I left my gear at home, thinking (rightly, it proves) that I'd be packed to the max with a tuba and the gear for everyday life. I also thought (wrongly, it proves) that I'd be able to find dirt cheap, if low quality, gear over here; who cares if a tent only lasts a dozen trips if you only pay $30?
Well, half wrong.
Running on piss and vinegar, I priced out camping gear last night. Turns out, I was only half wrong about the gear here--it is flimsy crap, but it costs half again as much as name-brand back home. I cringe at the thought of what I would consider quality equipment, and I'm just not ready to sling a hammock under a banana tree and weather out whatever comes. (Locals camp with a hammock, maybe a tarp, and one of those pincher grill baskets for cooking over the fire. It's not the same, at all, but serious rains in the Alps turned me off just getting rained on, and I'm too conditioned to be paranoid of malaria and dengue to trust just sleeping out.)
Which brings up the issue of gear: at home, I'm equipped for ultralight, cool and dry backpacking, or ultrawarm arctic outings. What's not goose down is wool, or here with me, save for my pad, packs, tent and bivvy sack.
But I'm in the tropics. Wool? HELLS no!
Ultra-lightweight down sleeping bag? Mold.
Water-resistant down sleeping bag? Death under -40 insulation.
Bivvy sack? Unventilated e-vent material: mold. Plus it's too small to comfortably weather a monsoon.
Tent? Non-freestanding, not to be trusted with serious rain or camping outside of nice, firm, packed dirt surfaces.
Which comes to the things I could use: my pack and pad. But to ship them, from what I recall of international flat-rate, would again cost more than the international flat rate on the rei.com order.
And with that, I think I've talked myself into a new tent, pad, bag, and pack, shipped from America, for just over what I would pay for a Thai-grade tent here in the cheap part of the country.
Welcome to Thailand, I guess.
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