BootsnAll Travel Community

Gold Bond is an old American remedy, old as in 200 years old practically. It has menthol and who knows what else, but it stops the itching and absorbs the dampness.

here are some other ideas:

Sprayable bandaid.

It's an alcohol based plastic skin covering which protects feet when nothing else will hold. Theres nothing worse than a heal or arch based sore or infection. Just walking on it grinds in more dirt unless its kept very clean.

Heres a warning. It stings like the devil on an open wound, but the alcohol can't do any harm to you as its extremely anti-bacterial.

Its a tad expensive, but I won't travel without it now, along with the athletes foot medication and triple antibiotic solution.

Ibuprofen I carry to stop sinus headaches and general small muscle pain. Heck, when I work on a ski-lift, I live on the stuff.

Another thing to get organic splinters out is animal fat. Depending on how deep and big the splinter is, it should slide out in a few applications.

use baking soda as a deodorant. store it in one of your zip locks.
rub some dry under your armpits. can also rub a drop of essential oil into it, esp patchouli...
can also use as an antacid and mouth rinse after purging...
oh, its also great as a toothpowder.

I learned this one while at Girl Guide camp.

If you have a shirt that's clean but a bit stinky around the pits, rub foot powder into the shirt on the area in question.

One of my tentmates did that every day.

I used a roll-on that I bought in Nepal. Looked snazy. Now if I use it, sore lumps appear in my armpits. Thanks for the enlightenment about that. It's been binned now.

A travel towel is so recommended as walking the annapurna circuit taught me. U replace something that takes three days to dry and weighs 3 times as much after use by a small light weight, quick drying and must have bit of kit. Invaluable so invest.

I'm allergic to wool socks, too - but there's nothing better, IMHO. I use a poly liner sock first and slip into that. They are easy to clean and both socks last longer.
I guess it's the same thing as wearing women's underwear to do it...

I usually keep my money in multiple locations and on my last trip, I had little sewn-in zippered pockets put on the inside of a few pairs of my pants. A seamstress took care of this very cheaply and, while I had to unzip my pants to get to any of it, I always felt that my money was secure.

I scan my pass port and visa pages, and attach them to an email that I send to myself. That way, I don't need to carry copies of them with me, and can always reproduce them if I need to.

How about taking a large safety pin to use in the shower. No, you won't be giving yourself a new piercing, you can use it to attached your money belt to your towel.

Some places in Singapore and other Asian countries have a communal bathroom. People stroll down the hall with their toiletaries, towel and money belt (hopefully). Have you ever looked up on top of the shower? You will probably see a line of shampoo and conditioners from all the countries that people staying there are from. People forget to take them after using them. Same could be true for the money belt. You really don't want to loose your cash, t-checks, credit cards, RTW ticket, passport, it would be a drag. By pinning it to the corner of your towel you can be pretty sure it will get back to your room with you.

I used to live in Bahrain and the weather was normally about 130-140 degrees farenheight. When I first arrived I wore VERY little clothing ( hey it works in Florida where I'm from) and I was soaked in 30 minutes and famished, hot and MISERABLE (not an exaggeration). Well, I noticed that the locals wore WAY more clothes than I did and when I started wearing long pants, long sleeve shirts and even a jacket I barely broke a sweat. How about that?

quote:

Originally posted by wb681:
I used to live in Bahrain and the weather was normally about 130-140 degrees farenheight. When I first arrived I wore VERY little clothing ( hey it works in Florida where I'm from) and I was soaked in 30 minutes and famished, hot and MISERABLE (not an exaggeration). Well, I noticed that the locals wore WAY more clothes than I did and when I started wearing long pants, long sleeve shirts and even a jacket I barely broke a sweat. How about that?

reminds me of the author Nick Middleton who went to all these extreme places including one of the continually hottest place in the worlds - Ethiopia. The local men all had big afros...they said it kept them cooler...where as many would think shorter would be better. Go figure...

Same reason you want your house insulated in the summer and in the winter - insulation keeps stuff the same temperature. In Florida the temp outside is rarely higher than your body temp and if so then not by much. Extra clothes would block out the breeze and would be too stuffy thanks to the humidity. In Bahrain it's 40 deg. hotter outside so you want to keep the (relatively) cool in next to your body so you wear clothes to insulate you against the extra heat. Reflective and light is better, too, because some of the heat that would have been absorbed by your body bounces off.

That reminds me of what I either read or heard recently - that on a hot day - drink hot tea. Not a cool drink.

Does this logic follow that on a cold day I should drink ice water?

Like math ; 2 'negatives' = a positive?

No, my friend I think in cold weather you should stick to the cider and hot cocoa. works for me

I think the tea thing has more to do with the caffienne than the heat of the drink. Caffienne dialates blood vessels, especially those near the surface of your skin, and that cools you off rather than the heat of the drink. There's not enough heat energy in a 6 oz. cup of tea to really make that much difference in the heat energy in a 150 lb person. The temp of the drink will change how your mouth and throat feel but that's it. The 100 mg's or so of caffienne will do the trick, though.

You were/are a Chem major werent/arent you? Heat energy, coffee cup calorimetry and such. I thought I was the only one.

Pchem PhD student at Ga Tech. My dad has a Ph D in Pchem as well so you can imagine what dinner table conversations were like growing up, much to the annoyance of my art major sister.

My Dad used to always tell me a story of his army days

"a pair of underwear can be worn for four days. Forwards,backwards, inside-out forwards and inside-out backwards"

I doubt he went to those extremes though.

I find a good trick for hiking is packing you things into two garbage bags then put them in your backpack. It makes is very easy to remove all your goods in one hit and also when it rains you can separate your wets from your dries

On the backpack/trashbag idea - line the inside of your backpack with a big trashbag to keep your stuff dry if you get caught in the rain and to keep your pack itself a bit cleaner. Makes unpacking easy, too, cause you can just pull it all out in one fell swoop.

This is an aid to help you quickly identify your baggage when it's mixed in with others at the airport carrousel: attach (sew) some ridiculously loud colored tag or piece of cloth. Years ago, I sewed a "hot pink" swatch on our two suitcases and they stick out like sore thumbs on the carrousel.

quote:

Originally posted by Tom Fisher:
This is an aid to help you quickly identify your baggage when it's mixed in with others at the airport carrousel: attach (sew) some ridiculously loud colored tag or piece of cloth. Years ago, I sewed a "hot pink" swatch on our two suitcases and they stick out like sore thumbs on the carrousel.

i do this but just put a band-aid on...people think i'm just too cheap to fix a tear but really its for identification