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A visit to Taiwan came highly recommended to us by friends as a budget friendly destination with great food and interesting attractions, but a flight in to a more inconvenient airport, misrepresented accommodation, and less than beautiful scenery quickly started to cause our experience to not live up to our expectations of the visit. In keeping an open mind while exploring more of the country, and employing a few tactics like seeking out foods and activities we enjoy, we were able to turn our experience around and came away really enjoying our trip. This change in our experience made us think about how our high expectations coming into Taiwan may have caused us to inaccurately weight our few initial negative experiences, and how travel expectations in general can influence the way you view a place.

On this episode we talk about how factors like people’s opinions, where you’re coming from, and how long you’re going to stay in a place can influence your expectations going into a destination, and ultimately your experience there. We discuss some tactics on how you may be able to turn around your view of a place where you’re initially having negative experience by implementing a few strategies like establishing realistic expectations before you travel, seeking out foods and activities you enjoy, and planning your travel route around cost of living or a trip highlight. Keeping an open mind and working from your own experiences rather than overall recommendations from others can go a long way in helping you to make the most of your trip!

Enjoy!

What we talk about:

• How your pre-formed travel expectations for a city or country can influence the experience you have in that place
• Switching travel mindsets on arrival to Taiwan from Japan, where we were traveling with more of a leisurely style
• Our first few mishaps on arrival in Taiwan, including landing at an airport further from the city than we originally thought, an apartment which had been misrepresented as being much larger in photos, and slightly out of the way from attractions
• Our previous experiences in Asia where we could rationalize issues or bad experiences in South East Asia with the affordable cost of living, and the higher cost of travel in Japan and Korea with better travel experiences and infrastructure; and how our initial experience in Taiwan seemed to be that it was on the more expensive side but didn’t carry the same value
• Our tips and advice on how to avoid such clashes of travel expectations and experience, including focusing on facts and recommendations for specific attractions when planning a trip rather than people’s opinions, researching the area and having a clear and realistic idea of what your expectations are going into a trip
• How as our trip progressed we found interesting areas, lowered our costs with street food and ended up enjoying our visit very much
• Balancing the things that attracted you to a destination with maintaining low expectations to experience the place in an unbiased way
• “Cheap” can be relative – the value in confirming the actual cost of living in a place you plan to visit,  and not assuming a certain cost of living due to geopgraphical proximity to other places that may have a lower cost of living
• How the place you’re coming from can influence your feelings on cost of living and experience with culture shock – We thought dining out in Singapore was relatively affordable coming directly from Canada, but our friends who were visiting after traveling in South East Asia thought it was expensive!
• Our recommendation to travel to the more expensive places on your list first during a longer-term/multi-stop trip in order to avoid sticker shock after visiting a more inexpensive country; or alternatively leaving a trip highlight for the end as something to look forward to and end your trip on a high note
• How to readjust and move forward at the time when visiting a place where expectations clash with your travel experience, like focusing on finding activities you like to do and foods you like to eat in that place
• How first impressions can change, and that there is often a silver lining to a place you feel you’re not enjoying
• How getting a change of scenery, finding inspiration by meeting locals through Couchsurfing or Meetup, consuming media like travel shows on Netflix, and finding new food can positively influence the way you experience a destination
• The importance of giving yourself a couple of days to adjust to your new environment and resisting the urge to make a judgement based on your very first impressions
• How your length of expected travel in a place can affect how much you let initial negative experiences influence your view of a place
• How it’s absolutely ok not to like a place that traditionally has favourable reviews based on your experience there, we all have different opinions, preferences, and things we look to get out of our travel experiences!

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