Preparing for international travel - it's been a while!

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I haven't flown anywhere in some time... almost exactly three years. I'm very much looking forward to traveling again and am planning to go to Taiwan in a couple of months! Especially because it's been a while, I've been doing what I can to be prepared.

The first step (well, other than deciding where to go!) was to make sure that my passport was okay and not about to expire. Around this time, Taiwan hadn't re-opened to US citizens for tourism yet (due to COVID) so I decided to renew my Taiwanese passport just in case. It took a couple months for the new one to arrive since the application had to go from the embassy to Taiwan to be processed. 

Note: by now, things are back to normal and US citizens are allowed to visit for tourism without a visa as long as the stay is less than 90 days.

Second step was to buy the plane ticket and then book lodging. On a typical vacation, I'd probably look into what cities or other countries I'd like to visit and book lodging/transportation accordingly. This time, though, I'm planning to spend most of my time in Taipei so I booked a longer term Airbnb. Even if I decide to go on a couple of day trips or anything like that, it'll be easier, safer, and probably cheaper to leave my extra things in the Airbnb rather than trying to figure out storage. I know that some people pack so that they only have to worry about their carry-on, but I'm not that light of a packer! Mostly because I'm a gifts kind of person, which brings us to the third step.

Step 3: prepare gifts! Since I'm going to see some family while I'm in Taiwan, I've started making lists of things to bring. Mostly small things that might not be that common where they are and/or are made in the US, like Ghirardelli chocolates. Even if I'm not planning to see family/friends, I sometimes still like to bring a couple simple gifts just in case I need them. Bonus: once you give away the things you bring, you'll have room for souvenirs! And for gifts that you want to bring back for people at home...

Pausing here for now. Let me know if I've forgotten anything in the preliminary planning stages of a trip!


Note: I meant to come back to this and now it's ~8 months later and I'm planning to go back to Taiwan AGAIN. I'll try to update more but I'm going to be taking classes this time so maybe I'll be even less successful than last time πŸ˜…

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