One of the perennial problems of being a traveler is keeping your clothes neat, clean and pressed. If you've just schlepped halfway around the world to eat in fancy restaurant in Paris or Tokyo you don't want to do so in crumpled up shirt and badly-creased pants. Equally, getting hold of an iron and board in some
hotels can be pretty difficult.
Luckily, there are several strategies you can adopt to get around the embarrassment of crinkled clothing on your travels:
1. Invest in some non-iron clothes. These are much better than they used to be, and you can even get cotton and wool-rich garments that, in principle, don't need to be ironed. However, very few non-iron clothes actually need no ironing at all, and if they've been crushed up in a travelbag for twelve hours they aren't going to look great. As soon as you get to your hotel room, hang them in the closet. If you can, take a plant mister with you. Hang the shirt or pants or whatever somewhere airy and light, and give them a spray with hot water. Grab hold of the waistband/shoulders and give them a really good shake, then hang to dry again. If possible, let them air dry outside or in an airy room rather than use an artificial heat source. If you're in a real hurry, you can reasonable results with non-iron garments by misting them and drying with a hairdryer while they hang.
2. Get a good case and pack carefully. It's much easier to keep clothes relatively crumple-free if you fold them carefully in a solid case. Backpacks are great for casual vacations when you just need to lug stuff around, but if your clothes are important a hard case is a must.
3. Purchase a travel iron, with a plug adapter if necessary. Travel irons tend to be small, but they can be pretty effective. Unfortunately, it's a lot less easy to take an actual ironing board with you. Fortunately, most hotel rooms have flat surfaces you can use, usch as desks, tables, and even the headboards from beds. Before ironing on a surface like this, cover in in a towel so that dust, grease and dirt don't stick to your clothes. You'll find it a lot easier if you take some clothes pegs or string to fix the towel down while you iron.
Follow these tips and you'll never have to go out in a distant city in a crumpled shirt ever again!