Again, thanks for the replies. As someone stated above perhaps I'm overthinking it. I welcome that view. Actually, to me that's good to hear. Whenever I do that nothing tends to happen anyway haha. Its kinda bad that I have the tendency to frequently do so, however.

Hopefully I don't get hit in the head with the whole 'I need a work visa' thing. That could get messy. Good thing is I have time on my side, for now. Just enough time to perhaps talk myself into taking less gear

Oh and just to clarify about the tripods, I'm not taking 2 full sized ones, just one full sized. The other is a small macro photography tripod(which I may actually use more). So yeah it isn't completely ridiculous to assume at this point that I actually may end up going with less gear, especially if it potentially saves me from a whole different beast of a problem. Looks like I've got some thinking to do. Thanks to this forum I've got great insider recommendations on where to go when I'm there. Looking forward to it alot