Long Haul Travel | Packing Your Carry On Bag

Hiii,

Throwing it back to 2013… You’ll find 12 year old Niamhy, watching ‘Pack With Me’ YouTube videos & ‘Travel Day’ vlogs. Living the excitement of going on holidays through others! Over the last decade of watching these videos, I must admit I’ve learnt a trick or two. Trail and error has lead me to my own perfect array of packing must haves! On our most recent travels, I was more glad than ever to pack these three items. What was meant to be 26 hours of travelling with 2 direct flights, became 47 hours and 3 flights. Trust me you’ll want to read this blog!

Spare Change of Clothes

Even if you are travelling short haul, BRING A SPARE OUTFIT!!! However, especially on long haul flights this is a nonnegotiable. In a little wash bag, I pack:

• 2 Pants & Socks
• 1 Pair of Leggings
• 1 Pair of Shorts
• 1 T-shirt or Gym Top

This isn’t going to way your bag down. They are all light items and fold up small, not taking away from space in your bag!

Travelling long haul can be uncomfortable at times, especially if you are sweating or too cold. Having a change can be nice. I mainly travel with these items to freshen up before landing. Last thing I want is to smell bad in a confined area or when I land!

This proved extra helpful on our unexpected 19 hour delay in Doha. When we arrived in the hotel, we were both able to have a shower and change into clean clothes! It’s little comforts like these that made the experience less stressful for us.

Toiletries

Make use of your liquids allowance in your carry-on! It’s not a hassle bringing them through security if you have them in the appropriate bag and pack them at the top of your carry-on. This way you grab them out easy, pop in the tray the same as your watch or belt & get on with it. Few liquids I consider essential for my inflight sanity:

• Toothbrush/ Toothpaste
• Roll On/ Stick Deodorant
• Skincare

Whether you have a delay like me or your luggage gets lost, these are 3 things that will get you by for the day ahead! Often on long haul flights we will clean our teeth and put some deodorant on half way through the flight. Gets us out of our seats to stretch our legs for 5/10 minutes and we always feel fresher for it!

If you don’t fancy purchasing new skincare in travel sizes, you can always use a travel bottle set! Using the long sachets for my hair products. Face creams into the pots. Then the squeeze bottles are home to my face wash & body wash. My friend gifted me a 3 piece Kitsch set for Christmas last year & I use it that much that I upgraded myself to the 11 piece! Both Jordan & myself travel with these for work. This is not an AD nor have I been gifted anything from Kitsch. However if you do fancy shopping there, this link and ‘NIAMHGORDON15’ gets you 15% off & I will receive a small commission for it too! But as I said, I’ve purchased this myself, it’s always a bonus if you can save some dolla too!

Chargers and Leads

I will never travel without all my chargers and leads in my carry-on bag. I repeat, I will never travel without these on hand. Here’s why:

• They are very expensive to replace if your luggage gets lost.
• If you have an unexpected delay or stop over, your devices aren’t going to run out of battery.

Jordan usually begrudges me doing this. I can understand why, they are fairly bulky to pack. Especially when your packing adapters. Although, when we had the unexpected delay in Doha, this was the saving grace for us. Without these we would have had a very long 19 hour stop over or expensive one replacing them. Moral of the story is… always listen to your girlfriend hahaha!

P.S I always get asked by friend and family where this personalised bag is from! It’s from Manor & Breeze! I was gifted this back in 2021 & has been a travel staple since. Again though, this isn’t an AD!

All in all, these 3 items will make your travel experience hopefully more comfortable and less stressful!

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Thank you for being here <3

CYA xx