How to Keep Glowing Glass Skin While Trekking Around South East Asia

Simplify Your 10 Step K Beauty for Your Carry-On Sized Backpacking Trip

So, you’ve become accustomed to your glowing, glass skin (no doubt at least in part thanks to K Beauty, right?), but you want to go backpacking. Hardly an experience conducive to a ten-step skincare routine. I feel that, I have combination, acne-prone skin and work extremely hard for my glassy glow. So, never fear, your pocket-size skincare fairy is here! Having spent 3 months backpacking around South East Asia, and maintaining my Insta-worthy glow throughout, I have some tips, tricks, and products that will keep your skin glowing while you bronze into the backpacker god or goddess you are.

I don’t know about you, but if I’m living out of a backpack for however many months, I refuse to pay for said backpack to be a “checked bag”. Save that money so you can buy more pho, laksa, and khao soi! Back to the point, skincare. Glowing. Poreless. Before I left on my backpacking adventure I reduced my vast array of skincare to 5 products, all in containers 100ml or less. In short, what I recommend you pack into your clear, sealable, airport friendly sandwich baggy is: a water-based cleanser; exfoliator; moisturiser; eye cream; and sunscreen.

Let’s start with where every good skincare routine starts, cleansing! My cleanser of choice is the Cosrx Low Ph Good Morning Gel Cleanser. It’s not harsh, great for all skin types, and does a great job of getting your day off of your face without making your face feel like the Sahara. It does however come in a 150ml bottle. My solution, genius, unique, and you never would have thought of it yourself obviously… Buy a 100ml bottle at a store anywhere and transfer your product over!

Whilst this worked great for cleansing my face, I would recommend also packing an oil cleanser in order to effectively melt your sunscreen off. If you’re one of those incredible individuals wearing

makeup on a daily basis while backpacking, then an oil cleanser pre-gel cleanser is essential. No amount of makeup is going to properly cover a breakout if you’re not cleansing properly. A great oil-based cleanser which melts even 5 pounds of drag makeup off is the Innisfree Green Tea Cleansing Oil. Green tea also helps fade hyper-pigmentation and prevent breakouts, so that’s a nice little bonus!

Moving on, we have exfoliation! South East Asia is hot and humid, and you will no doubt be running for AC at every opportunity. This means your pores are opening in the heat, letting in pollution, dirt, bacteria, and sweat, then closing and trapping all of this in your pores when you get into that heavenly AC. Don’t get me wrong, this does not mean you should be exfoliating every day while you’re travelling! Your skin will adjust, produce excess sebum, and essentially turn your face into a million little Vesuvius’! Exfoliate once or twice a week. Three times if you’re feeling particularly clogged up one week. I used Clinique’s Exfoliating Scrub. It’s based in salicylic acid which is great for acne, stimulates

blood flow which helps with the glow and regenerating new skin tissue, and has the added benefit of being a scrub so you get an immediately satisfying feeling when you use it. However, if you prefer a chemical exfoliator, I would highly recommend Cosrx’s BHA Blackhead Power Liquid, or any of Neogen’s Cica based chemical exfoliators. Both work to deeply cleanse, and tighten your pores, while helping improve the skin’s barrier and protections against external pollution. All of the above exfoliators come in 100ml containers, so no new bottles required!

Following exfoliators, we would usually move onto serums for specific skin concerns. If you have the space, then definitely pack them! I however, did not, and so I reduced my routine to Cosrx’s Advanced Snail 96 Mucin Power Essence. This is an essential in my routine, and I have been pushing it on everyone I meet, whether you have dry, combination, or oily skin. Everyone needs

moisture in their skin, and this product delivers it without making you feel oily. It’s what gives my

skin its glow, is wonderfully hydrating, and helps to even skin tone, and fade hyper pigmentation and scars! Due to how hydrating this product is, paired with how humid South East Asia is compared to my base in Seoul, and home country of England, I used this essence as my moisturiser, and it worked perfectly. It also comes in a 100ml bottle, so is great for your carry-on sized backpacking gear.

Next we have my little lifesaver for flights, overnight buses, and days following night spent with bowls of interesting drinks, and even more interesting boys, girls, and everyone in between. This is my eye cream. Innisfree delivered another excellent (and cheap) eye serum which kept my face from looking like I hadn’t slept in 5 years. I have been using Innisfree’s Jeju Lava Seawater Eye Serum. The serum helps moisturise and tighten the skin around your eye, and the massage tip on the bottle cools and stimulates blood flow to tackle puffiness and dark circles under your eyes. In other words, on the aforementioned days, I used an extra couple pumps of this miracle serum. Innisfree has a variety of eye serums, all are excellent, so choose the one that feels best on your skin and roll with it. Again, they come in bottles less than 100ml, so they’re easy to pack!

Finally, and most importantly we have sunscreen! A little PSA to all my friends who have told me this isn’t necessary for them because, to quote the gorgeous Monique Heart: “Melanin never lets go!” You do! Having more melanin in your skin actually provides relatively little additional protection from the sun. So while you won’t be walking around like the drunken British lads out here looking like an overdone lobster with beetroot sauce, your skin will still be begging for protection from UVA and UVB rays. As I mentioned, I have acne prone skin, and so sunscreen has been one long ride on the struggle bus for me. Seoul came through however, and endeared me to Korea and its skincare even more when I discovered their wide array of sun sticks. I used three different sunsticks on my face (and the Nivea factor 50 sunscreen on my body), and my favourite was Peaufinne’s Calm Down Cicsa Sun Stick. It’s lightweight, its cica-based formula helps your skin develop stronger barriers against pollution, and doesn’t leave your face feeling clogged or oily. Best of all, it never broke me out! This also has the benefit of being small, but also a solid stick meaning it doesn’t count towards your liquid allowance!

Now, for my little luxuries. They're not essential for your glow, but I love them and they have served me well! A good lip balm, and a pack or two of the Cosrx Acne Pimple Master Patch for when you inevitably get a little breakout during your trip. After all, no one wants to be kissing you with crusty, dusty lips, and we all want a quick solution to our random spots. Stay tuned for my lip balm favourites!

This brings you to around 500ml of your 1 litre cabin baggage allowance, so keep an eye on future posts for my favourite serums, essences, toners, masks and more!

What tips and tricks have you picked up to keep your skin clear and glowing while backpacking? Any products you think are essential that I currently don’t have on my absolute backpacking skincare essentials list? Let me know in the comments section!

Unfortunately Innisfree's Jeju Lava Seawater Eye Serum has been discontinued. I have since been using their Green Tea Seed Eye and Face Ball and loving it.