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by Markoff·5d ago·view on hn ↗
If it's surprisingly raining you would not bring umbrella anyway and left it in tour accommodation (but you can make simple cheap rain jacket from big plastic bag or trash bag, just tear holes for your neck and arms), so packing things you won't most likely need is useful only for the way to/from airport, while you are at destination there is not much use in things left in the room when the weather suddenly changes or suddenly you need to replace something broken kilometres away from accommodation.

I was hiking through the Malaysian jungle (Tanah Rata, jungle trail maybe 9/9A) in flip-flops (pretty standard in SEA also for hiking in mountains) and one of my flipflop broke, guess how helpful would be knowing I have spare shoes in my accommodation? Tried to fix it will some local plants - didn't work, so had to finish hike slowly until reaching at least unpaved road (ofc it broke in the most overgrown part, maybe made wrong turn), later paved road where I could walk barefoot and hitchhike back to town where I stayed to buy new flipflops (btw. my long-term advice, don't ever buy flipflops for outdoors, they always break (at the worst moment), slides (slippers, whatever you call them) are much more reliable).

1 comments
"If it's surprisingly raining you would not bring umbrella anyway"

Me I wouldn't, I have a small and lightweight rain cover that fits allmost everywhere.

"I was hiking through the Malaysian jungle (Tanah Rata, jungle trail maybe 9/9A) in flip-flops"

And I love to travle light and being barefeet, but I really would not recommend hiking in Flip Flops. I like protecting my feet from leeches and more importantly snakes, scorpions, spiders, thorny bushes and small holes where you can hurt your angles.

> I like protecting my feet from leeches and more importantly snakes, scorpions, spiders, thorny bushes and small holes where you can hurt your angles.

depends where you are and where you go, no such thing in cameron highlands trails, it is quite high and cold, I've met with leeches only in Thai jungle (while on trail), same with scorpions only on some small Thai island unpaved road, most of the time I try to follow some trails if I won't get lost, there are various kinds of jungle, the most dangerous thing I've met on some trail was probably some pretty big monitor lizard