One of the problems that I have been facing with my plan to go back to Canada is what to do with all my stuff. It’s too much to take on a plane and too expensive to ship from Kuwait. Seriously, I have looked with courier (1500$) I have looked at container shipping but I need a full container. I have looked at other shipping companies but they have little to no info. I have looked at blogs and forums, it’s all about sending to Kuwait and nothing about getting it back to North America. I have a few friends who speak Arabic looking into options for shipping that I can’t but I have a few back up plans anyways.

Back up plan one is to send my stuff home as airline cargo. This maybe difficult because of the lack of direct flights to Canada. I have tried to look online but it’s all very complicated and hard to do with connections and partner airlines. I will look into it when I go to the airport next weekend for my trip to Greece.

Back up plan two is to take a big suitcase to Greece with me and then mail it home using the Greek post office service. From what I’ve seen it’s relatively cheap to use (maybe 120Euros to send a suitcase parcel of 20kg). I could be wring though because the price list is only in Greek. Though when I calculated shipping it told me 118Euros. I have thought about using the Kuwaiti mail service but then I remember that they are 2 for 5 in getting me my packages.

Back up plan three is to sell what I can and donate a large portion of my clothes to the needy by leaving it at the mosque near my house. Then I can buy new clothes in Canada. I like this idea because I haven’t bought clothes in the two years I’ve been in Kuwait. The things here are so expensive, it’s like they take off the $ sign and replace it with KD. 1KD = 3.5USD making things roughly 3.5x more expensive in Kuwait. So except for a few needed items, like a hoodie, I have kept my shopping to a minimum in Kuwait.

I can also pay extra to take extra bags on my flight with me. The trouble with that is I have a large unknown number of flights to take before I get to my destination. I fly to Macedonia and have two weeks travelling around before I fly to London. Then I fly to Belfast, then Glasgow, then London before returning home to Vancouver, Canada. To many times I would have to pay for extra baggage. I guess I’ll just have to wing it.

My travels to reach home this summer will be long and adventurous. I only hope that a combination of actions can help me get my stuff home safely and relatively cheaply.