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Gesundheit

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I have a few more topics in mind when it comes to healthcare on the road.  My first piece of advice is plan ahead.  There seem to be a lot of discussion forums and advice columns about what medications and immunizations you might need, but my most important tip is just to get whatever you need before you quit your job (and lose your health insurance).  All the shots we needed were covered at no cost, however it did require some persistence to get through the system so start early.

Another thing I didn’t mention in the last post was about prescriptions. I had a few medications that I take regularly which you generally can’t get without a prescription and are pretty expensive without insurance.  I was very concerned about trying to buy a year’s worth before we left.  In most cases it’s not possible, but my insurance company allowed an extra 3 month “travel allowance“ before we left.  For the rest of the supply, I stockpiled a few extra months ahead of time by getting my RXs filled as soon as they are eligible, which is often a  few weeks early.  It adds up over 6 months or so.  In the end, we also made a pitstop back in the US in the middle of the trip and re-stocked everything then.  There are some countries where you absolutely must have a prescription and it must be from a Dr. in that county.  There are other countries where you just turn up at the pharmacy and tell them what you want.  Once again… plan ahead.

Finally, I wanted to talk a little about health insurance while you are traveling.  This decision is very personal and will have to be based on your situation in life.  Are you generally healthy?  Do you have enough money to cover any emergencies?  What is covered by your existing domestic insurance?  What are the worst case situations if do or don’t get it?  What countries will you be visiting and what is the healthcare like there?  

We had to consider that we are pretty healthy, but at age 40 there is a higher probability that something could go wrong than at 20.  We also found that the insurance we had while working didn’t cover much outside the US.  We had enough money saved to cover any basics while traveling, but if something major (think car accident or heart attack) happened, we would need some insurance and potentially evacuation coverage.  After researching lot of different companies and policies, we ended up going with one offered by this company (they also offer kidnap and ransom insurance, but I hope no one reading this ever has need for that!):  http://www.piu.org/medical/worldwide-major-medical-plan

High deductible/catastrophic coverage plans turn out to be fairly reasonable in price,  However keep in mind that most only cover you when you are outside of the US.  Finally, you might hear that there is reciprocal coverage in the EU.  This might be true depending on where you are from.  However, if you are from the US, it’s not the case and you will need some form of insurance or will have to pay the bills yourself.  I wish everyone healthy travels! 

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Left the Snake Bite Kit at Home

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

I was looking for my next topic to blog about when I came across an article about travel & medications.  It’s a topic that gets a lot of attention on travel forums.  It’s one that I thought about a lot before we left, and not much while we were actually travelling.  I don’t think I can cover everything in one post, so I’ll probably break this up into a few blogs.

 

I’ve read a lot of posts and articles with lists of what should be in your first aid kit.  The kit, just like everything else you pack is a series of tradeoffs.  What will fit?  What do I think I’ll need? What will I be able to buy while traveling?  Based on my experiences, here’s a list of what I took along, and my recommendations.  I’ll start out by saying that I think I was a little paranoid about my health before we left, so I tended to over-pack in this area.

 

Melatonin tablets – This is a chemical that your body produces naturally to help you sleep.  It’s not addictive and I found it helped with jetlag to take one at bedtime for a few days in a new timezone.  It doesn’t keep me from waking up in the middle of the night, but it seems to make it easier to fall back to sleep.  You can’t find this in many countries, but it’s OTC in the US, so I brought some with me.  There seem to be many people who get and Rx for Ambien, but that’s more than I need.

 

Aspirin and Ibuprofen – We used them quite a bit for all sorts of headaches and muscle aches.  You can replenish them just about anywhere, so don’t take too much to start.

 

Immodium – Thankfully we never had to use it.  That’s not to say that we didn’t get sick, but we stayed in one place long enough to get through it with out this.  I will only use it if I have to get on a plane/train/bus while I have, uh, symptoms.

 

Cipro – I had to use it once for Delhi Belly and Eric needed the Big C in Turkey.  Don’t leave home without it.  If you really need it, you probably won’t be in a condition to go out searching for a Dr. or pharmacy to get it.

 

Bandaids/Plasters – Blisters, scrapes, etc. are unavoidable if you are an active traveler. I always carry a few in my purse or daypack too.  It’s weird, but I’ve met a few nice people on hiking trails because I had one to share when they needed it.

 

Benadryl (antihistimine) and Sudafed (decongestant) – I have terrible allergies so I went through my initial supply quickly.  In most places, the pharmacist could recommend a good replacement if they didn’t have these specific ones.  If you are in a place where little English is spoken, bring the empty pack to the pharmacy so that they can see the ingredients.  It’s much easier than trying to “mime” a stuffy nose and sneezing. Benadryl is also good for some skin rashes.

 

Mefloquine (for malaria) – We started taking it, but gave up and just went with the next item…

 

50% DEET bug spray  (the Boots brand in the gray bottle is the best we found)- I covered myself in this stuff while I was in malaria zones.  It’s horrible,  (it actually dissolved the printing ink on one of my bags – what does it do to your skin?) but I didn’t get a single bite, which means no malaria, no dengue fever, or any other nasty disease. 

 

Meclazine (Dramamine) – I have occasional bouts of vertigo, so I brought this along, but maybe used it once.

 

Antiboitic cream – I think I only used it once for some scrapes I got hiking that didn’t heal.  I would probably still bring this along since it doesn’t take up too much room.

 

Hand Sanitizer – We carried it with us most of the time.  Since the “swine flu” was getting a lot of press last year, you could find this everywhere.  I also used it as an antiseptic to clean out some cuts while hiking (If you haven’t noticed, I’m a little klutzy on the trails).

 

Contact lens solution – I found this in most places, but it can be really expensive.  A year’s worth of disposable contacts takes up a lot of room too.  I ended up wearing glasses most of the time anyway.

 

Anthisan – I don’t think this cream is available in the US, but you get it in many other countries.  It’s for bug bites, bee stings, and rashes. The sand flies in NZ are unavoidable, so this was my only relief.  I also got stung by bees twice during our travels and it worked great.

 

That’s it for the first aid kit. Next up is that hot topic of health insurance.

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It’s my bag, baby

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

Last weekend we took our first post-trip trip to do some spring skiing for the weekend with friends at Mammoth. It was fun, and it was also great to have all our gear – proper hats, gloves, socks, pants, jackets, goggles, and every other accessory specifically designed for skiing. Since we had no “one bag” restriction like on the RTW trip, I was pretty excited to be able to throw in an extra sweater (or two or three).

With packing on my mind, I think it’s time to tackle the blog that I’ve been putting off for a while. I’ve wanted to write a review of our bags, but it was hard to decide my opinion about them. Before the trip started, I read a lot of articles and forums about whether to use a backpack or a more traditional suitcase. I didn’t intend to do much actual backpacking on the trip, but jumping on/off trains with a big case is no fun. We compromised and bought bags with handles and wheels that also have backpack straps. In the end we only used them as backpacks once – they are really too big and heavy to make them practical for that purpose. However, the wheels are totally key and I wouldn’t suggest traveling without them.

I went with the Osprey Meridian 28 inch “wheeled convertible pack” and Eric got the Victorinix 26 inch Trek Pack Plus. They both have an external detachable daypack, which were OK for grocery shopping or toting around laundry, but too small to be really useful for day hiking (for that we used our regular daypacks/carry-ons). The main bag size is just about right for long term travel. When we left I though they were incredibly small, but after a year, I probably could have gotten by with an even smaller one. When fully stuffed, with clothes and books, they were just around 15 kg, which is often the weight limit for “free” checked-in bags on many international airlines.

The wheels on both bags were pretty rugged and we put them to the test, rolling and bumping them over everything from cobblestones to escalators. I only had one minor issue. There is a plastic piece on the bottom that helps the bag “stand” upright on the wheels. It is held in place with a few rivets, but tends to get caught on curbs and steps if you don’t lift the bag enough. Eventually one of the fasteners broke and I had to replace it with a nut/bolt combo we bought along the way (but it did give me an excuse to learn the Spanish word “tornillo”). The fabric of the bag generally held up to airline baggage handling, except for a small puncture on the back, which I fixed with an iron-on patch and it never got any bigger.

Eric’s bag came through about the same, except for a torn seam along one of the zippers that I think was just from over-stuffing. We got it fixed at a tailor in Turkey for roughly $2, so it wasn’t a big deal. Both of our bags were dark red/maroon which made them easy to spot on the airport baggage carousels, but really shows the dirt. After a few months they both looked pretty grungy and stayed that way for the rest of the trip.

My final opinion on the bags is that for our type of travel they were the right choice. We had a car for a lot of our trip, so weight wasn’t the most important thing. However, if I were going to do a more “mobile” trip with more trains, buses, or visiting more countries, I would probably use a smaller bag, possibly a true backpack. However, that would mean making a lot more tradeoffs on what gear to bring and that’s a topic for another blog.

Here I am in Istanbul with the beast on my back.  Note the fine example of Turkish parking in the background:

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Posted in Reviews, Travel | 3 Comments »

Pod People

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

We’re still fixing up the house and unpacking (slowly), but have had some time to get together with a few friends.  It’s weird, in a good way, to see everyone again after so much time, but there are a few questions that everyone has.  One of them is “what did you do with all your stuff while you were gone?”

The explanation leads me to some travel advice as well, so I think it’s a good topic.  First off, we rented out our house, unfurnished, while we traveled. It was a big decision, but definitely the right thing to do.  We hired a management company to handle the rental  logistics and that was also a good decision.  They did everything from advertising the property, finding a renter and doing background checks, to collecting the rent.  They would also have handled evictions, but thankfully we didn’t have to put that to the test.  We never even met the person and basically just received a direct deposit every month from the company. Of course, they take a % of the rent, but they are also available to help the renter get a plumber or handyman if something goes wrong.  There’s no way I wanted to be worrying about whether the renter could reach us when we were 15 times zones away and the sprinkler system broke (which I’m told actually did happen and flooded the neighbors’ yard – better to find out after it’s all fixed).

In the end, the house survived pretty well with just a few nicks and our mortgage payments were covered while roamed around the world.  It was a huge weight off our minds and wallets.  If you plan to do this, consider the market conditions in your area though, and do some research on rent rates for similar properties.  You might be able to get enough to cover other home expenses you might have like taxes or insurance.  You’ll also need to think about whether you want to do a month-to-month agreement or a fixed time period.  Our renter signed for a year, so there literally was no place to come back to after we left.  A few months before the year was up, we decided to extend our travels for 3 more months.  The management company also worked it out with the renter to stay longer too.  Overall, the experience was good and one of the easier things we had to deal with before and after we traveled.

As I mentioned above, we rented the house unfurnished, which meant we had to find a place for our “stuff.”  While we tried to sell/donate/throw away a lot of things before we left, we knew we’d be back and would need some of the big items, like furniture and the big screen TV again.  The obvious choice is a storage garage, but we went with a “pod” instead.  It’s a huge container that they deliver it to your house, you load it up, and they take it away.  It’s stored in a climate controlled warehouse somewhere until you call and have it delivered again to unload.  The best part about it was that we didn’t have to move things very far… just out the front door into the pod, and then back in again a year later.  With a storage garage, you have an extra step of renting a truck and unloading/loading at the site.  The only downside is that once the pod is gone, you really can’t get access to your things. You need to be sure that you won’t need whatever is in there until after you are back. For us, it worked out really well and was probably a slightly cheaper option, too. 

We finished up moving boxes out of the pod and it was picked up today.  It’s seems trivial, but that action made our return feel very real and final.  Until then, I had the sense that maybe we could just send it back and hit the road again. 

Here’s the Pack Rat pod in front of our very full garage. 

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