i am not talking about Back to the Future with the flux capacitor – but traveling with a bunch of electronic equipment. I moved to Thailand and decided to take the essentials – mainly – my electronic goodies.  Here is what I brought:

  • Minelab Excalibur II metal detector with battery charger and spare battery
  • Minelab X-Terra 705 metal detector with AA battery charger and spare batteries
  • Garrett ACE 250 metal detector with AA battery charger and spare batteries
  • ACER laptop computer with charger
  • SimpleTech external hard drive with power supply
  • Kangaroo external hard drive with power supply
  • Olympus digital camera with battery charger
  • Sony digital video camera with battery charger
  • Sony Walkman digital music with charger
  • Flatbed scanner with power supply
  • Photo/negatives/slides scanner with power supply
  • External DVD burner with power cables
  • DVD player with power and DIN cables

The only clothes I brought with me were to protect the above listed equipment.  Not sure how it all made it through security at Honolulu but it was all in checked baggage so that may of helped.  Though I am sure some inspector about had a heart attack when he saw all the wires.

Keep in mind too, that I traveled on a one-way ticket – a sure fire red flag.  But, it all got here without incident and all is in working condition.

Also keep in mind that there are a lot of miscellaneous items that go along with the metal detectors – knee pads, gloves, pin-pointer, metal sand scoops, plastic sand scoop, digging tool, pouches, straps (swingy-thingy), boots, and more.

You can now see why I had 4 bags to check  in and 2 carry ons.  Fortunately, I had just been upgraded to Gold status with China Airlines and was allowed 3 checked bags and 2 carry-ons.  The girl was nice and charged me for one bag and called it a golf bag so that I would get a 50% discount.  Only cost me $48 extra.

I also had to catch a flight from Bangkok to Khon Kaen and they just go by total weight and not the number of bags.  Me and my wife were 33 kilograms over and again, the girl was nice, and charged me for 23 kilos – 1,380 Baht or about $43. This was a lot less than I thought it would cost me for excess baggage.

Anyhow, it is all here and working fine and my wife thinks I am absolutely crazy.

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