What exactly do you buy for a female traveller, especially one travelling full-time? It’s a tough decision because it seems like every choice is either something that will either weigh her down or will cost way more than your budget (in my case, that’s nearly anything to do with photography).
Having spent half of this year as a long-term traveller, I had a lot of experience with gear that did (and didn’t) work. These are some of the things that made my life much more comfortable along the way, so I think the female traveller in your life will thank you if she finds any of them in her stocking on Christmas morning.
Jump to the individual products: Aroamas · Packing Cubes · Anker Astro3E battery pack · GorillaPod · Travelon bags · Bamboo Body clothing · Tieks · Samsung Galaxy Note 8 · Osprey Packs
First, the Cheap(er) Gear
Aroamas (AU$8 each): Not that I wore much perfume of home, but the idea of taking perfume travelling never appealed to me. Sure, travel brings a lot of situations where perfume would be handy (hiking for 4 days in the NZ backcountry, for instance) but the thought of having a fragile glass container in my bag was not pleasant.
Aroamas: solid perfume sticks.
Enter Aroamas, the solid perfume for travellers. These handmade perfume sticks are perfect for travel since they’re not breakable and live in a little tube in your purse. They’re great for freshening up on a night out or for generally just feeling a bit more girly. I can’t tell you how great it was to have one in the boat in Croatia that didn’t have showers either!
There are plenty of different scents to choose from too. Want to feel a bit beachy? Go with Bondi Beach. Love chocolate? Go with Aztec (one I’m looking forward to trying!). My personal favourite: Parisian.
A size comparison of the Anker Astro3E and the iPhone 5.
GorillaPod: Tripod for people on the go (and with no weight to spare).
Travelon bags (~US$40 and up): I’ve previously written about Travelon bags on both this site and Her Packing List. I’m a huge advocate of carrying them on your travels because they are specifically designed to keep your belongings safe. From the lobster claw system that keeps all of your pockets locked to the slash-proof sides and straps, Travelon made it much more difficult for pickpockets on the street to get your stuff — something I found out firsthand when two men tried to open my messenger bag unsuccessfully in Porto.
The Travelon Signature Cross-Body Bag: for extra security.
Along with their anti-theft gear, their website offers plenty of other goodies for the traveller. I am now the happy owner of an underseat rolling bag, which at 18 inches is the perfect size for a weekend trip while not raising any eyebrows from even very picky Australian airlines. It was great for packing all of my camera gear in on the way back to Australia — unbeknownst to the airline, who thought I had a basic carryon bag, I had more than 40lbs worth of gear rolling behind me. It would have been a lot more obvious if I’d been trying to carry that on my back!
Their bags aren’t just for women either — after I brought home the underseat rolling bag, James bought one as well!
Bamboo Body clothing (AU$40 and up): For years I’ve had the same travelling clothes: my favourite jeans and a Queensland Reds rugby jersey. That changed this year when I realised how much more comfortable I could be. On the recommendation of Brooke from Brooke vs. the World, I bought myself a bamboo tank top and bamboo pants, paired them with a cotton button-up top and my Teva Tirras, and got on the plane to England.
The benefits of the bamboo pants were immediately obvious when I went through security and didn’t have to stuff around with removing a belt. Plus, they are not anywhere near as restrictive as jeans, which really helps when my sore knee swells in flight. It’s hard to beat the feeling of being enveloped in softness that bamboo cotton gives too.
There were two downsides to the pants: (1) they didn’t have pockets, so I had to stash my phone in my bag, and (2) the elastic in the waistband seemed to loosen after a few months, leaving me hoicking up my pants more than I would have liked.
Bamboo Body clothing can be bought in Australia from Ciao Bella Travel.
And The Not So Cheap (But So Worth It)
Tieks (US$175 and up): Her feet will seriously thank you for it. These leather fold-up ballet flats are some of the comfiest shoes I can remember owning. That’s a pretty big call for me, since I have never owned a pair of ballet flats that I’ve found remotely comfortable (since they always seem to rub giant blisters on the back of my smaller foot). My Tieks, which have pretty much lived on my feet for the last two months, have never once rubbed blisters, not even when they were “breaking in.” Plus, the metallic pewter colour I chose goes with nearly everything.
Tieks: seriously comfortable (and foldable) ballet flats.
For those worried about the support in a shoe like this, there isn’t a lot — but at the same time I’ve found them more supportive than some tennis shoes on my sore knee. It’s possible to slip orthotics into them as well.
Plus, the experience of buying a pair of Tieks is second to none. They are only available online, but they make it as easy as possible to figure out what size fits best. If the size you originally ordered doesn’t work, they’ll send you another pair and you can compare before you send one pair back. How awesome is that? Plus, they’ve thought of everything, as you’ll find out during the unboxing process. The bag that folds up and fits in your purse for when you need to take your heels off later is genius.
Samsung Galaxy Note 8 (US$329): After buying the original iPad and realising that the only thing I ever used it for was to play Angry Birds, I’ve not really been in the market for a tablet. I just couldn’t figure out where it fit and where it would do something my MacBook Air and iPhone couldn’t do already.
Now, I carry a Note 8, which is light enough to easily hold in one hand while scribbling on it with the other. It’s got built in support for a stylus, so it’s got great handwriting recognition and apps with features designed around the stylus. I love that I’m able to sit at the train station and scribble out half a blog post — in fact, most of this post was written in the waiting room of a hospital. Then, once I get home, I can load up Google Drive, where it has automatically backed up my writing, and I can finish up there.
An original draft of this post as written on the Galaxy Note 8 and translated from handwriting into text. It sometimes has trouble between capital letters and lower case (as well as between punctuation marks) but overall it does very well.
It’s great for all of the other standard tablet activities too — games, surfing the web, etc — but the support for creating content instead of just consuming it is what makes this the tablet for me. I don’t know if I could ever use a 10 inch tablet again either after realising just how much more portable this one is.
The one downside here is the battery life: if you’re using it extensively, don’t expect to get more than a day’s charge. However, if you already bought an Anker battery pack, that shouldn’t be a problem, even if you are on the go!
Osprey Farpoint 55: a backpack designed for people that actually want to access the gear in their bag.
To be honest, I’m still not certain that I shouldn’t have gone with Osprey’s backpacks that convert into rolling bags, since there were more than a few times where I got grumpy with how much weight I had to carry (but that’s a problem that comes with all backpacks). Fortunately, I found that their bags were balanced very well, so it never aggravated my whiplash injury as other packs have done.
So, which of these will you be buying for the woman traveller in your life? No matter which of these items she gets, I know she’ll be happy and ready to tackle a new year of travel!
I have previously received complementary products from Travelon but this has in no way affected my opinions in the piece. I bought all other items myself. Some links on this page are affiliate links which will give me a small cut if products are sold through them.