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No. We are not adopting again. 🙂 But – a huge part of the reason this website exists is to help make adopting families’ lives a little easier. This is the compulsive planner coming out in me again with a packing list that will hopefully take one more thing off of your “to do” plate as you prepare to meet your child. For reference, we did this trip twice – two different Thailand adoptions (about 2 weeks in country). Once for our son (who was 25 months at the time we met) and once for our daughter (who was 21 months when we met). My husband and I each checked a bag, had 2 carry ons, and I carried my trusty travel purse while Aaron had his camera backpack. Coming home, we bought a cheap piece of luggage to accommodate souvenirs and items that belonged to our children.
If you are ready to start packing, feel free to use this link to download and print your adoption-ready packing list. If you’d like a few more insights to what we took, keep reading below.
For the record, this is the “I want to be prepared” version of me. In my heart, I waver between loving minimalism and the anxiety of “what if I need that?” mentality. You don’t need everything on this list, and there may be things you’d rather take. Feel free to make alterations as needed to your list so that YOU feel prepared.
On the packing list, you’ll find multiple items listed under things like “tops”, “bottoms”, and “shoes”. This is not to imply that you need each of those items, but to get you thinking about what you might want to take.
Clothes were the hardest part for me in deciding what to pack. I opted to go for the more casual dress route just because that is what I am comfortable in, but I know other families who were thrilled to live in workout-wear. I would say go for comfort, pick things that can mix and match together, and don’t plan on anywhere near an outfit a day. You can do laundry very inexpensively and it’s not worth lugging around extra bags for.
We did pack clothes for our kids and I was so happy we did. Yes – this is definitely something you can buy when you are there and you know exactly what size to get, but I had 5-6 outfits packed and it worked out well.
Once you have your outfits picked out, make sure you have the right undergarments to go with each one and then come shoes. We travel in one pair, dress up with one pair, and mostly lived in a pair of flip flops. I also had a pair of flats to be culturally appropriate when visiting temples. The easiest way to not overpack? Lay it all out, make sure you can mix & match, add outfit specific undergarments and shoes that can be worn multiple times (the shoes that is).
We love to have a language dictionary and maps with us when we travel. I realize phones probably take the place of both of those items, but it’s what we prefer. These are my favorite maps any time we visit a large city.
We’ve stayed in 6 different hotels in Thailand and have never once needed a converter. We did take a set along, just in case, but never used them. What we did use (and always travel with other than when we cruise) was 2 surge protectors. It gives you extra plugs when you need them, and protects things from getting fried. I used it for everything from my hair straightener to charging our electronics and never had any problems. The ones we used had 3 regular plugs plus two usb ports, so we could charge 5 things at once. Probably one of the best things that we packed.
Speaking of electronics, we documented our adoption trips like our lives depended on it. We took everything in our camera bag, plus a laptop, portable battery charger, tripods, external hard drive, and card readers.
We love traveling with our Snooz for white noise while we sleep, always keep a luggage scale in our bag so that we don’t find ourselves scrambling at the airport to make weight, and love having a fabric refresher to make things re-wearable or to give your shoes a smell-good boost (is that too much information? – when you’re in survival mode and can’t get to the laundry, this just works). Collapsible bags are awesome for grocery runs, carrying gifts for foster family members and social workers, work as a beach bag, tote, or whatever. Also – ziploc bags work for anything from packing wet bathing suits to a portable snack, and I used them to measure out formula on the trip home so I could easily make a bottle on the plane any time I needed to without a mess.
Regardless of what country or organization your are going through, be sure to check your travel documents checklist that your agency provides. If you forget everything else or lose your baggage, you are going to want to make sure you have all of your documents ready and keep them close.
In the interest of not making this the longest post on the planet, I am going to break this one into two – the other will have more extensive notes for Thailand specific adoption travel.
This is a tried and true packing list for our family. It may not be an exhaustive list for yours. Be sure to add / revise as needed and let us know if there are any major items that we are missing out on.
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