My advice would be to pack light! I know it’s not easy and takes time to learn what to pack, but the best you can do is pack light and take it easy!
During this trip, we stayed at 7 (yes, 7!) different hotels, plus two-night buses and a night train, and we left our bags two times at a hotel and just travelled with a small backpack.
For me, it was more important to be able to pack everything quickly than having different options when choosing something to wear.
It was a bit complicated to pack because we needed clothes for the tropical climate and for the mountains as well where it can be very cold. Swimwear and hiking gear as well. But still tried to keep it minimal. And I think we managed to!
We used a laundry service whenever we stayed long enough at a place to get our clothes back dry ☺ once they were still a bit wet, but at least we got them back before we had to leave, I’m trying to look at the bright side!
Toys for the kids? Not necessary at all, just their favourite and they will find so many things anyway to play with.
During the flight, Pixie spent so much time reading the in-flight magazine. In the hotels, she played with the phone, the normal landline, which we disconnected every time as soon as we got the room because we knew that it’s her favourite toy!
So what to bring?
We did take nappies with us and wipes. Sometimes it’s hard to find these baby items when abroad, especially if staying in rural areas as we did. But in bigger cities, you can always find some at pharmacies or big supermarkets.
At least at the end of the trip, we had space for the souvenirs ☺
Medication, I think that’s another thing which better to take from home. We usually have paracetamol for us and the kids, and some other basic stuff. Again, easy to but these over the counter in big cities but not while trekking in the mountains.
We just made a calculation, and we needed clothes for 5 days, I added two extra for the kids, but that’s all we needed. Every 5 days we were able to get our clothes washed so we didn’t need to pack more. Vietnam is very nice, but it is definitely not a clean country so maybe for the kids more change of clothes would have been better, but I guess even if I’d given them nice clean trousers every day they would still manage to get dirty in 10 minutes.
I think we did well. For 3 weeks with very versatile weather we only had two medium suitcases (this is our favourite) and two backpacks for the four of us.
When I think about that we have to carry the kids, the backpacks and pull the suitcase I know that I want to keep it as light as possible.
I didn’t need to pack the baby carriers, it’s always on us ☺ wouldn’t be able to imagine how we would survive without them.
And in Vietnam, we managed to book rooms with two double beds. So we didn’t need to take any travel cot or our favourite travel cot. And the kids like to take a shower now so no foldable bath either. It was very easy this time.
Yes, if you are going on a beach holiday, taking a taxi from the airport to the hotel where you’ll stay all week you can pack as much as you want, otherwise, try to imagine carrying everything and decide if you really need to pack something or not.