If you live in a hot country, where do you buy clothes to visit a cold country.

[FlamingoAndJohn]

If I was to go on holiday somewhere hot I could buy clothes for a hot country or I already have some.
But if you live somewhere hot and are going somewhere cold where do you go for jumpers etc?

(Yes lock down is getting to me)

We used to buy coats at jumble sales for when my cousins visited from Australia.

what people consider cold is relative

This is so true! My mum used to live in a hot country and people would start putting shawls on when it dropped below 30 degrees.

In early or late summer it could be 23 degrees or so and we would be in the beach in bikinis and some people would be walking around in coats and scarves 😂

@InTropicalTrumpsLane there is no heating in any houses????

When I lived in Singapore they had winter shops which included skiing stuff. But also you acclimatise. Singapore sits around 28 all year round but I wore hoodies and jeans if I was going to be inside in the aircon. Especially at the cinema which was always cold!

And obviously you could buy jeans and hoodies etc. Just like anywhere else.

I saw winter jackets in shops in the Canaries...so even hot countries sell winter gear.

Presumably online. I had to buy winter clothes for a summer visit to an extremely cold place and ordered them all online as few shops had them. I got some in places like Go Outdoors but even there the stock was very limited.

It also depends what the hot country is like, or if living in a city or not. Plenty of places dont really have internet shopping yet, or big department store chains. I know people who have come over from hot asian countries and they just buy stuff once they get here.

Sister lives in Gran Canaria and when I was there in November Primark was selling winter clothes and ski wear.
I lived in California, and winter clothes were in the stores from September. Even though winter was temps in the 20's and maybe 30's we still wore jeans and hoodies in winter as we felt the cold from being in the heat so long. Lots of people Skied too. Every year the teens had a challenge to see who could wear shorts to school into winter the longest, my kids gave up by November. Friends son made it right through to spring.

@UnfinishedSymphon

Nope! Maybe if you go down to the very south where you can get snow sometimes you might see some sort of heating, but I'm in the state of São Paulo in a very good flat and there's no heating whatsoever.

Frankly, I'm not sure if I could even have it if I wanted. I mean, surely it requires wiring and other stuff that just isn't there. I do recall seeing a couple AirCons for sale that had a heating function, but I also recall how it was received with mockery. I suppose hotels in typically cold cities might have radiators, as there's a family story involving one... But not in hopes. I live very well, so it isn't an issue of poverty, more of an issue of need.

Then there's other things that contribute to the cold: our houses are made out of brick (very fresh), floors have tiles instead of carpet/wood, big windows and doors... I had a really miserable time in 2018 when it got around 5°C, and I lived in the highest floor of the highest building in the area. The wind was chilling. I recall wearing layer upon layer and still shivering so much my teeth chattered.

Just saw I mentioned I lived somewhere nice twice... sorry, not a stealth boast.

I remember my parents taking a business trip to the UK and Canada from Australia one January in the early 90s, so definitely pre-internet. Plus Australian summer into a Canadian winter.

I think there was a lot of borrowing from friends, and buying from sports places (though a lot fewer of those back then), and then buying proper things once they arrived.

We pretty much go from thick winter coats (-40) to shorts and t-shirts (+25 today).

My advice would be to buy it once you got there.

The nights in hot countries can be very cold... esp in their winter. In places like India, Pakistan Afghanistan they have very dense, heavy, felt like blankets worn as shawls. My grandparents (from that part of the world) used to bring those to England when visiting us.

When I was a child a teacher arrived at my mums school from Kenya in an exchange. He arrived in Edinburgh in January with short sleeved shirts and one light cotton jacket. He had partly underestimated the cold and partly hasn't been able to buy anything before leaving.

Poor lad spent the first month dressed in cast offs from other teachers' sons, husbands and brothers.

I used to work at a school in Northern Norway with a friendship school in central Africa. We met them at the airport with winter clothes they changed into before walking outside. They couldn’t get warm enough clothes at home and it was too cold to wait until they had the chance to go to a shop after arrival.

I'm not far from @MooseBeTimeForSummer and you do need a wardrobe for extremes here - it's regularly below -30 in winter and then pretty quickly goes to +30 in summer. I moved from the UK and already had a lot of outdoorsy winter stuff like snow boots, merino base layers and down jackets etc. but I had to buy more my first winter here, I needed more really heavy-duty winter gear and there's a much better selection in Canada.