Despite New Zealand`s hardly reachable location at the back of beyond, this lovable island has kept very popular destination for backpackers lately. The backpackers accepted to country are usually from Europe, Japan,China,USA, Canada. While some countries have no limitation for the application to the visa that allows backpackers to work during their vacation, some others do have limitation to apply in a year. For example, only 100 Turkish people are allowed to come into NZ through this visa in a year. This means, the country that your passport belongs to is crucial to get a visa from New Zealand as well as your age which has to be under 31.
As soon as you get your visa, I highly recommend you to collect some information online about the country. Information may be about the weather conditions, popular destinations, tourist attractions, must-dos so forth and so on. Also, knowing the cheapest city to live, the cheapest sim card to use or the cheapest hostel to stay help you a lot to save some money during your holiday. If you are alone and want to have a travel mate to discover the country with, you can find one from Facebook groups by sharing a quick post. You will already see lots of other backpackers looking for travel mates in these groups.
After arriving New Zealand, most backpackers try to find a job to afford their holiday. Because of the fact that one year is too long to spend savings, experiencing NZ work life is unseperable part of the journey for backpackers. To start a job, you need to open a bank account and get your IRD tax number. These two will take a few days to be done. While you have a rest and try to get rid of jet-lag after an exhausting flight you can call the bank to ask for an appointment to open your account. If you are in one of the big cities the bank probably wants you to have an appointment to open an account. After opening it, you can apply for IRD number online. It takes 2 or 3 days to get an answer for your IRD application. Once you have bank account and IRD number, you have no impediment to start a job. So here the challenging part comes. Finding a job that meets your expectations and qualifications. There are actually a couple of web sites that really help you to do this namely trademe, backpackerboard, seek. You mainly have two options at this point. You might spend a few months by working to save enough money to cover all your expenses in NZ and enjoy your rest of holiday or you can work in each town that you have visited. According to the visa that you hold, you are only allowed to work 3 months for an employer, then you have to change it.
For me, who has decided to emigrate from his country and discover the world more, New Zealand has been a good start. Although it is far, time and money you spend are definitely worth it. The only thing that I ask for is please come open minded. If you don’t have tolerance to other cultures, please stay where you are.
This article might help you with thinking seriously about being a backpacker in New Zealand and if you are interested there will be other articles coming for you soon. Stay tuned :-)