Translation-Earbuds

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. The night a $200 earbud saved a $4 bowl of noodles A side street in Hanoi, just past 9pm, rain starting. I was pointing at a bubbling pot, the woman behind it was shaking her head, and somewhere in the gap between my zero Vietnamese and her zero English was the simple question of whether the broth had shellfish in it — which, for the friend standing next to me, was not a small detail. I’d almost left the translation earbuds in the hotel. Gimmick, I’d thought. I’ll just point. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. The gadget I almost left at home — and used in the first hour My phone hit 6% somewhere over Siberia, fourteen hours into the longest day of my year, with a boarding pass, a hotel address and a Doha layout I hadn’t memorized all living behind that dying screen. I’d packed the power bank as an afterthought — do I really need this? — and shoved it in the seat pocket. By the time we taxied to the gate in Tokyo it had already saved the trip once, and it hadn’t even been a full day. ...