As a someone with prescription medicines I had to ask the pharmacy to dispense my four months of medications. Anti-depressants for the serotonin, anti-histaminic for the allergies, anti-menopause for the hot flushes and night sweats, anti-biotics for a possible infection. About two kilos of anti-things, which seems like an anti-thesis for a small backpack and my whims of traveling light. Plus, the medicated shampoos and creams, bandaids and Voltaren® for the faulty knee. Another kilo of that, which left my 12 kg backpack beyond its capacity, and I had to take a small 30 L duffel bag with my tropical clothes for Bali and Sri Lanka, my winter polka dot coat, my towel and a sample of my medications. Loosely packed but still another bag.
I had heard that packing is easier with packing cubes, and Cassie who travels with a backpack all over the Kimberley (WA) confirmed that. I got two cubes and four rectangular cuboids and then try to squeeze them into my cylindrical backpack. It felt like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Didn’t make sense and I only kept the two cubes with undies and t-shirts and all the rest went into the backpack, loose and squashed against the walls and against the cubes. The cuboids went in too, but one that held my 2 kg of medication went outside of the backpack, tightly anchored with the given straps. All covered with a waterproof cover that barely fit the backpack, and no locks.
Upon getting to the Darwin airport, I experienced for the first time what is like to travel with a blue passport. I settled in pre-boarding, picked up my book and waited. My whim is to become a travel writer, and for that I am taking guidance from one of my favourite writers: Bill Bryson. In his book “neither here nor there” he wrote about going from Paris to Istanbul, I was going the other way around, so at least I got something sort of in common with him.
Landing in Bali and getting around was smooth as I had my driver friend, iMade, pick me up and take me to my hotel at the west side of the island. I kept my 30 L duffel bag while he took my backpack and my polka dot coat. We met iMade when we went to Bali for the first time in 2016, he has taken care of me, my friends and family when going to Bali, and now he was the guardian of my backpacker backpack. About 2 hours later he dropped me off in Padang Bai where I will be catching the fast ferry to the Gili islands. I was going to Gili Air, the smallest of them all, where there are no cars but only bikes and the sea is clear of rubbish and gunk, unlike ‘mainland’ Bali. Rubbish is a permanent sight in Bali. And every tourist contributes to it, whether we want it or not.
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[written in Sighisoara, Romania - the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, who gave origin to Bram Stoker's Dracula]
[1] Op-shop stands for opportunity shop, where all second-hand stuff gets donated and sold for little money. Op-shops are amazing in Australia, and Frilly’s (ran by the Nightcliff Uniting Church) is the bestest of them all. Most of my clothes are sourced in op-shops. I volunteered at Frilly’s from March 2016 to September 2026 that I left backpacking.
