Here we provide recommendations on packing and carry-on baggage weight.
Carry-on bags are also knows as “in-cabin” baggage, which are bags that you carry with you onto the aircraft.
Fortunately, ✅ busses and trains in Southeast Asia do not care about your baggage weight or number of bags you have, ❌ but airlines do.
Packing Your Bags
Packing a bag is challenging. It sounds easy, but it’s not!
Short-term travel (under 2 weeks) is much more simple. But, you’ll face limitations when packing for a month, multi-months, or multi-YEAR travel.
Tip
Carry important things on you on the bus/train/flight, not stored under the cabin. So, pack accordingly. Have a main bag that does not leave your sight and possession. This lowers risk of damage, theft, and loss. Bonus points for adding locks to on the zippers of your bag.
Strategy: Spread things out over your bags – instead of putting all of your medication in 1 bag, you could split it up and put 75% in one bag and 25% in another. The goal is if your bag gets lost, then you still have some of that ‘important’ stuff.
Packing Limitations:
( 1 ) Limits on what you can bring with you (you can’t take everything!).
You’re limited on 1) what fits in your bag, 2) what is within the baggage weight limits, 3) what you can carry.
( 2 ) What you can buy locally vs your home country.
( 3 ) Carry-on bag weight for airlines (in practice, busses and trains do not care about this).
Prioritize & Choose What To Leave Behind:
Prioritize bringing things that you cannot buy in Southeast Asia, in which you must have. Examples: 1) Special gear, 2) Specific high-end electronics, 3) Critical medical supplies.
Truth is, you can buy most things in Southeast Asia. Although, not every country sells the same things (example: finding contact lenses is relatively easy in Thailand , but is rare in Vietnam).
The issue is that you’ll need to figure out how and where to buy them, along with potential language barriers. The big cities have more availability compared to smaller ones, so it’s smart to pack the critical things you need (or must have).
Once you arrive in Southeast Asia you should start looking to figure out how to buy things such as medication.
Weight Limits For Carry-on Bags (Bus, Train, Flights in Southeast Asia)
✅ Busses and trains in Southeast Asia never care about the weight or number of your bags.
❌ Airlines do care, and you can expect them to measure the weight your check-in and carry-on bags.
*The below post is only about airline baggage & weight, since busses and trains don’t care.
Airlines have baggage limits, we all know this. You’ll often find the weight limit for carry-ons (bags that you take onto the aircraft) is not enough! Especially if you have electronics that cannot be put into check-in bags.
⚠️ 7 kg carry-on (in-cabin) baggage limit
⚠️ In Southeast Asia, limits for carry-on (in-cabin) baggage is 7 kg (15 pounds). This is the case for all airlines in Southeast Asia, with a rare exception of 10 kg (22 pounds) for Vietnam Airlines. However, assume all airlines will have a 7 kg limit for carry-on bags. Yea, you may get one flight with 10 kg, but you’ll eventually fly on that will be 7 kg.
Tip
Buy extra carry-on (in-cabin) baggage weight: AirAsia is the only airline (that we are aware of, at least) that allows you to buy an extra 7 kg (15 pounds) of carry-on (in-cabin) baggage weight. Buying this extra weight is cheaper than checking-in a bag + it’s in your possession, and therefore no baggage losses!
Lastly, this limit is for all flights within to between Southeast Asian countries. That means that flying between countries such as between Thailand and Indonesia does not give you a higher limit with extra baggage & weight.
Taking Risks: Q: Will the airlines check your bag weight? A: Mabye or maybe not. But, eventually you’ll run into issues if you have much more baggage weight than they allow.
Nomads have found out (and have been told by airlines directly) that wearing a single, smaller/medium-sized, backpack (no other carry-on bags) will prevent the airline staff from weighing your bag. So, are these backpacks informally exempt from weight limits? It appears so, at least for the time being. However, don’t count on it as it appears to be a curtesy measure, based on the airline, management policy, and staff’s mood.