I must 'fess up, we planned a mixed camp & motel trip, but my ulcerative colitis flared up when we set off, so we decided a motel with a loo was a bit of a necessity. Great to have a sleep in with the bed set up both sides of the ferry both ways though. Made the trip up and down from Hamilton to Richmond then back from Blenheim much easier.
Rather than go for a full camper mod, and in order to get through the strict import controls, we kept it in original condition apart from the addition of the leisure battery & electrics running off that. Even then, we only got through because my partner was a returning Kiwi, and we were bringing in our domestic vehicle. Since then, I removed the rear seat, which now works as a lounger on the porch, and build a base for a futon mattress (the futon lives on the porch too), and which we use to stow all the stuff we need underneath. That means the front row of rear seats can still be used as seats, and be quickly folded down with stuff stowed underneath, or on the front seats, or up in the roof if we pop the lid. It works well for a weekend, but we weren't sure how well it would work for us with the Jack Russell (rescue from Ireland, and shipped over with us as well) and that on a long trip. but, because we had all the stuff for cooking, cleaning, cutlery, etc. it made life much easier. It meant I could do a brew, avoid cafe's and rich food as much as possible, make cheese butties while the boss went off to eat something sickly and sweet. We carry two cookers, one of those briefcase types, which is ideal for a brew, and a French Gaz one I converted to a NZ bottle fitting. The Gaz one does toast as well as having two nice controllable burners. The briefcase one provides a great base for one of those aluminium coffee percolater things, and I can get a long black up in 5 mins. We also have a French Gaz top-loading 240/12v cooler box, which holds enough to keep us and the dog's chilled stuff cold for two days. We put a couple of freezer packs in as well, when we have access to a freezer compartment. Motels are really handy here, having cooking facilities and stuff, so as soon as we pull up somewhere, I just shift all the kitchen & food stuff into the unit, and we are ready to stay. The bonus is, if the unit is dirty, or inadequate, or knives are blunt for cutting stuff, we can use our own stuff. We even got our cooker out at one place, because the unit only had an electric frying pan, and we needed to boil water.
I don't think we'll ever set the Bongo up as a full conversion, because it is so handy the way it is. We have a small section with lots of fruit and other trees, and when not in use the Bongo stays the same, but without the camping stuff, and under the 1/2 base I store all the crap I like to know is in the van, and on top of that I can easily fit piles of wood if I happen to take the chainsaw out to somebody's garden, or half-a-dozen pallets if I spot some good ones going wanting, or old tyres for a potato bed if I need some. Such a versatile vehicle.
The leisure electrics is a pile of poo, and the guy in Southampton who fitted it couldn't have had any real idea what he was doing. On one set of blinds, if you press the button at the front, one blind goes up and the other goes down.
Plus the lead to the battery burned out about a year after we got here, and we had to put it into an auto-electrician. This trip, even with a battery connector, the plug on the fridge melted going into one of those 3-way 12 adapters, and I had to replace the plug. I got rid of the adapter - I don't think those things are worth bothering with. Also, upon request he switched the stereo from the car to the leisure battery, but it is one of those ones that the front comes off. What I discovered while away was that if you leave the facia plugged in for 48 hours without using the vehicle, it virtually drains the battery completely. Not sure what that is about, but there needed to be some kind of way of stopping power to the unity, which would happen automatically on the main battery when switching the engine off. We never got an electric certificate for NZ, so if we did want to plug it in to a camp site, officially, we would need an electrician to redo all the 240 v as well, for safety and function. Given the mess the guy made of the 12v side, even though the 240v stuff seemed to work OK while in the UK, I wouldn't trust that side of it any more. Being in a metal cage plugged into the mains having been wired up by somebody who cannot even get the blinds to work properly off the leisure battery does not appeal to me.