One Bag Travel Testing Complete

Unfortunately I am writing this in Perth. We went to the airport last night to test the Tatonka Small Barrel Bag as I promised in my previous post and then had to walk straight back out of the airport. No leaving Perth for us yet!

We went to the airport to test this bag as we are wanting to go on our next travel adventure with only hand luggage. That means getting the biggest bag possible while staying within the airlines carry on luggage restrictions. You can read all about the search in the blog post I wrote about the search for carry on bags.

View our video about the journey 🙂

One Bag Travelling – Testing Complete

I believe I should tell you more about this nifty bag. It may not be the most comfortable backpack ever made. It does not have a decent harness or hip straps or anything like that. It doesn't even have pockets on the outside to put general crap in. What it does have that other bags do not have is ease of use and lots of capacity. There are no straps that cause havoc when trying to open the bag in a hurry or pockets that can be pick-pocketed easily. In actual fact the main pocket zipper, when the bag is on your back, is pressed up against you. It is not accessible to the public at all. The other good thing about this bag is that the backpack straps can be unhooked and folded up into their own little holder. And of course it can hold a lot!

I (Tanya) love this bag. I am sure I will hate it at some stage. It will be a perfect love/hate harmonious relationship that should last a long long time (it does have a 50 year warranty after all! 🙂

I have just found out something else about Air Asia and their hand luggage rules. I was a little stressed last night when I put my little bag on the scales and it came up to 8.8kg. Now, I had absolutely over-packed it. I think I even had some of Andrew's stuff in there. I was trying to pack for my absolute worst-case scenario.

I had been wondering if a laptop was considered part of the 1 bag rule. Even though I got the lightest possible laptop I could afford to buy in it's case with a power cable it came in at 2kg. Now, if I took the laptop and associated paraphernalia out of the bag, even with over-packing, the weight would have been 6.8kg.

Checking out Ask Air Asia link here it is mentioned here that:

“An approved cabin baggage is:
1 item of baggage not exceeding dimensions of 56cm X 36cm X 23cm and provided that it does not weigh more than 7kg.
In addition to 1 item of baggage specified above, you can also bring an additional baggage of:
1 laptop OR 1 handbag OR 1 musical instrument – a small musical instrument such as a violin/guitar/saxophone/trumpet etc. provided it does not exceed the approved weight and size (i.e. does exceed the dimensions of 56cm X 36cm X 23cm and must not weigh more than 7kg) and fits within the 2 bag limitation.”

Yes, I am happy 🙂

Footnote from Andrew. If you want to confuse and possibly frighten an airline check-in person wait in the check-in line and when its your turn put a bag on the conveyor and say “We're not actually going anywhere today. We just wanted to ask you a question…”