What Worked on My Long Haul Flight and What Didn't

hello everyone I have not filmed a video in here in a while I used to film in my closet really regularly when I first started my channel because my sons were still home a lot and it was just quieter in here but right now I'm filming in my closet because I am in the midst of unpacking so I've got my personal item bag right here we just got back from a 10-night trip to Tokyo Japan unbelievable and we weren't just in Tokyo we were actually all over the country so if you want to watch those travel Vlogs make sure you head over to Jen laforge which is my travel content Channel where I do my Vlogs and they will be there but I did the video before I left telling you everything that was in my personal item bag and today I am bringing you the video letting you know what worked in here what didn't we are very informal today I don't know if you can hear I have a little bit of a cold no it's not covered but between that and jet lag I'm just kind of starting to get back into the groove of things and as I was unpacking this bag I thought you know what we're just going to film this video now while it's top of mind so it was a 12 hour flight there we actually spent the night in LAX so we flew Atlanta LAX which is about a four and a half ish hour flight and then we spent the night in LAX 12 hours from LAX to haneda and then on the way back we flew back through La is a lot shorter on the way back it's only around 10 hours and then back on our connecting flight from LA to Atlanta which again was you know just about four hours so a lot of time in the air and not as much time as some I know if you live like in Australia or New Zealand some places like that you guys fly 15 16 hours and don't even think about it but for me a 12-hour flight was a long time put a lot of intentionality into packing to make sure that I had everything that I would need or want during the flight and I did pretty well I had a few things that really surprised me that I took and I'll start with the one that shocked me the most and that was my neck pillow now you guys know when I left I was kind of dubious as to whether or not this would work and I kind of want to show you I don't know if it's going to bother my microphone but like how you do it and really you do it however you want but you wrap it around like this and then you can I'm sure that's going to cover up the mic but then you can position it to either be you know if you if you like to sleep this way you can put it in the window and lean up against it if you're on the window it has a lot of flexibility to it I was shocked how well I slept with this thing like I have not had good luck with neck pillows I've done videos where I've talked about why I don't travel with a neck pillow but it did remarkably well so I will link this below um I promised you guys I would give an honest review it's by B cozy b-c-o-z-z-y or be causi but probably be cozy and loved it now um I did figure out that if I put it in the laptop sleeve it kind of smushes it down and it doesn't really take up very much space at all um but yeah this item was great in fact on the way back I used it more than on the way there I was just really excited on the way there and I slept over five hours on the flight back which for me is unheard of so I credit this but also let me show you the other item that ended up working great and that is this eye mask so imagine how ridiculous I looked I had that on I had now this I do have to show you guys my noise canceling headphones which I knew that I was going to be happy that I took those those were a no-brainer but let me show you what I looked like with these on and then I put this on over that and attached it in the back and this is what I look like while I was sleeping but let me tell you oh my gosh I got such a good rest such a good rest so um yeah this I will also link below I don't even remember the name of the brand on this it's called fresh me cotton sleep mask f-r-e-s-h-m-e I think the reason it worked so much better than other eye masks I've had in the past is because it wrapped all the way around and there was no strap so there was very little pressure on my eyes I do not do well when sleep masks have pressure on my eyes and this one was just so cozy and so comfortable so that was that was phenomenal one other item that I actually didn't show in my packing video in fact I know I washed it it should be here somewhere um let me see if I can grab it hold on just a second and I'll grab something that I want to make sure that I mentioned to you was kind of a game changer as far as me being able to get really good sleep so hope please okay um this is what I wanted to show you this is the three yard wrap from Blue salt and I have had this for I don't know how long have I had this maybe two years now and it is amazing because I just wear it you can wear it however you want she's got all kinds of ideas on the website on how you can wear it I just wear it kind of like this just around my neck but you could wear it as a scarf you can do whatever jaunty type fashion thing you want to do but the reason it's so great for sleeping is it's a little personal item blanket and it's actually pretty darn big so you can really cover yourself up with it I um they do disinfect and re-wrap the airplane blankets so I don't have a problem using the airplane blankets but it is just so much Cozier and softer to have something that is this soft and this is meant to mimic cashmere but it's machine washable and dryable and it is a lot of money but price per wear I have gotten so much use out of this it will be going with me when we fly to California next month it will be going with me when I go to Rome in June and it's just it just because it smells like my me and it's my home and and all of the things so anyway the blue salt three yard wrap absolutely love it for travel it went with me it was amazing so where are we we knew that the the Bose noise canceling headphones would work um the my charge portable battery this was essential in Japan there are on most of like the shinkansen the shinkansen the bullet trains there are Chargers you can use and in Japan everything is the two prong so if you have items like a laptop charger or a blow dryer that are the three prongs here in the US those you might want an adapter for but anything you have that only has two prongs is fine to just plug into the regular outlet and this thing charges fast it enabled me to have charge for my phone my son to have charge for his phone and you're using apps a lot to navigate in Japan we used one called navitime I think it's called Japan something I'll put a link to that to it below but you're on your phone a lot and you want to make sure that your phone is charged it's a security issue all the things so I will list this below I actually found it at Costco for way cheaper than you can buy it in the store so if you you are a Costco member check there first but it has an enlightening cable for an iPhone and then if you have the other kind there's also a little USB C charger here as well because you don't need any other cables so that worked great I knew I kind of knew that it would um what else is in here oh my compression socks I have an extra pair tucked in here just to show you guys these worked so great I did end up liking the target ones better than the sockwell ones the sockwell ones were just too tight but wearing the compression socks I did not swell at all and that is very strange for me for an international flight I was I was super just impressed with the fact that I didn't have any issues so definitely highly praise the compression socks these are fairly inexpensive from Target I want to say they're two pair for 25 dollars so if you have long travel coming up or long-haul flights even for long car rides these are a fantastic idea if you are a succession fan there's kind of an ongoing um compression sock joke going on this season and it's funny and not funny but yep you know what I'm talking about if you're watching succession okay now this I did not mention in the video um but I took this again and again it is such a heavy hitter for me palette by pack and this is the fiber and let me just show you so I pre I loaded this with my night cream when I left and I was gone 10 nights and there is still probably one or two nights left in there I also loaded up and I just happen to know what my different numbers are but that's number four that's the day cream that one's pretty much used up if you go oh and this one is still completely full so if you guys are like I'm not sure that that holds enough of product for me it totally does what I have in here is one and two are my curl cream for my hair three is my night cream and four and five are both my day cream because I tend to use more of that than I do the night cream but this thing bringing this into the bathroom because I was doing my makeup in another part of the hotel room but just having this in the bathroom was so handy easy to get to easy to get to during the flight if I wanted to put like some moisturizer on my face for my next Long Haul flight I may put like some hand cream in here so I'm not messing with that and it's so secure you don't have to worry about it leaking this has just been a go-to for me for a while now and I absolutely love it so that went and worked great um this little bag was what I put all of my absolute Essentials for the flight in pretty much used everything in here the one thing I would say 100 percent 100 percent made me feel more human on this flight were these little things right here and they are gone I don't know why I have an empty thing in here I should have thrown this away but now I'm glad that I didn't because I could show it to you every time I went to use the airplane bathroom I took these with me stuck them in my pocket and wiped down everything in the bathroom before I used it I am sure it's mostly psychological but you guys it made such a huge difference I just felt so much just cleaner safer better it I knew that the bathroom was was cleaner than it had been obviously I'm not going to be in there scrubbing the floors but this just made a huge difference for me so it's such a small thing but having some Clorox wipes in your little go bag so that you can grab that to go into the bathroom that makes a huge difference I did end up using although I had a bit of a fail with this the subtle Beauty little stack I reviewed this separately here on my channel I actually really liked this the problem is I didn't have a mirror so if I wanted to use it I would have had to have gone in the airplane bathroom so I did not really use this on the flight I did use it during the trip but just a little Pro tip on this if you're gonna pack it thinking you're going to use it on the airplane make sure you actually take a mirror okay now this next item ended up being a fail but for a different reason than you probably think so this is the little Bluetooth transmitter the airfly which I love and I've used on many many flights but we were in the bulkhead and because of the way that the setup was with the charging thing and where you would have to plug in your headphones there was no way I don't think for me to connect it it was fine because I just used my wire cable and it wasn't a problem all the way back because we didn't have that bulkhead seat but yeah this did not work for me because of the setup of the entertainment system so this was like this got like a 50 percent normally though I love this if you work with any kind of um you know your Apple air pods or the the um Bose Bluetooth although these also will plug in to the in-flight entertainment it comes with the cable so that wasn't that big of a deal um the little disposable air wisp toothbrushes of course they worked great I still have a couple in here these are brilliant you don't need water you can just freshen up your mouth makes a huge difference um yeah and I think that's pretty much it I mean my pen of course although interestingly we ended up not having to fill anything out because for entry into Japan we had done everything through the um fly Japan I think it's called website ahead of time and we had QR QR codes so we actually didn't need a pen and on the way back they didn't have us fill anything out for the U.S so you know there you go um oh this was a fail so when we got to Japan I thought I had packed plenty of disposable contacts but or not disposable but daily I had actually packed more I have two different prescriptions in each eye and I had packed more of one and not enough of the other so I had barely enough but I do have one backup pair here in my bag so I don't know what that has to do with anything other than just an you know a message to those of you that are smart to make sure you check that you have enough of your daily contacts and that you've taken the correct amount for each eye because I had a ton of threes and not enough of two seven five so anyway all right what else is in here that was in that video that I definitely used or didn't use on the flight I think that might be I feel like I mentioned more in that video oh my little makeup remover wipes definitely use these because when I decided on the flight it was time for me to sleep took my makeup off put on my moisturizer I did all of that so that worked out great um these we bought in the airport I did not have these in the packing video and I really wish I had had them so bought those in the airport so highly recommend having some mints in your bag just makes you again with me and the feeling more human um okay so my uh e-reader let's talk about that for a minute this is the Kindle Paperwhite of course I used it I ended up not reading Memoirs of a Geisha so I am a survivor of sexual assault when I was in high school and stories that involve especially young girls and all of that really tend I'm actually I have PTSD so I really have to watch what I read and I got about three chapters in and realized I couldn't handle it so ended up reading Molly Shannon's autobiography which all of a sudden I can't remember the name of it let me see if I can get it to come up where is it should be in my library this book was so friggin good I can't even express you guys it was just so freaking good she um it took me a minute to get into it but once I got into the book I mean I was on the plane just bawling my eyes out um you know there's a way for me to go back home to look at what oh call hello Molly yes it was it's called hello Molly by Molly Shannon I read half of it on the way there and then I ended up finishing it on the way back and oh my God you guys such a good book but love this e-reader and I really love the way that this case is because I could set it up like a little easel so I didn't have to hold it so that was really great for the airplane so this was well used and well loved one item that I did not initially bring but did end up bringing on the way back is a couple of trash bags I had trash bags because in Tokyo there are not a lot of public garbage cans so people generally bring a little trash bag they fill up their trash and then they throw away their trash either when they get home or in the train station so I had a bunch of trash bags but they were packed in my suitcase which was up above and a lot of times and you guys know this if you've ever flown Long Haul they're not coming around to collect trash as often or you have generated trash and you just don't have anywhere to put it so I wish wish I had brought maybe a Ziploc would have been great I had this one with some clean paper towels in it which was super helpful but I wish I had had a just empty Ziploc bag for the trash that I was personally generating so that I could could categorize it all because you don't really have anywhere to put stuff so trash just ends up on the floor and that's disgusting so that is going on my list for my next Long Haul flight is to make sure that I pack a Ziploc bag for my own personal trash I am going to go start putting this crap away in a way that is organized so that I'm ready for my next trip my next trip is actually coming up in just a few weeks but it's a personal vacation so I won't be vlogging but I do need to have you know my my stuff in a stack and organized so you guys know I'm very big on that when I first get back from a trip making sure that everything gets organized and put back where it belongs so I realized this was really chatty but I hope that you enjoyed it if you haven't already subscribed please go ahead and do so and it would really help me if you would make sure and give this video a big thumbs up and if you have not joined us on patreon yet that is basically how I get paid for the work that I do what I do is the money that I make from Google AdSense from the videos that's what goes into my travel but how I get paid for my time because I don't do sponsored videos is from patreon that's how it's possible for me to be a travel vlogger and as I say all the time without patreon I would still travel you just wouldn't know about it so if you enjoy this content um you you have our patrons to thank for it and if you'd like to join us over there it's as little as five dollars a month and you get blog posts we have a secret Instagram all kinds of great things and I think it's just a really fantastic community so I would love it if you would join us over there all right that's it for today whatever you're doing I hope you're finding joy and I will see you in the next video bye

Channel: Joyful Living with Jen Lefforge

Views: 56,803

Keywords: travel tips, travel hacks, long haul flight, what's in my personal item back, how to sleep on a plane in economy, jen lefforge, long haul flight essentials, long haul flight tips, must have travel items

Id: fEb1p3EzvMo

Length: 18min 54sec (1134 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 29 2023