The 5 most overrated products for backpacking

backpacks in pickup truck

Let me tell you what not to pack when going on a backpacking trip. Packing your backpack for a trip is different for everybody. Some take weeks to plan and use lists to make sure they don’t forget anything. Others, like me, start the evening before. We all have one thing in common though: we over pack. Heavily too. To make matters worse, there are some travel items that everybody seems to be recommending while they are really not that great. Or even useful. You pack them, drag them around your whole trip and unpack them back home. Never really used them at all. So in a probably futile attempt to rid the world of these overrated and useless travel products, and to give myself a nice opportunity for a rant, here are the 5 most overrated travel items for backpacking.

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Bangkok to Siem Reap: a border crossing guide from Thailand to Cambodia

If you are traveling the banana-pancake trail, chances are high that you will at one point cross the border between Thailand and Cambodia. When traveling from Thailand to Cambodia, assuming you depart in Bangkok, you have three options: plane, bus or train. While air travel is undoubtedly the fastest and easiest, it is also the most pricey. Also its not really thrilling. Traveling  by road will be slow. A bit tricky at times and definitely uncomfortable at moments. BUT it is cheap and adventurous. If you follow the tips in this border crossing guide, there is really no way why going from Bangkok to Siem Reap should not be a breeze.

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Cycling Angkor Wat

The great temples of Angkor need no introduction. Every traveler that plans on visiting Cambodia  has  both heard of and intends to visit them. Next to its infamous main temple Angkor Wat, the Bayon temple (temple of the heads) and the ‘tomb-raider temple’ Ta Prohm attract a daily massive crowd. Nevertheless few doubt their beauty when they are standing face-to-face with them, crowds or not. As a Dutchy I am obviously biased towards cycling, since we’re basically born on one. But with this read I am not merely going to explain how to visit the temples by bicycle. I am also going to convince you that cycling Angkor Wat is really the only way to go at it. 

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