For most of Indonesian, campervan is uncommon being used for travelling. Yes they do travelling with a car but not a campervan. I think it is because of the road condition in the country. However, as long as I know, travelling with campervan is becoming a trend in the country since around 2016 (references here).
I know about campervan only through television and book. I guess I never see it in Indonesia so far. It was back around 2014 when I studied in New Zealand, I saw campervan was runnning on the street for the first time. Yet my first experienced travelling with campervan was in 2015. The story can be found here. Later, I travelled again with campervan with my family in Tasmania in 2019. Therefore, based on those experiences, I want to share what to prepare if you want to try travelling with campervan.
What is campervan?
Campervan is a vehicle that accomodates place for sleeping & cooking yet can be used for a transportation as well. We can sleep and cook inside, even some van has a small shower room. In addition it can transport us from one place to another like a car, but a little bigger. The campervan can be rent from their website. There are several options can be choose for renting in Australia or New Zealand. All the payment can be done using the credit card. We can process it from our country if we want to rent it.
What to prepare for travelling using campervan?
- Choose the right size of campervan. There are a lot of size options of campervan, from campervan only suitable for 2 person until suitable for 4 person. The bigger size of the van, then it is more spacious inside. Beside that, we also have to make sure the pick up and drop off point of the campervan. While travelling in New Zealand, we didn't need to drop off the campervan in their office. We could just leave it at the airport. Yet, while we were travelling in Tasmania, we had to drop it off at their office. Each rental company has their own regulation regarding picking up and dropping off the campervan.
- Prepare the international driver license. Based on my experience road trip in Australia and New Zealand, they will ask for international driver license for renting the car (campervan). They usually will ask two drivers for the safety reason. Yet, again, each rental company has different regulation regarding this.
- Check the weather in the travel destination. Travelling during summer and winter is totally different. We need more warmth during winter and it means more electricity for the campervan. When I travelled in winter, we had to turn on the heater inside the campervan all night in order to be able sleeping at night. Turning on the heater needs a lot of electricity and it costs the gasoline for running it. We had to fill the gasoline often during the trip. In my opinion, it takes more energy for travelling in winter using campervan.
- Book the caravan park in advance. Caravan park is where you park your campervan. Basically, it looks like a big parking space with some common room, shower and kitchen. Some place let the driver choose where they want to park as long as still inside the caravan park. But most of the caravan park will give the driver number of parking area where they should park when they check in. The number is like room number in hotel. Once we get the number, we parked our campervan. Each of the parking area will have an electric plug and a water tap. We need the electricity to charge the electronic inside the campervan. Meanwhile the water tap is used for supporting water on the toilet and washing inside the campervan. However, if we don't want to take a shower inside the car, we can used the bathroom in the caravan park. Most of the caravan park will have bathroom and some of them have hot water as well. It is more comfortable to take a shower there for me than inside the car.
- Bring only the essential items in your lugage. There is no big space inside the campervan to open your suitcase. It is better to bring big backpack and only bring the most essential items. Less cloth if possible. But then again, it is different for each person.
