walk the city walls.

Eltz was fucking amazing, more so that Neuschwanstein. Neuschwanstein has become such a landmark and so commercialized, it was better experienced from the mountains looking down than actually in the immediate vicinity.

Road trip through Europe is amazing. Will take the kids when they are older. Planning to do a road trip through Japan in the next few years as well.

I don't know why anyone bothers to bring a suitcase, just throw away all your clothes when you arrive and buy a new wardrobe at your destination!

/s

Thats pretty much what the rich europeans do at whistler. They buy all the latest ski gear causing renting has poor people germs and then leave it in the room as a tip for the housekeeper.

Damn I should walk around the Fairmont and Four Seasons and duck into a random room being cleaned "Oops sorry I think I accidentally left behind my gear"

Does Whistler have lifties who are ski bums from overseas? At Big White a ton of them are Aussies, but they travel around a bit more after the season ends. Shipping skis and snowboards back is extremely expensive so at the end of the season tons of them are selling nice gear for dirt cheap if you watch the FB groups.

Do any of you guys use wireless headsets for your Teams/Zoom calls? My personal set of Microsoft Surface Headphones 2 finally cracked in half after a solid five years of near-daily usage. The product itself is discontinued (so we think) so I can't get a replacement. Conversely, I have a pair of Apple Earpod Pro 2 but I find the Bluetooth audio quality paired to a Windows device and applications like Teams or Zoom is quite poor, or rather, it lags a lot (maybe just my unit?)

For work, they've issued me a Jabra Evo2 headset. It's quite good but every few years, the headband at the top snaps in half from wear and tear. I have a fat head, so this contributes to the problem. My criteria is that it needs to be a headset and not a speakerphone-type of device for the purpose I work in an open office environment. Thanks in advance.

Big time, I'd say the majority of the lifties up in Whistler are from overseas, Australia specifically.

They sleep 10 to an apartment, and you can see them partaking in bathroom key bumps on any given evening at the Longhorn :lol

Aussies!? YEEAHhH naaaahhhh!!!
Those guys are wankers

Your wife in your next life will be Australian whose accent will never change.

vail should lmia Whistler

We actually dont even own a carry on sized suitcase so we figured it was a good excuse to buy one. They are cheap there and pretty decent quality, and since we barely travel lately it should last a good while.

Bose QC SC. Works really well at blocking out sounds and the mic does not pick up spurious background noise unlike the Jabra ones.

Airpods on Windows is truly a second class experience. Don't do it lol.

Edit: Nevermind - I didn't see the "Renewed" on Amazon.

I am confused and I know this is not the Costco thread, but when I searched "Bose QC SC" Amazon.ca lists it for $283.99 while Costco lists (what I think is) the same item for $429.99 (online order.) Am I seeing this or are they different? Do I just get the Costco version and return it every 89 days? :confused:

How is a voice quality when you speak on Teams/Zoom? The Jabra is quite good but as you mentioned, it picks up WAY too much background noise, even with software settings enabled.

The current price on Amazon is from a 3rd party seller, so it's not following official pricing. At one point last quarter, Costco had them on sale for $220:

https://forums.redflagdeals.com/cost...l-tie-2786580/

If you need something now and don't mind refurbished, Bose has a similar set for $280:
https://www.bose.ca/en/p/refurbished...ONE&quantity=1