If you’re not familliar with the Artists Abroad trip, you should check out the quick blog post before reading this article!
As a testament to our usual ignorant assumptions about places we haven’t visited; we’ve discovered through the powerful detective work of a simple Google search, that New Zealand is going to be rather cold while we’re visiting.
I was looking at some pictures of a couple places we were planning on visiting: “Damn that looks coo–is that snow?”
At first I just thought “Nawww, no way,” and clicked the “back” button on my browser. Then, remembering how my own naivety has gotten me into trouble oh-so-many-times on this trip, I looked again…then I checked another site… Shit.
To make matters worse in the case of everyone’s perception of my intelligence, I hadn’t even thought to research the weather until I was looking at those pictures and saw the snow.
All of this wouldn’t be too big of a deal if I hadn’t sent back everything even related to cold weather when we sent some belongings home with Corey: My sleeping bag, sweater, pants; all sitting comfortably at home in Ohio.
I told Aaron what I had found out and after a few moments in which we both just stared at the computer screen, we decided we should get some clothing in Asia since it will be much cheaper here than Australia or NZ.
Which led us also to realize that it’s going to be near-impossible to find cold weather clothing in an area of the world which literally never sees cold weather. It would be like shopping for a surfboard in Germany.
The only place I could think of was maybe an outdoors outfitter of some kind. I’ve located one in Kuala Lumpur, which is the city we’re now residing in, and we’re going to check it out today. Hoping for the best!
The moral of the story here is the importance of research. It’s one thing to go to a new place completely unplanned in terms of accommodations and travel plans. It’s another to be completely unplanned entirely. I’m a huge fan of traveling spontaneously, taking a trip as it comes rather than having a specific itinerary planned out, but it’s important to do your research on what to expect in a new place.
I’m usually very good at this as well, but I guess my travel hubris got the best of me on this one. I simply looked at a map eight months ago when I was planning the trip and thought “hey, look at that, New Zealand’s really close to Australia; probably exactly the same.”
What are some bad planning or lack of planning mistakes you’ve made on a trip? Tell me in the comments below or visit me on Facebook and Twitter!
