The days of the pioneering explorer, traveling with nothing but a local guide and all the supplies they could carry are clearly over.  With technology marching forward at a constant pace the modern traveler has unlimited access to information about any location on the planet, and low cost gadgets to record their adventures and to bridge the distance back to wherever home may be.

Our trip to Asia will certainly not be the pioneering adventure of the past – traveling with a collection of high-tech gadgets will allow us to be well informed about where we are, where the local amenities are, and will also allow us to keep our friends and family entertained and updated with tales of our experiences.  Part of this need for some gadgetry is because I will be working part of the time while I am there.  One of the great things about my job is the ability to telecommute, and with my developers spread out across the globe, other than dealing with the timezone issues, working from a different location should not be too different from what we are already used to.

I started looking at the things we would like to take, and while there are tons of cool gadgets available for the traveler, we have to think carefully about how much things weigh and how much space they occupy – it will be plenty hot and humid enough there without me having to carry a backpack full of gadgets around!!  Also, we need to keep in mind that the power is different there (240v vs 120v), so many of our battery powered gadgets will need to be charged either via a USB charger off a laptop or via a 240v compatible charger.  Some of the things we are going to be taking are:

1. A couple of laptops – my trusty MacBook Pro and Laurie’s IBM Thinkpad.  I need my laptop for work, and between the 2 laptops we should be able to keep up with email, blogging, and instant messaging back to work and family.
2. Digital camera’s – these are so small and inexpensive that we will likely have more than we need 🙂 We have a couple of Casio’s and a Nikon that will be making the trip, and with a few extra SD memory cards and my laptop to upload photos to, we should have a great photo record of the whole trip.  With any luck we will be able to upload some of them as we go to our website.
3. GPS Datalogger – something that is getting more common in the digital photo world is geotagging, this allows you to record the GPS location of where a photo was taken and then attach the photos to a map, or to a ‘track’ of your journey.  A datalogger records your GPS position every 30 seconds or so and then at a later time merges the data into your photos based on the timestamps of the records.  I picked up an iBlue 747A+ from Semsons.com – about the size of a box of wooden matches, it just clips to your belt or pack and records away.  For about $70 it will be an interesting experiment and really cool once I get it all setup.
4. VoIP phone – I will need to make calls for work from time to time, but the rate to call from Thailand to the US/Canada would make long calls cost prohibitive, but I picked up a Linksys WIP310 wifi VoIP phone.  This should allow me to make calls through our office phone system to people at the office, customers, and back home.

The good news is that so far all of the stuff we are planning to take will all work with the power there in terms of recharging, and other than the laptops it will all fit in a small day pack.  So if we are able to stay fairly close to spots with good internet connectivity and working power it will be almost like being at home 😉