I am Anin. I live in Indonesia, a country with a tropical climate. At this time, I want to share my winter travel experience as a tropical climate person. I had traveled in the winter season twice in my life. My first winter trip experience was to Japan in early 2016 with my family. My second winter trip experience was to South Korea, in early December 2019 to join my Father’s scientific conference. In my country, there are only two seasons, which are: rainy season and dry season. The rainy season occurs from October until March, while dry season occurs from April until September. Besides, the temperature during these two different seasons is not quite different. During rainy seasons, the temperature ranged from around 15 to 25 degrees Celsius. While during the dry season, the temperature ranged from around 23 to 30 degrees Celsius.
As a person who lives in a country with a tropical climate, I never experience extreme air temperature changes.
In 2016, I had a trip to Japan with my family. During January 2016, I also had a semester holiday. I chose to have a winter trip because there was a cheaper plane ticket that was offered for a departure in January 2016. When my siblings and I decided to buy a plane ticket to Japan in January 2016, my parents were a little bit disagree. My parents thought that traveling during the winter season would not be convenient for a person from a tropical climate country like us. My parents also told us that most people especially who come from a country with a tropical climate usually will avoid winter trip. The tropical climate person would feel inconvenient to travel during winter season not only because of the different air temperature, but also the different air humidity.
The trip to Japan was our very first winter trip experience for my siblings and me, while my parents had ever travel abroad during the winter season. Although we had the experience to visit a cold place in Mount Bromo (East Java Province, Indonesia), we could not guarantee that our experience in Japan would be the same. Having a trip to a mountain located in Indonesia means that the air humidity was not that different even though the air temperature in the mountain area is quite different than the area in the city. In Japan, we visited three different cities, such as Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo. During my travel to Japan with my family, the weather was cold. The temperature was nearly 0 degree Celcius. Even though, during our travel time, the sun shined brightly until we did not feel the extreme breeze. We could enjoy our travel time although sometimes we shivered. During our trip to Japan, we chose morning to evening trip than night walk. From the five nights that we spent in Japan, there were only two nights where we go outside. Most of our nights were a train riding from one city to another city. In 2019, I traveled to South Korea during the winter season with my parents. In South Korea, we visited Busan and Seoul. Our outdoor trip to the tourism objects was spent in the morning until evening. During the night, we only went outside to have dinner. That’s why, we did not feel too breezy during our travel to South Korea in the morning to evening.
From my travel experience to Japan and South Korea during the winter season, I want to give some tips that might be useful for another tropical climate person who wants to travel in
the winter trip. The tips will be classified into two aspects, such as travel itineraries, weather
forecast, and travel essentials.
1. Travel Itineraries
Travel itineraries show the destination where we plan to visit. It will include travel destination, ticket fee, time, and duration where we will plan to visit a certain destination.
a. Travel Destination
It consists of the tourism objects that you want to visit
b. Ticket Fee
Ticket fee is crucial to help you to prioritize the travel expenses to avoid a lack of money.
c. Time
To enjoy the trip conveniently, we should also choose the right time (morning, afternoon, evening, or night) to avoid the crowd and hustle that caused by another visitor.
d. Time Allocation
Planning time allocation to visit certain destination will help you to plan how much time you will spent to visit a certain place. You should not visit a certain place for too long in order to avoid rush hours, that you still be able to visit another interesting place.
2. Weather Forecast
Weather forecast is also a crucial thing to be understood by the traveler. It will help travelers to choose and prepare the clothes that he or she should wear. It will also help the travelers whether he or she needs to bring another travel essentials or not. When the weather forecast stated that the temperature will be 0 degree Celcius and the weather will be rainy, the travelers need to prepare an umbrella, wear a thick sweater or down jacket, and a waterproof coat. If we could not get the accurate and specific weather forecast, we could use the general weather forecast. It is also included the season during the date we will travel and the average air temperature range. From the forecast above, we could be able to conclude what should we wear and need to be prepared for anticipation when the horrible weather comes.
3. Travel Essentials
a. Clothing
The clothes that we must bring during winter travel were inner-wear, sweater, and outer-wear. To avoid the cold reaching our body, we must wear innerwear inside our sweater or pants. The inner-wear is called as long john or heat tech. It can be formed as a top or bottom. After we wear our long-john or heat tech, we can wear our sweater and pants. Don’t forget to put the winter-coat as the outer-wear to protect our body from the cold air and break the wind. As the outer-wear will be heavy to be brought, we don’t have to change our winter coat or pants every day. We can use our winter coat and pants for two until three days. Preferably, the inner-wear and sweater should be changed every day.
b. Winter Gloves
It will protect your palm from getting chilled in the low air temperature and heavy wind. However, you should not wear thick winter gloves that will restrict your arm movement. It will be better that you wear the not-so-thick winter gloves that make you feel comfortable when you wear it and be able to protect your palm from getting chilled.
c. Scarf
It is used to protect your neck from coldness. If your sweater’s neck could not protect your neck, you should wear a scarf to protect you from coldness. If you have worn a turtle-neck sweater, wear a scarf is an additional option. Besides that, scarf could not only worn to protect your neck. It could also be used to protect your back from coldness during the night when the air temperature is getting lower and the wind is getting heavier. To protect your back from cold temperature and heavy wind, you should wear a wider scarf or shawl.
d. Beany Hat or Ear-Muffs
Beany hat or ear-muffs is used to protect your ears from coldness. It usually used in the area with very low air temperature during the winter, such as in the mountain, snowy area, or plateau. If you travel to a city during the winter season, you might not have to wear them. Although you will travel to the city without an extremely low air temperature, you should bring this beany hat or ear-muffs as anticipation of unpredictable temperature changes.
e. Umbrella
It should be bring for raining anticipation.
f. Hot Pack or Hand Warmer
It is useful to be used to heat your body or palm hands during cold weather temperatures. You should use this as a heater when you feel chilled during the low air temperature and/or heavy wind. If you could not get this in your home country, you can buy it in the nearest mini-market or super-market in the country that you visit. Lastly, don’t forget to bring any other travel essentials that you need to bring.
I hope that the tips will be useful, especially for the tropical climate person who will travel during the winter season.
Written by: Anindya Pritanadhira, 28, Indonesia
Instagram: @aninprita | Facebook: Anindya Pritanadhira | Email: anin.nadhira@gmail.com
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