My Travel Bag & Tech Essentials (after 50+ Work Trips)

So I've been lucky enough to explore over 35 countries for work and play. And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that packing well and packing light makes a world of a difference. Hey friends, Andrew here. Hope you're well. In this video, I'll share what's in my travel bags, some of my travel clothes and watches, my tech essentials, and the apps on my laptop that help me travel and work comfortably no matter where I am in the world. I just returned from a work trip in Malaysia last week and I stayed in Alala Bangsa's suite room, an absolutely beautiful hotel that sort of weaves modern minimalist design with nature. And in here, I was able to set up a productive workstation with the tech I brought with me. So what better time to share with you guys my travel essentials and hacks after traveling over 100 cities across 35 countries. This is going to be a longer video than usual, so I'll leave timestamps on the play bar. Feel free to skip around but stay until the end to win an item from this video. So starting with the bags that I carry, I change mine around all the time depending on where I'm going. The one I took with me on this trip is Harbour London's backpack handmade in Spain. I find it super stylish and it's really comfortable on the go with the generously padded shoulder straps. It's made of part recycled plastics, part full grain leather. It has a luggage holder and a magnetic closure so I can close it up fast and go. Really useful in airports too since it's so easy to access and close. Inside all my bags and luggage are a bunch of even smaller bags and cubes. I find this the easiest way to organize all my clothes, tech, cables, stuff like that into easily accessible packing cubes. You can find most of these from Amazon but these specific packing cubes that I'm using are from the travel brand July. I'm not the biggest fan of their luggage products but these travel cubes are great. Something I always keep close to me is of course my passport holder. It's probably the most important thing. It is the most important thing I travel with. So it lives in this high quality genuine leather passport holder from Grams 28. It holds all my arrival cards, receipts and things like that and I think it looks so cool and classy. This cable pouch also helps tame the cables in my bags which if you travel with loads of devices and charges is extra useful. So this pouch helps me store all of that in a single spot and that way I don't leave any charges behind because there's nothing worse than having a tech device that's just dead weight because it ran out of battery when you travel. I've been there so many times and it's really disappointing. Other than cables, inside the cable pouch is one of my favorite fast chargers I just started traveling with and using and I want to share this with you. This is a Nexo 65 watt fast charger from Ugreen and it's much more convenient carrying this charger than most laptop charging bricks. It's half the size of a MacBook charger and it's multi-port too. So it has two USB-C and one USB-A input so I can charge my laptop, phone and an accessory all at the same time. Another difference is the fact that it's a gallium nitrate charger so in case you don't know what that is, sometimes you'll see it referenced as GAN or G-A-N and it charges a lot more efficiently than standard silicon-based chargers along with it dissipating heat more effectively so they're a worthwhile purchase and they're not that expensive in the first place anyway. Just a heads up though, to get the full 65 watt fast charging speed, this charger needs to be connected to a single port so if I'm in a hurry and I need to charge my MacBook to about 50% from zero, I'll use this as a dedicated charger to get that half charge in only about 30 minutes. A lifesaver when I forget to charge my device the night before in the hotel and I need to run out the door in the morning. Size is everything when you travel so yeah, just love flicking close the charger into a small cube and then throwing it into the bag. It's definitely a small but mighty charger. As with all the products, I'll drop a link to this and all the other items in this video in the description box below. So moving on to my tech and portable desk setup, a powerful laptop is a must and it's the heart of everything I do when I work abroad. This is the 14-inch MacBook Pro M2 specced with 1TB hard drive and 16GB memory and seriously the M2 power is a lifesaver with the creative work that I do on my apps which I'll show you in a moment. I also just find that the 14-inch size is the absolute sweet spot when traveling. It's big enough so I don't need to plug it into a monitor. It's small enough to pick up and go. And before I show you how I create a remote workspace setup with all the tech accessories to go with my laptop, I'll jump into this laptop first and I'll show you the life-saving apps I use when traveling so I can do my best work remotely. First up is one of the most important to me, monday.com and I've been using them for months now and they're also today's video sponsor. It's a platform that organizes my digital work life and helps the team collaborate when I'm not physically in the office. I'll quickly show you how I'm using it. So in the main workspace, we created these boards to track different parts of the business like our office makeover, our content calendar and lead management From a single glance, I can see all the outstanding tasks, where they're at, who they're currently with and the whole team can collaborate together even if we're all around the world. And because I am frequently traveling and working across the globe, we've added a column here with a world clock to keep track of our clients and team members time zones. I can even add an automatic trigger based on time zones to automate parts of the project while I'm sleeping. You can do a whole heap on monday.com. We've created video scripting templates, we can share them with the team so we don't need to use a bunch of different cloud-based document platforms. And we also review our creative work on monday.com where other team members can see it and provide feedback directly on the platform. Basically, monday.com is a highly visual work management platform and that's my favorite thing about it all. It helps simplify the chaos of running a business so I can maintain operational efficiency when I'm working abroad. I'll drop a link to a completely free trial below if you or your team would like to check out monday.com. The next app, Forest, is useful when there's so many distractions working in a new city and country. It's also free as a Chrome extension and this app helps me stay focused by blocking distracting websites. It sets a timer by planting a tree, then it'll grow as long as I focus and the more trees that grow, the more credits that I get that go towards planting real trees in real life through the tree for the future organization. It's a great app and a great incentive. The password management app that I use, Bitwarden, I can't live without it. It keeps all my different passwords safe in a secured vault. I can access them wherever I am in the world. I've set up a collaborative password vault too so the entire team can log in from one spot. And of course, I totally recommend Grammarly to everyone. Seriously, don't type without this free add-on. It's an AI-powered typing assistant and it's helped me fix my terrible grammar when I send emails or do any sort of writing on my laptop which is surprisingly quite a lot. According to Grammarly, I apparently type more than 99% of users and am 99% more accurate which is kind of hard to believe but you know, I'll take it. Thanks, Grammarly. So that's my laptop and some of the apps that I use to work remotely. Now, here is the tech accessories I carry with me and I use with a laptop so I can set up a workstation abroad in the hotel room or a cafe. And the first thing that I find is a must is a mouse especially if I'm working long stretches of time with a laptop. I use Razer's Orochi V2 mouse when I'm traveling because it's featherlight at only 2.2 ounces or 60 grams. It's a breeze to travel with and just as importantly, it's an ultra responsive mouse that works with both Windows and Mac. This one has a bunch of macro keys on the left and underneath the scroll wheel too. Plus, you can choose to use it in Bluetooth or with 2.4 gigahertz dongle for even faster responsiveness. I don't even need to charge it because it works with a single AA battery and lasts for months which is great for travel. Here is the external drives I use and a lot of you guys seem to ask about since I do a lot of video editing and work with large creative files. These are Team Group's M200 SSD drives and I have a couple of them, one in 2 terabytes and another in 4 terabytes I always travel with even if it's just to the office back at home. The reason I love these so much is because it's tough, it's made of graphene and lightweight at only 3 ounces or 83 grams. They're also capable of lightning fast transfer speeds of up to 2 gigabytes per second. Plus, they're just really small so I can edit at an airport lounge or on the plane no problem and just throw them into a bag and they're easy to travel with. Okay, so when it comes to music when I travel, I carry two headphones and a speaker. Yeah, I know it's probably a bit excessive but the AirPods Pro 2 have just blown me away and this is a headphone that I take with me everywhere now. It's perfect no matter where I go, in airports, commuting, grabbing an Uber, you name it. The noise cancellation is just so good on this, especially for its size. It's actually kind of surprising and the case is just a match made in heaven when it comes to travel. So the only reason I also bother to carry my Bose QC35s is to use it on board the plane. They connect to the double headphone jacks in planes which AirPods obviously don't and the over-ear noise cancellation from these QC35s goes just that step further and does a perfect job cancelling out the non-stop drone of a plane so I can enjoy, you know, the in-flight entertainment and movies in peace. And then I also bring with me Sonos' portable Roam speaker when I want to give my ears a bit of a rest from the headphones. And so I play music on a high-quality speaker in the hotel room while I'm working or lazing around the pool or beach. This is when I'll bring the Sonos Roam out. It's a portable rugged speaker that still sounds great. Moving on to probably one of my favourite few items when I travel, the cameras. I don't carry light when it comes to cameras even though I try to but that's because photography is a passion and hobby of mine and I'm very lucky that my hobby is part of my work. So I travel with more cameras than your average person. I've got most of them stored in this camera bag here. It's from Peak Design, it's basically a camera cube and it organises my different cameras and lenses with these dividers here and protects them in a waterproof nylon canvas shell and foam lining so I can throw them into my luggage and not have to worry about the expensive gear. And this camera here is the workhorse of my entire travel gear, the Sony a7IV. It's an absolute beast when it comes to hybrid full-frame photography and videography. It does it all. It shoots 33 megapixel photos and records up to 4K 60 frames a second in 10-bit 422 which is crazy good in a single camera and perfect for travelling with. I've got it paired up with a classic Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 zoom lens which is more than capable for travel and it's really versatile and I just left the more expensive and bulkier lenses back at home. This particular video is shot on this setup actually so let me know in the comments how it all looks to you. I also carry with me a dedicated camera for photos only and this is the Fuji X100V and if you're a subscriber you'll know that I absolutely love this camera. This is the best camera I've used yet. It's so good because it's stylish, it's well built, it's portable, the fixed lens is amazing and of course Fuji's colour science and film simulations are to die for. If you don't know what Fuji film sims are, I'll fill you in real quick. They replicate the charming look of film without the hassle and high cost of actually using film. So you can get these really gorgeous shots right out of the camera as JPEGs. You can share immediately without the need to edit big raw files. It's a big time saver so I can put that time instead to enjoying the new city that I'm exploring. The only time I'd consider replacing this camera is if I ever end up with a Leica but they cost an arm and a leg unlike this Fuji X100V so it's really hard to justify. It just doesn't make sense even if I had the money anyway. For the action shots I have a 360 degree pocket camera that has now replaced my GoPro entirely. It records 360 degree video at 6K resolution which is just insane and it's rugged enough to fling around in all sorts of environments when traveling. I just love the fact that I can go out and record with this small thing and I can crop in on any part of the frame I want to in post so I don't need to worry about framing the shot in my head and just enjoy whatever it is that I'm doing when traveling and know that I'm going to get the perfect shot of the perfect frame later when I'm ready to edit the footage. And then the final camera that's always in my pocket is the iPhone 14 Pro. You'd think with all this camera gear that I wouldn't even bother with a phone but funnily enough I still find myself reaching for this amazing phone. Turn on pro raw mode and you have the ability to shoot in 48 megapixels which is insane to think that it's even more megapixels than the Sony A7IV but it eats up my phone's memory really fast. It is great for taking photos of simple things when I'm traveling like the food that I'm eating and other random shots when I might not have my other bigger cameras with me. Next up I want to show you some of my staple fashion pieces I travel with. The first one is really special to me. It's my Tudor Black Bay 58 watch. This is the piece that took my passion for watch collecting to the next level. It's an iconic dive watch at a refined 39 millimeter case which is a size that I really enjoy. It features a very beautiful coin-edged rotating bezel oversized crown that the Black Bay lineup is known for snowflake hands and the warm gilt and black dial oozes vintage charm. This nifty watch is powered by Tudor's impressive in-house M2 5402 COSC certified movement which has 70 pounds of power reserve and is waterproof to 660 feet or 200 meters. This is a luxury watch that I don't baby. I trek, swim, dive, and run with it and it still looks great. I find that wearing a nice watch when traveling is a way to elevate a simple outfit whether I'm at a nice dinner, sitting in business class, or just sightseeing. I don't actually take my Apple watch with me but my Aura ring is responsible for all my health metric tracking when I'm abroad so I can still enjoy wearing my Black Bay 58. I feel like everyone male or female should own and travel with a mechanical watch and you can get a nice one for the same price as an Apple watch anyway like a Hamilton khaki field and they'll last a long long time if you take care of it. Now these Birkenstocks are something I recommend to everyone too. They're the most comfortable shoes and sandals I've ever worn. They're German made cork sandals and the footbed molds to your feet over time to give you a one-for-one type of shoe. I think just the other week someone bought Steve Jobs's old pair of Birkenstocks for an incredible $220,000. Thankfully you don't need to pay a house deposit for a pair. They're just $100 from the store for normal people like you and I. I've taken these with me to so many different countries and they're still holding up strong. They're light, they're durable and I personally think they look great especially in warmer climates and paired with an oversized t-shirt. Which speaking of which I've recently been absolutely obsessed with Uniqlo's oversized Arism t-shirts. If you know anything about them you'll know that there's a cult following for these because they're affordable at only $20 each. It's thick yet breathable and smooth and the cut is fashion forward. I like to alternate between these and custom fitted t-shirts just to change things up or if I'm really in a hot climate like where I am in Malaysia. And I just have a bunch of these in different colors and I just throw them into the luggage and I'm good to go. Okay let's move on to the essential travel toiletries. I find it more challenging to keep well-groomed when I'm on the move but here are some of the things that I carry that help a lot. For starters my facial hair grows ridiculously quickly. Yes even though I'm Asian it just grows really quickly in my face. I literally need to shave every day and this kind of gets tricky when I travel. I found the best combination for me is a classic wet shave with this German made double edge razor from Morlair paired up with Astra's platinum double edge razors. It's not cheap but it's really portable and it's really high quality too and I don't need to worry about cords or batteries. For shaving cream when I travel I use Pro Raso's green tea and oatmeal shaving foam so I don't need to you know lug around a badger and shaving bowl. Plus it smells really really good and speaking of smelling good I have this custom cologne I got in Singapore from Maison 21G. What they do over there is I took a personality test, you pick a few ingredients then they come up with a personalized scent for you and this one contains sandalwood, sage and other scents I forgot about but yeah I love that it's a completely unique bottle of cologne to me and not something that you know someone else can just get from the department store and smell exactly the same as you. So that's a nice piece of luxury that I like carrying with me. I try and keep my skincare routine really simple when I travel so I'm not spending too much time on it but it's as important as ever especially when you're exposing your skin to so many different climates your skin isn't used to and I'm in the sun for longer stretches of time. I use a day cream which contains sunscreen which is probably the most important thing then I've got a toner then a night cream so it's just an easy three-step process and I throw them all into these travel bottles I got from Amazon and then making sure that I take care of my teeth by investing in the right travel toothbrush guys. You'll thank me later for this one, this one's really important. Electric toothbrushes are the way to go. They usually come with a travel case and I can go for a two-week trip on a single charge no problem at all. The one I currently use is Philips Sonicare 5100 which I got for only about $100 also from Amazon. They clean teeth and gums way more effectively than a standard toothbrush and the built-in timer helps with that two-minute recommended brush time. The next essential is having a good travel credit card and guys this one is a big one that I think more people should look into. The main card that I now use is Citi's Prestige card and this thing has so many travel perks. With this card I get access to over 1,200 airport lounges around the world. The fourth night stay at a hotel is paid for, free travel insurance, luxury travel service, mobile phone cover and a concierge service all with this card it's pretty crazy. There is an annual fee of almost $1,000 but the perks pay for itself and plus every dollar that I spend is points collected on this card. So then I can for example upgrade to business class or even first class with these points which is what I did for this trip thanks to my personal and company credit cards like the Citi Prestige card. So guys to win an item from this video just comment the code word centurion and we'll be picking out a winner in a month's time and then announcing them in our newsletter the humble hustle link in the description. I think the two biggest takeaways from this video is to travel as light as you can it just makes things so much easier when you travel and then also just pack well pack high quality items and less items. That way you're going to actually enjoy the devices that you use If you guys have anything else that you think I should add into my bag when I travel make sure you drop a comment below. Also I'll leave a video on screen here for you guys to check out it's my day in my life just in case you're curious about what I do the company that I run and things like that and if you're traveling anytime soon happy travels stay safe and as always thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.