Advice needed re travelling with Pipes in China & Hong Kong

[MaxFlute]

Hi all,
I'm a UK based piper looking for some advice on care and prevention when traveling and touring abroad to try and avoid my reeds drying up/playing up.....

I'm about to go on tour to China and Hong Kong playing in the band for a theatre company. We go to Beijing next week, Shanghai the week after and then spend the first 2 weeks of March in HK.
And so with my Reeds working well and nicely used to the humidity over here, I'm a little concerned about how they'll cope firstly with the dryness of the airplane cabin and then with the dryness of Beijing (and to a lesser extent Shanghai).
Does anyone have any tips for how I should transport them?
(At the moment, main one lives in Chanter and spare two are in a padded metal cigarette box, all within Pipes case).
I've invested in this gadget which I'm probably going to pop in the pipes case pre travelling, unless anyone has any better solutions....
Planet Waves Humidipak Automatic Humidity Control System for Guitar https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000OMG0KI/ ... TwbNSDB1GK

And does anyone have any tips, or advice born from experience of how to cope in a very dry environment?
(Obviously it would be amazing to hear from someone whose reeds had behaved whilst Piping in China!!)
I should add that though a working musician I'm still only a few years into Piping, ie I'm not lashing through epic material on this theatre gig (!), and so any care and maintenance and travel info, no matter how basic, may be new and useful to me!!!
Thanks in advance all!!
Max

[boyd]

PM sent

[brianholton]

I've passed your message on to my friend Bill Telfer who lived many years in Hong Kong and many times toured China with NSPs and SSPs. Good luck! Enjoy that wonderful Chinese food!

yrs aye
brian

[PJ]

For air-travel, the golden rule is never check your pipes: bring them as carry-on. This may require that you disassemble the pipes and put them into a small case (like a viola case). The one part which you can put with your checked luggage is the bellows.

On board the plane, a solution for the dry air is to cut an apple in half and put the halves into the pipes case. This should keep the RH of the air in the case at a reasonable level for the duration of your flight.

If the problem in Beijing and Shanghai is dryness, then buy yourself a small humidifier. Alternatively, get your reedmaker to make you a reed for a dry climate. In fact, it might be a good back-up plan to have a few reeds made while the air-con was blowing!

[brianholton]

Here's what Bill Telfer says:
"I've had this kind of query before about NSP /SSP... he correctly assumes that its the very dry conditions that will be the problem not humidity ie dampness as most people wrongly assume! In HK it was only in the dry season that problems developed ie approx November -February. Also I did a St Patricks dinner gig in Bejing once round about easter and it was cold and extremely dry as you'll imagine! I almost gave up at the warm-up but our Irish host had in a previous year looked after the Chieftains so he told me what Paddy Moloney did:- He kept the pipes in the hotel room bathroom with all hot taps and shower turned on all day.......! So I followed suit. This worked, but only just! The performance was downstairs in the hotel we stayed in and our spot just half an hour. So it involved rushing the damp (!) pipes down in the lift just before we were on. Within about 20 minutes the chanter reed had started to seize up, but got away with it! I guess Paddy pulled it off as well! We all know how how insanely cold and dry the Chinese like the Air Conditioning....!!"

I hope this helps

b