A little trick I discovered for travelling to countries with other plug layouts.
You will need:
- Half a dozen eggs
- An adapter from your local plug layout to the one you will be staying in
- A multi socket extension, get a surge breaking one if possible
- Glue (optional)
Firstly unwrap everything, if you weren’t intending to do this in the first place then you probably shouldn’t be following this. 
Secondly, pop the adapter onto the plug (the one you normally put in the wall). You now have 4/6/8/n sockets of your local plug layout which you can use wherever you’re traveling to.
Now a little warning. This does not convert frequency or voltage, you can only use appliances which will take the frequency/voltage settings from the country you’re traveling to; however, this is not an issue in most places now as most standard appliances take a range of settings, my laptop will work in Europe, England, Japan, Australia, and even the USA with a simple plug change*. What this will enable you to do is provide a reasonably wide range of appliances with power, recently I’ve seen that most charging plugs (mice, phones, speakers, pda’s, cameras, etc) are compatible with this method. If your device isn’t then it’s probably best to buy a multi-voltage/plug adapter from the target country, almost every device has voltage/polarity instructions somewhere near where it gets it’s power.
This method does NOT provide any inbuilt protection from power surges, so I’d advise the purchase of a surge breaker within the power socket extension, this may be extra cost now but replacing everything is an extra cost later. Do not over load this little set up, if you do you will probably be in pretty big trouble from whoever owns the establishment which you’re living in; this is not suitable for running CRTs or kettles off, buy a proper adapter or just a new kettle. Who takes a kettle in their suitcase anyway?
If you decide to use this constantly you may wish to glue the apparatus together to prevent it falling to bits, some two-pin layouts are less than secure.
The only other thing I can say is, don’t do this unless you accept full liability for when you break it. I mean if you break it…
Kind regards, Robert.
* It may work in other places but I haven’t checked this.
October 29th, 2007 at 6:17 am
I laughed when you said you needed a half dozen eggs. it made my night. i always hated how here in the USA we have two prong plugs and three prong plugs. so when your outlet does not have the three prong plug. then you have to go buy a three prong adapter . it’s very annoying at times
November 1st, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Our three pronged plugs are the most stable I’ve come across, in my opinion they’re both more safe and more secure than the American or European alternatives. I can’t comment on the Australian plugs, I’ve seen them and fiddled with them but never had a socket to test them with.
Kind regards, Robert.