Carry-on-only travel suits Asia. Laundry is cheap, hops between stops are short, and on regional flights a checked bag costs you a fee and a wait. One thing is harder than in North America or Europe: weight.
The weight limit
Airlines you know may check cabin-bag dimensions and ignore mass. Much of Asia’s low-cost sector enforces weight. Single-digit kilogram limits are normal, and some cover your bag and personal item together.
There are scales at the gate and they get used. An overweight cabin bag weighed at the gate usually costs far more than a checked bag bought online in advance, and that gap is how these carriers make money.
So mass, not volume, is what limits you. A bag that fits the sizer and weighs eleven kilos is a problem. Compression cubes and clever folding save space, and space was never the issue.
Pack for four days
Pack four days of clothes and use the laundry. Same-day or next-day service is cheap and easy to find across most of the region, and many guesthouses will arrange it.
Four days of clothes is lighter and avoids fees. You also move faster through airports, and you wear what you like rather than what filled the bag.
Where the weight is
Clothes are rarely the heavy part. Look at shoes, liquids, books and electronics.
- Shoes: wear one pair, pack one light pair.
- Liquids: keep containers small. The security limit on container size still applies, so a full-size sunscreen goes in the bin at the checkpoint whatever your weight budget. Buy toiletries at your destination, where you will want local sunscreen for the humidity anyway.
- Electronics: take one multi-port charger instead of four bricks. Ask whether the laptop is coming because you will work or because it usually comes.
Check every leg
A trip across Asia often mixes a full-service long-haul carrier with two or three regional low-cost ones. Their cabin allowances can differ by several kilograms, and the strictest carrier on the itinerary sets your limit, not the one you booked first.
Check each one. Packing to a generous long-haul allowance and meeting a seven-kilo limit on a domestic hop four days later, at a small airport, leaves you no cheap way out.
What you gain
- You walk off every regional flight straight to the exit instead of waiting at a belt.
- Your bag cannot be lost on a tight connection.
- You stop paying baggage fees on carriers whose fares are cheap because the fees are where the money is.
The cost is that you will sometimes wish you had brought something. In a region where you can buy almost anything within a short walk, that is small.