It was a 30 minute drive from Yilan to Taipei. This was our only freeway on the east coast, but I mostly kept to the speed limit since most of the drive was in narrow tunnels through the mountains that separate the counties. Even a small accident can block commuter traffic all day. Once you hit those tunnels, you either make it through or you wait. There are no alternate roads at that point.
Since Yilan to Taipei was our least amount of driving, and since this was a road trip, we decided to drive up to Tamsui, which is generally spelled Tamsui, but pronounced 淡水. Most of the place names in Taiwan are spelled relatively close to their pronunciation. Hsinchu and Chiayi might confuse a few foreigners, and it takes English-speaking people a while to get Kaohsiung, not to mention the inappropriate confusion between 高 and 肏, but Tamsui is just off no matter how you look at it. I would have spelled it Danshui, but no one ever asked me when they were printing up English signs and maps.
“Tamsui” is at the mouth of the Tamsui River, about 25km from downtown Taipei. The red line MRT goes that far north, but with almost 20 stops, it takes a while. The drive is pretty easy, once you get away from downtown Taipei traffic.
Like a lot of villages in Taiwan, Tamsui was home to one indigenous group or another who were forced out by invaders. The Spanish invaders built a mission to convert the heathens into the proper religion. The Dutch invaders kicked out the Spanish and built a fort just in case. They were then kicked out by invading Chinese.
Most people go to Tamsui for food, shopping and to stare at the horizon. It is a popular place to watch the sunset because you can face west without anything in front of you but water and sky. One of their signature foods is 阿給, which are liberally soaked cubes of tofu, gutted and filled with fried noodles, wrapped up and steamed. Variations are widely available, but Tamsui seems to be the place to get them.
Just next to Tamui is Yangmingshan National Park, home to Qixing Mountain. Qixing is Taiwan's largest volcano, but the park is a noticeably lower elevation than other mountain parks in the country. Most of the mountain ranges are over 3,000 meters above sea level. Taiwan's tallest mountain, Yushan, is 3952 meters. Qixing is 1120. We drove on roads at Taroko Gorge that were higher.
Like every national park, there are numerous hiking trails. But since this park is based around a volcano, there are flowers and plants that rarely grow in other parts of the country. Millions of people go to Yangmingshan every spring to see the cherry blossoms and early summer for the migrating butterflies. And with volcanoes come hot springs. Finding a hot spring north of Taipei is easier than getting dysentery from gutter oil. Closer to the city, you can sit in a wooden structure built around a spring. At Yangmingshan, you can soak in the mountains.
There are several differences between the hot springs at Yangmingshan and the cold springs at Su'ao. Not only are the temperatures on opposite ends of the scale, so are the dress codes. In the cold springs, we could wear whatever we were willing to get wet. We could have gone in fully clothed if we wanted to. No one would have cared. In the hot springs, not even the bathing suits we brought were allowed. Since they are segregated by gender, no one has a problem with all the nudity.
I fully support separate pools. Segregation almost never works on a date, but when you are there to relax, keeping men away is the way to go. Soaking in water is always better without clothes, even more so the hotter the water gets, and too many people today are not mature enough to be naked without acting like 12-year-old boys. There was a time when it was possible, but just like modern American politics, different parties can no longer work together. Not too long ago, we were all in it together. Now, everyone is the enemy.
I also fully recommend soaking in a natural hot spring on a mountain. Taiwan is a place where it is easy to buy a massage chair. Go to any of the thousands of stores that sell them and you will see several people sitting in chairs and testing them out, getting a free massage. Relaxing is one of Taiwan's national pastimes. A hot spring is a million times more relaxing, in every possible way. And taking off your clothes in the mall and sitting in those chairs is discouraged.
While driving around the park, fully clothed, we hit the northernmost point of Taiwan, Fuguijiao. Just like the southernmost point, Eluanbi, there is a lighthouse up north, though it has a less interesting history and is closed to the public most of the time. Naturally, this had us wondering where the western and eastern tips were. As it turned out, the easternmost point, Sandiaojiao, was an hour's drive away. It would have been more efficient to go to Sandiaojiao from Yilan, but we did not know it existed until we were at Yangmingshan. Unlike Fuguijiao, the lighthouse at Sandiaojiao is a tourist attraction.
The drive to Taipei was mostly downhill, but about as safe as driving down mountain roads can be. Since most people go from Taipei to Sandiaojiao by bus, someone decided that the route should probably not kill everyone. Of course, that also means cars share the road with more than a few buses, so it is not the quickest drive, until you hit the freeway from Keelung to Taipei.
We had no hotel reservations in Taipei, just like the rest of the trip, but Taipei has more than enough hotels. As long as it is not the New Year. Something we had to consider this time was parking. If there are a million hotels in Taipei, there are maybe a hundred with reliable parking. Unlike a B&B in a small village, where you park as if you live in the house, a large city hotel either has a parking lot underground or there is a public lot somewhere in the vicinity. This is where driving a new car has a drawback. In a 20-year-old cream colored Kia, I would be completely comfortable parking anywhere. In a 20-hour-old purple Porsche, I get a little picky about parking spaces.
All the top hotels have parking. They are also $6,000 per night, or more. To make this an authentic road trip, we were looking at places in the $1,000 or less range. Fortunately, Taipei, like most large cities in east Asia, has love hotels.
A love hotel in Taiwan is pretty much like a roadside motel in the United States. They have cheap rooms for low prices. The difference being that love hotels are infinitely cleaner and are designed for couples to go somewhere private. Cheating on your wife is a time-honored tradition in Taiwan. Getting caught is not. Most rooms have bathtubs big enough for two. Some have special sex chairs and mirrors on the ceilings. All have porn on the TV, which is interesting because porn outside of love hotels is as heavily censored in Taiwan as it is in China. Our room was some kind of underwater theme. The ceiling was painted blue with fish and seashells. I'm not sure why anyone would want to have sex under water, but if every room at every love hotel has a theme, they must run out of ideas sooner or later.
Most importantly for us, it had private parking. Each room had its own individual parking garage. They are designed that way so men cheating on their wives can drive their mistress to the motel and go into their room without being seen by anyone. Lily and I were never worried about being seen, but the private garage was about the safest place I could possibly park my new car. I found that convenient.
We stayed in Xinyi, which was my first neighborhood on my first trip to Taipei. This trip was about exploring new places, but it was nice to see something familiar. That made Taipei less hectic and busy, which was nice.
Xinyi is the government center of Taipei, with the city hall, Taipei 101, world trade center, and the convention center. If you want to get to know Taipei or its people, this is not the best neighborhood, but because it is full of government buildings and overpriced western hotels, there are wide sidewalks where you can ride a bicycle without getting hit by cars. Other than along the rivers, Xinyi might be the safest place to ride a bicycle in Taipei.
I have spent more time in Taipei than anywhere else in Taiwan, besides Kaohsiung, but I have no idea what Taipei's most famous food is. In villages and smaller townships, everyone will tell you their signature dish. Taipei might be too large to have one.
Friday, August 28, 2020
Monday, August 24, 2020
Tour Of Taiwan
Northwest To Yilan
From Taroko Gorge, we headed east to the coast and then north up the winding road into Yilan. More often than not, if I am going somewhere, I want to head out as early as possible. Days go by quickly the more you put into them. Getting an early start is usually the best idea. On this day, we knew we would be spending the night in Taipei. We also knew that was one of the few places on this trip that does not close down early, so it would never really matter if we got in late. We had all day to make a three hour drive. Spending the morning at Taroko Gorge did not set us back at all.
There was little to see between Taroko Gorge and the northern tip of Yilan County besides mountain roads and tunnels. Even when the road was near the ocean, we were either in a tunnel or too high up a cliff to see much of anything.
Our first stop of the day was Su'ao, a tiny fishing village we visited in February. Nothing has changed since then, but we wanted to drive around anyway. The last time, we came by bus and walked around. This time, we had a car. Su'ao is actually a township and not a village, but most of the township is industrial and a navy base. Visitors mostly go to the villages and harbor.
Another difference was that we brought bathing suits. Not specifically for Su'ao, but you never know when you might need one on a road trip, and a car can carry a lot more than a backpack. We went to our usual cold spring. Now that we have been there twice, it is our usual. As usual, the place was completely deserted. We could understand that in February, even though it was certainly hot enough, but this was in August. The place should have been packed. Ordinarily, an empty business is a warning sign, but an even bigger sign might have been all the clouds in the sky. It always looked like it was going to rain on this trip, and it rained a little from time to time, but what we did not know until we got home was that a typhoon was headed toward Taiwan. The locals were undoubtedly aware. Though it passed just north of Taiwan before hitting Wenzhou, this was our first official typhoon since moving here.
From Su'ao, it was a quick drive into Luodong, famous for its night market. We were pretty sure we would be in Taipei by dusk, so the night market was useless to us. Luodong has more than a few parks and cultural centers. None are as big and famous as any of the national parks we saw on this trip, but if you live in the neighborhood, they look like a good place to take a walk or ride a bicycle. Luodong is also at the mouth of the Lanyang River, with several tributaries cutting through, so there are riverside parks and a good deal of water activities around town.
Physically, Luodong is the smallest township in the county, but we liked what we saw enough to spend the night. Taipei would always be there the next day. Alternately, we could have simply driven through Taipei without stopping at all. We have both been there a few times and this trip was about discovering new places. But that would have meant spending the day driving north to Taipei and south along half of the west coast. Taipei was the logical place to spend the night. But not this night.
This is as good a place as any to point out how Taiwan divides itself. Rather than provinces or states, there are counties (縣). Each county has at least one city (市), more than a few townships (鄉 rural or 鎮 urban), and a lot of villages (村 rural or 里 urban), based on population. Larger cities are further divided into districts (區). The largest cities are also special municipalities (直轄市). They used to be cities within counties, but now the entire county is in the city, like San Francisco. The exception being Taipei County, which became New Taipei City while Taipei City stayed as it was, for purely political reasons. On this trip, we spent the night in a 村, two 鎮, and two 市, one of which was also a 直轄市. There will be a test a few posts later.
Since we were spending the night in Luodong, we got to see the famous night market. Having seen several night markets throughout the country, I'm not really sure why this one is so famous. There is nothing particularly wrong with it, and it is larger than you expect from such a small town, but every city and almost every township has a night market. This one had nothing that the others did not. Every county, and almost every city, has a signature food. At the Luodong night market, it was 蔥油煎餅, which is widely available at street stalls all over the country, and probably at most night markets.
We had the Hello Kitty room in a B&B close to the night market. Though Luodong is tiny, it is difficult to park downtown, just like any downtown in Taiwan. With parking at the hotel, we could walk downtown and drive to the scenic spots, where parking was easy.
Something we noticed in Yilan County was that more than a few people drive Maseratis and Porsches. We even saw a McLaren. The houses in Yilan make it look like it might be one of the poorest counties in the country. Maybe the people of Yilan spend their money on cars rather than houses. Then again, maybe someone saw my new car and thought the same thing.
There was little to see between Taroko Gorge and the northern tip of Yilan County besides mountain roads and tunnels. Even when the road was near the ocean, we were either in a tunnel or too high up a cliff to see much of anything.
Our first stop of the day was Su'ao, a tiny fishing village we visited in February. Nothing has changed since then, but we wanted to drive around anyway. The last time, we came by bus and walked around. This time, we had a car. Su'ao is actually a township and not a village, but most of the township is industrial and a navy base. Visitors mostly go to the villages and harbor.
Another difference was that we brought bathing suits. Not specifically for Su'ao, but you never know when you might need one on a road trip, and a car can carry a lot more than a backpack. We went to our usual cold spring. Now that we have been there twice, it is our usual. As usual, the place was completely deserted. We could understand that in February, even though it was certainly hot enough, but this was in August. The place should have been packed. Ordinarily, an empty business is a warning sign, but an even bigger sign might have been all the clouds in the sky. It always looked like it was going to rain on this trip, and it rained a little from time to time, but what we did not know until we got home was that a typhoon was headed toward Taiwan. The locals were undoubtedly aware. Though it passed just north of Taiwan before hitting Wenzhou, this was our first official typhoon since moving here.
From Su'ao, it was a quick drive into Luodong, famous for its night market. We were pretty sure we would be in Taipei by dusk, so the night market was useless to us. Luodong has more than a few parks and cultural centers. None are as big and famous as any of the national parks we saw on this trip, but if you live in the neighborhood, they look like a good place to take a walk or ride a bicycle. Luodong is also at the mouth of the Lanyang River, with several tributaries cutting through, so there are riverside parks and a good deal of water activities around town.
Physically, Luodong is the smallest township in the county, but we liked what we saw enough to spend the night. Taipei would always be there the next day. Alternately, we could have simply driven through Taipei without stopping at all. We have both been there a few times and this trip was about discovering new places. But that would have meant spending the day driving north to Taipei and south along half of the west coast. Taipei was the logical place to spend the night. But not this night.
This is as good a place as any to point out how Taiwan divides itself. Rather than provinces or states, there are counties (縣). Each county has at least one city (市), more than a few townships (鄉 rural or 鎮 urban), and a lot of villages (村 rural or 里 urban), based on population. Larger cities are further divided into districts (區). The largest cities are also special municipalities (直轄市). They used to be cities within counties, but now the entire county is in the city, like San Francisco. The exception being Taipei County, which became New Taipei City while Taipei City stayed as it was, for purely political reasons. On this trip, we spent the night in a 村, two 鎮, and two 市, one of which was also a 直轄市. There will be a test a few posts later.
Since we were spending the night in Luodong, we got to see the famous night market. Having seen several night markets throughout the country, I'm not really sure why this one is so famous. There is nothing particularly wrong with it, and it is larger than you expect from such a small town, but every city and almost every township has a night market. This one had nothing that the others did not. Every county, and almost every city, has a signature food. At the Luodong night market, it was 蔥油煎餅, which is widely available at street stalls all over the country, and probably at most night markets.
We had the Hello Kitty room in a B&B close to the night market. Though Luodong is tiny, it is difficult to park downtown, just like any downtown in Taiwan. With parking at the hotel, we could walk downtown and drive to the scenic spots, where parking was easy.
Something we noticed in Yilan County was that more than a few people drive Maseratis and Porsches. We even saw a McLaren. The houses in Yilan make it look like it might be one of the poorest counties in the country. Maybe the people of Yilan spend their money on cars rather than houses. Then again, maybe someone saw my new car and thought the same thing.
Thursday, August 20, 2020
Tour Of Taiwan
Northeast To Hualien
From Kenting, we drove up the east coast to Doulan Forest, home to the Ami indigenous people. They put on a show for the tourists, but otherwise live just like everyone else. The forest has scenery, sights, and plenty of hiking trails, but we were never going to stay long. Our main stop that day was Taroko Gorge, four hours up the coast. Doulan was a rest stop before the longest leg of our road trip.
The good thing about driving the east coast of Taiwan, as opposed to the west coast, was virtually no traffic. The bad news was that the main route was a narrow road rather than a freeway, and rarely hugged the coast. Even when the road was close to the ocean, there were usually bushes and trees between the road and water. I think they worried more about typhoons than the view when they built the roads. The scenery most of the way was trees and fields, but at least they were green. The east coast gets more rain than the west coast and is mostly undeveloped. Instead of driving from city to city, we drove past farms and rice paddies, with the occasional village along the way.
The four hour drive took me about three. We were mostly on a two lane road, but with no traffic and long stretches without any cross streets, scooters or pedestrians, it was almost like a miniature freeway.
What I liked about the east coast was the combination of nature and civilization. Even though that entire side of the country is undeveloped and green, there are ample gas stations and rest stops. There were small parking lots at every government-approved scenic area. Just past the border between Taitung County and Hualien County, the Tropic of Cancer cuts through the country and there is a large marker for people to take internet pictures. We never saw any people on any of the beaches along the way, but they were mostly rocky coasts, and it was the rainy season. It never rained during this leg of the drive, but it looked like it could have at any moment.
The road changed in Hualien County. Instead of driving between fields, we were finally between mountain cliffs and the ocean. But that was never going to last. About 30 kilometers into our coastal drive, we had to start heading up into the mountains. After a few twists and turns, we went back toward the coast again, but then we were driving through Hualien City, which is small, but more developed than the country drive we had for the previous two hours. From Hualien City, it was a quick drive to the entrance to Taroko National Park. Once in the park, the real driving began.
The main road through Taroko Gorge is narrow, winding and more than a little steep in places. It was a great test of my new car, which handled beautifully. The tunnels were especially interesting. The headlights and dashboard lights are all automatic, though I can set them to operate manually. The tunnels were the first time I really got to see the automation in action. Every time we entered a tunnel, everything switched on as it was supposed to, and immediately switched off as soon as we exited. The technology is not all that impressive, but I liked how quickly everything happened, even when we repeatedly went in and out of smaller tunnels. Since we were on the side of a cliff, some of the tunnels had an open wall. None of the different lighting levels confused the car for a second. Had I been manually operating the headlights, I would have kept them off through all but the longest tunnels.
Taroko Gorge is “the Grand Canyon of Taiwan”, though it is mostly green rather than mostly brown, it was created by earthquakes as well as rivers, and it is less than one fifth the size. One of the great things about Taroko Gorge is that you can drive from just above sea level to almost 3,000 meters. No mules required. There are a million hiking trails and plenty of relatively safe places to ride a bicycle, but I liked driving through the park. I'm sure my new car greatly influenced that. If we were driving a beat up 1998 Suzuki Kei, the steeper roads would have been a nightmare.
Hotel options are limited inside the park. Most people stay in Hualien City. There is a big, fancy resort in the park, but we did not make any reservations and we did not want to spend ridiculous amounts of money for accommodation on this trip. Road trips are for Motel 6, not the Ritz. The Taiwan equivalent of Motel 6 is some random B&B. Our room's theme was fruits and berries, for some reason.
We mostly spent the night at Taroko Gorge because we wanted enough stops on the trip to keep it from getting tedious. But Taroko Gorge is the kind of place where you can easily spend a few days. Driving up and down the winding road is fun, but there are also too many trails, rivers, and bridges for one day. I will have to come back sooner or later. Maybe not during the rainy season.
The good thing about driving the east coast of Taiwan, as opposed to the west coast, was virtually no traffic. The bad news was that the main route was a narrow road rather than a freeway, and rarely hugged the coast. Even when the road was close to the ocean, there were usually bushes and trees between the road and water. I think they worried more about typhoons than the view when they built the roads. The scenery most of the way was trees and fields, but at least they were green. The east coast gets more rain than the west coast and is mostly undeveloped. Instead of driving from city to city, we drove past farms and rice paddies, with the occasional village along the way.
The four hour drive took me about three. We were mostly on a two lane road, but with no traffic and long stretches without any cross streets, scooters or pedestrians, it was almost like a miniature freeway.
What I liked about the east coast was the combination of nature and civilization. Even though that entire side of the country is undeveloped and green, there are ample gas stations and rest stops. There were small parking lots at every government-approved scenic area. Just past the border between Taitung County and Hualien County, the Tropic of Cancer cuts through the country and there is a large marker for people to take internet pictures. We never saw any people on any of the beaches along the way, but they were mostly rocky coasts, and it was the rainy season. It never rained during this leg of the drive, but it looked like it could have at any moment.
The road changed in Hualien County. Instead of driving between fields, we were finally between mountain cliffs and the ocean. But that was never going to last. About 30 kilometers into our coastal drive, we had to start heading up into the mountains. After a few twists and turns, we went back toward the coast again, but then we were driving through Hualien City, which is small, but more developed than the country drive we had for the previous two hours. From Hualien City, it was a quick drive to the entrance to Taroko National Park. Once in the park, the real driving began.
The main road through Taroko Gorge is narrow, winding and more than a little steep in places. It was a great test of my new car, which handled beautifully. The tunnels were especially interesting. The headlights and dashboard lights are all automatic, though I can set them to operate manually. The tunnels were the first time I really got to see the automation in action. Every time we entered a tunnel, everything switched on as it was supposed to, and immediately switched off as soon as we exited. The technology is not all that impressive, but I liked how quickly everything happened, even when we repeatedly went in and out of smaller tunnels. Since we were on the side of a cliff, some of the tunnels had an open wall. None of the different lighting levels confused the car for a second. Had I been manually operating the headlights, I would have kept them off through all but the longest tunnels.
Taroko Gorge is “the Grand Canyon of Taiwan”, though it is mostly green rather than mostly brown, it was created by earthquakes as well as rivers, and it is less than one fifth the size. One of the great things about Taroko Gorge is that you can drive from just above sea level to almost 3,000 meters. No mules required. There are a million hiking trails and plenty of relatively safe places to ride a bicycle, but I liked driving through the park. I'm sure my new car greatly influenced that. If we were driving a beat up 1998 Suzuki Kei, the steeper roads would have been a nightmare.
Hotel options are limited inside the park. Most people stay in Hualien City. There is a big, fancy resort in the park, but we did not make any reservations and we did not want to spend ridiculous amounts of money for accommodation on this trip. Road trips are for Motel 6, not the Ritz. The Taiwan equivalent of Motel 6 is some random B&B. Our room's theme was fruits and berries, for some reason.
We mostly spent the night at Taroko Gorge because we wanted enough stops on the trip to keep it from getting tedious. But Taroko Gorge is the kind of place where you can easily spend a few days. Driving up and down the winding road is fun, but there are also too many trails, rivers, and bridges for one day. I will have to come back sooner or later. Maybe not during the rainy season.
Monday, August 17, 2020
Tour Of Taiwan
South To Kenting
With the keys of a new car in hand, I wanted to take a road trip. Driving in bumper to bumper traffic is exciting and all, but I wanted to take the new car out on the open road. As it turned out, I had not seen most of this country. My sister's school starts later this month, so she came along for the ride. This was her last chance to have any time off until they take a break around the new year.
Our first stop was Kenting, possibly the most popular vacation spot in the entire country. Maybe going on a Saturday was not the best idea. The drive from Kaohsiung to Kenting takes two hours. We got there in about an hour and fifteen minutes. There was no traffic, until we hit Kenting, and I might have exceeded the speed limit on the freeway once or twice.
Kenting is known for its tropical beaches, tropical national park, and tropical scenery. Lily and I were immediately unimpressed with the beaches. They might be the most popular beaches in Taiwan, and Taiwan is a mostly subtropical island with more than a few empty beaches. This should be a beach paradise, but Chinese culture is not fond of the sun or living near water. Just like Hong Kong, Taiwan could have some amazing beaches if the people wanted them. Instead, most beaches look like abandoned campsites, with ocean debris and more than a few dead fish and birds. Kenting is better groomed, but the beaches are small and, if you have ever been to a decent beach in any part of the world that appreciates beaches, nothing special.
The national park is a nice place for a hike and a great place if you like watching birds and butterflies. Most people seemed to spend most of their time in the village of Hengchun, which is the closest thing to a downtown around the national park, with all the hotels, restaurants, night market, and gas stations.
One of the biggest attractions that has nothing to do with nature is the Eluanbi Lighthouse. It looks pretty much like a lot of lighthouses, except that it is surrounded by an old fort. As the story goes, the Chinese authorities who controlled Taiwan in the 1870s did not particularly care that Japanese and European ships were crashing against Cape Eluanbi, so some French and British engineers built a lighthouse. Naturally, the locals were not too excited about being invaded, so the Chinese military built a fort to protect the construction and later the lighthouse itself. Why the Chinese sided with the Europeans against the Taiwanese over a lighthouse they never cared about is unclear. It may have simply been part of their long term goal of doing everything possible to alienate the indigenous population. In the beginning, the fort protected the lighthouse from the Taiwanese. Over the years, it had to protect Taiwan from the Japanese, Chinese, Americans, and then the Chinese again. The lighthouse is still functional today, though the fort is nothing more than a tourist attraction.
We had dinner at Smokey Joe's, a “Tex Mex” restaurant that reminded neither of us of Texas or Mexico. Their menu was mostly a combination of Taiwanese and standard “international”, but they also had burritos, quesadillas, and nachos, which are rare in Taiwan. The only reason we went to Smokey Joe's was because there is one in Kaohsiung, within walking distance of our apartment. We have never been there, and when we saw one in Kenting, we figured we might as well try it out. If we ever go to the one in Kaohsiung, it will definitely not be on a Saturday night.
We ended our night with a walk around the carnival atmosphere of downtown and the night market, mostly in the rain. Summer is the rainy season, and Kenting has the most tropical climate of the entire country. Rain or sun, Saturday night during summer was still too crowded to move around. Only a typhoon could have dispersed that kind of crowd.
We stayed at a tiny B&B relatively close to downtown, which was a good idea since parking downtown was difficult, while parking around the national park was surprisingly easy. There are a wide variety of hotels in the area, from expensive resorts to a room in someone's house. Since Kenting is the most popular vacation spot in the entire country, there are enough rooms for everybody. We wanted to plan as little as possible on this trip and go wherever the road took us. We also wanted to spend as little money as possible since one of us has no job and the other just spent a small fortune on a new car. That meant spending the night in a tiny B&B relatively close to downtown.
Where I come from, a B&B is usually a large house that the owner converted into a cozy hotel, with breakfast in the dining room and tourist brochures in the foyer. The system is relatively the same in Taiwan, except that the owner might not live anywhere near the property, and the house or individual rooms have a theme that has nothing to do with when the house was built or its location. We stayed at a B&B near Kenting National Park that decorated its rooms with cartoon characters. We were in the Doraemon Room.
The only reason we even spent the night in Kenting was because we knew we would be driving up most of the east coast the next day. We know there are plenty of places to sleep on the west coast, but the east was unknown to us. Discovering something new was part of the reason for this road trip.
Kenting is the kind of place that everyone in Taiwan should go to at least once. There are a few points of interest, and I suppose it is nice to say we have been to the southern tip of the island, but I can't imagine going all the way there from Taipei on purpose. If you live farther away than Kaohsiung, once might just be enough.
Our first stop was Kenting, possibly the most popular vacation spot in the entire country. Maybe going on a Saturday was not the best idea. The drive from Kaohsiung to Kenting takes two hours. We got there in about an hour and fifteen minutes. There was no traffic, until we hit Kenting, and I might have exceeded the speed limit on the freeway once or twice.
Kenting is known for its tropical beaches, tropical national park, and tropical scenery. Lily and I were immediately unimpressed with the beaches. They might be the most popular beaches in Taiwan, and Taiwan is a mostly subtropical island with more than a few empty beaches. This should be a beach paradise, but Chinese culture is not fond of the sun or living near water. Just like Hong Kong, Taiwan could have some amazing beaches if the people wanted them. Instead, most beaches look like abandoned campsites, with ocean debris and more than a few dead fish and birds. Kenting is better groomed, but the beaches are small and, if you have ever been to a decent beach in any part of the world that appreciates beaches, nothing special.
The national park is a nice place for a hike and a great place if you like watching birds and butterflies. Most people seemed to spend most of their time in the village of Hengchun, which is the closest thing to a downtown around the national park, with all the hotels, restaurants, night market, and gas stations.
One of the biggest attractions that has nothing to do with nature is the Eluanbi Lighthouse. It looks pretty much like a lot of lighthouses, except that it is surrounded by an old fort. As the story goes, the Chinese authorities who controlled Taiwan in the 1870s did not particularly care that Japanese and European ships were crashing against Cape Eluanbi, so some French and British engineers built a lighthouse. Naturally, the locals were not too excited about being invaded, so the Chinese military built a fort to protect the construction and later the lighthouse itself. Why the Chinese sided with the Europeans against the Taiwanese over a lighthouse they never cared about is unclear. It may have simply been part of their long term goal of doing everything possible to alienate the indigenous population. In the beginning, the fort protected the lighthouse from the Taiwanese. Over the years, it had to protect Taiwan from the Japanese, Chinese, Americans, and then the Chinese again. The lighthouse is still functional today, though the fort is nothing more than a tourist attraction.
We had dinner at Smokey Joe's, a “Tex Mex” restaurant that reminded neither of us of Texas or Mexico. Their menu was mostly a combination of Taiwanese and standard “international”, but they also had burritos, quesadillas, and nachos, which are rare in Taiwan. The only reason we went to Smokey Joe's was because there is one in Kaohsiung, within walking distance of our apartment. We have never been there, and when we saw one in Kenting, we figured we might as well try it out. If we ever go to the one in Kaohsiung, it will definitely not be on a Saturday night.
We ended our night with a walk around the carnival atmosphere of downtown and the night market, mostly in the rain. Summer is the rainy season, and Kenting has the most tropical climate of the entire country. Rain or sun, Saturday night during summer was still too crowded to move around. Only a typhoon could have dispersed that kind of crowd.
We stayed at a tiny B&B relatively close to downtown, which was a good idea since parking downtown was difficult, while parking around the national park was surprisingly easy. There are a wide variety of hotels in the area, from expensive resorts to a room in someone's house. Since Kenting is the most popular vacation spot in the entire country, there are enough rooms for everybody. We wanted to plan as little as possible on this trip and go wherever the road took us. We also wanted to spend as little money as possible since one of us has no job and the other just spent a small fortune on a new car. That meant spending the night in a tiny B&B relatively close to downtown.
Where I come from, a B&B is usually a large house that the owner converted into a cozy hotel, with breakfast in the dining room and tourist brochures in the foyer. The system is relatively the same in Taiwan, except that the owner might not live anywhere near the property, and the house or individual rooms have a theme that has nothing to do with when the house was built or its location. We stayed at a B&B near Kenting National Park that decorated its rooms with cartoon characters. We were in the Doraemon Room.
The only reason we even spent the night in Kenting was because we knew we would be driving up most of the east coast the next day. We know there are plenty of places to sleep on the west coast, but the east was unknown to us. Discovering something new was part of the reason for this road trip.
Kenting is the kind of place that everyone in Taiwan should go to at least once. There are a few points of interest, and I suppose it is nice to say we have been to the southern tip of the island, but I can't imagine going all the way there from Taipei on purpose. If you live farther away than Kaohsiung, once might just be enough.
Thursday, August 13, 2020
A Voice To Lead
I have lived in Taiwan for just over two months and have seen the president twice, though the first time was during a trip in February, before I lived here.
On Tuesday, the Taiwan Nursing Association gave a friend of mine, who is a nurse, an award. It was part of their big International Nurses Day celebration, “Nurses: A Voice To Lead, Nursing the World To Health”. They have a big ceremony every year, but this year came with a bigger bang, probably because a large chunk of the world is having a few medical problems. Nurses are generally treated with about as much respect as janitors, who also do an invaluable job. But this year, people are starting to appreciate what nurses do, if only temporarily. When the virus is gone and everyone is obsessed with the next big thing, I'm sure most people will treat nurses like crap again.
President Tsai Ing Wen gave a speech at the beginning of the ceremony and handed out a few awards. Having already seen her speak, I was not surprised by how calm and soothing her voice is, but I could not help but notice that her speech was about the nurses and not about herself. She never mentioned how popular she is, even though she won the last election in a landslide. She did not use the opportunity to attack her opponents, perceived enemies, the media or science and education. In fact, she seems to think science and education are a good thing. The most annoying part of her speech, to me, was that she had the entire thing memorized and yet was able to speak in coherent sentences. There were no teleprompters anywhere and she never looked down at notes or the lectern. It was either memorized or she was improvising. If the speech was improvised, then Tsai is a remarkably intelligent person. While she was praising the work that nurses do, I was wondering how a country with such diverse and occasionally volatile political opinions can so effortlessly have a worthwhile leader.
The ceremony reminded me of the Oscars. While the point was supposed to be recognizing a few people for their achievements, most of the time was used up by the host's inane chatter and too many song and dance numbers. I have nothing against song and dance numbers. I have made a decent living from them, but singing and dancing seems unnecessary when handing out awards to nurses. One of the songs at this particular award ceremony was by a high school a cappella group who were dressed like DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, for some reason. I wanted to be on their side since I know what it takes to sing on stage without any instrumental accompaniment, and this show was probably a great honor for them, but teenage a cappella groups around here are nothing like the Mills Brothers or Manhattan Transfer. Instead of harmony, they focus on “beatboxing” and a combination of rap and doing poor imitations of Mariah Carey. It was pretty bad.
While only a few people got awards personally handed to them by the president, a few hundred nurses were given plaques. That took a long time. Fortunately, they did not announce everyone's name. They lined up on stage in groups of eight, got their plaque, had their pictures taken, and went back to their seats. Names were printed in the program.
Since the president was involved, it was on the news that night. Rather than tell the people much of anything, the news showed the president posing for photographers with the head of the Taiwan Nursing Association and mentioned that this year is Florence Nightingale's 200th birthday. The nurses were the stars that night, but only for three hours.
On Tuesday, the Taiwan Nursing Association gave a friend of mine, who is a nurse, an award. It was part of their big International Nurses Day celebration, “Nurses: A Voice To Lead, Nursing the World To Health”. They have a big ceremony every year, but this year came with a bigger bang, probably because a large chunk of the world is having a few medical problems. Nurses are generally treated with about as much respect as janitors, who also do an invaluable job. But this year, people are starting to appreciate what nurses do, if only temporarily. When the virus is gone and everyone is obsessed with the next big thing, I'm sure most people will treat nurses like crap again.
President Tsai Ing Wen gave a speech at the beginning of the ceremony and handed out a few awards. Having already seen her speak, I was not surprised by how calm and soothing her voice is, but I could not help but notice that her speech was about the nurses and not about herself. She never mentioned how popular she is, even though she won the last election in a landslide. She did not use the opportunity to attack her opponents, perceived enemies, the media or science and education. In fact, she seems to think science and education are a good thing. The most annoying part of her speech, to me, was that she had the entire thing memorized and yet was able to speak in coherent sentences. There were no teleprompters anywhere and she never looked down at notes or the lectern. It was either memorized or she was improvising. If the speech was improvised, then Tsai is a remarkably intelligent person. While she was praising the work that nurses do, I was wondering how a country with such diverse and occasionally volatile political opinions can so effortlessly have a worthwhile leader.
The ceremony reminded me of the Oscars. While the point was supposed to be recognizing a few people for their achievements, most of the time was used up by the host's inane chatter and too many song and dance numbers. I have nothing against song and dance numbers. I have made a decent living from them, but singing and dancing seems unnecessary when handing out awards to nurses. One of the songs at this particular award ceremony was by a high school a cappella group who were dressed like DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, for some reason. I wanted to be on their side since I know what it takes to sing on stage without any instrumental accompaniment, and this show was probably a great honor for them, but teenage a cappella groups around here are nothing like the Mills Brothers or Manhattan Transfer. Instead of harmony, they focus on “beatboxing” and a combination of rap and doing poor imitations of Mariah Carey. It was pretty bad.
While only a few people got awards personally handed to them by the president, a few hundred nurses were given plaques. That took a long time. Fortunately, they did not announce everyone's name. They lined up on stage in groups of eight, got their plaque, had their pictures taken, and went back to their seats. Names were printed in the program.
Since the president was involved, it was on the news that night. Rather than tell the people much of anything, the news showed the president posing for photographers with the head of the Taiwan Nursing Association and mentioned that this year is Florence Nightingale's 200th birthday. The nurses were the stars that night, but only for three hours.
Sunday, August 9, 2020
New Car part 2
There are a few Mercedes dealers around here. Outside of Toyota, Mercedes might be the most popular car in Taiwan. They have a wide variety of models, and I think a lot of people buy the cheaper A and C classes just to say they have a Mercedes. If Bentley had a $30,000 model, there would be thousands of Bentleys on the road. Of course, like everyone else, Mercedes also has SUVs.
I was never going to buy a Mercedes, of any class, so I test drove an AMG GT 63, which is a four door sedan based on the E class. While it looks like an E sedan, it has a 577 horsepower 4.0 liter biturbo V8 and a top speed of 311 km/h. It is far more powerful than I need, and with a sticker price of $3,500,000 (元), it was never an option. But it was fun to drive.
It might seem like a bad idea to test a $3,500,000 car while shopping for a $700,000 car, but I figured as long as I was driving a bunch of cars, I might as well go all out.
Despite the power and excellent handling, I was a little disappointed in the Mercedes. A car like that should be fully manual, but this one had a nine speed automatic transmission. The driver can change gears when the car is in manual mode, but there is no clutch pedal or gearshift. You shift gears by tapping paddles on the steering wheel. I understand why they did it that way. That is how the Formula 1 race cars shift gears, and people like to think they are racing while they wait in traffic. But driving to the grocery store is nothing like winning the World Cup, or whatever trophy Formula 1 drivers get. I like the full tactile control of a manual transmission. Tapping a switch on the steering wheel does nothing for me.
The AMG GT also had something close to a stick for shifting, instead of the paddles, but it could not be moved in a standard H pattern, or any pattern. You slightly tap on it, just like the paddles. Touching the stick without actually shifting and not putting your foot on the clutch feels strange. The paddles make more sense. Unfortunately, Mercedes is not the only car maker to change from manual to fake manual. Finding a real stick in Taiwan is impossible, unless you go used.
The car had a lot of bells and whistles, and someone got paid too much to name everything. The interior was not dark gray. It was “dinamica microfibre black with red stitching and a matt carbon fibre trim”. The suspension and all of the sensors and cameras had their own trademarked names, though they were the same as everything on every other comparable car. You can open the doors with the remote, which every car can probably do now, but with Mercedes it is “keyless-go”.
As long as I was in the luxury neighborhood, I paid a visit to Porsche. I knew I was never going to buy a 911. They are far too expensive, and I need room for more than two passengers. I am usually the person who takes everyone to the airport. A tiny sports car is not ideal. I knew I wanted room for at least four people and maybe a suitcase or two. At Porsche, that means SUVs. The Cayenne is popular around here, but again, I want a car, not a truck. Not even a Porsche truck. While looking at a 911 Carrera Cabriolet that I was never going to buy in a million years, I got to talking with the salesman. He knew I was not going to buy his $5,800,000 car, especially when I complained about the lack of space for passengers and luggage. But he thought, as incorrectly as they all do, that I might be in the market for an SUV.
When I look like me and live in a place like Taiwan, everyone inevitably asks where I am from. When I told the salesman that I just moved from Hong Kong, he was far more interested than usual. For years, I have been telling people that Hong Kong is not all that exotic when you live there, and now I am surrounded by those who completely agree. But since I am from Hong Kong, the salesman assumed I would be familiar with right hand drive cars. And he was correct. Every car I borrowed or rented in Hong Kong had its steering wheel on the right side. When the salesman asked me if I might be interested in such a car, we both saw the opportunity in front of us. He saw someone who might actually want to buy this car and I saw a car that the dealership was having a hard time selling.
Taiwan, like most of the world, is left hand drive and right hand traffic. Hong Kong, like most of the former British occupied territories, is the opposite. Porsche, from a left hand drive country, is more than happy to make right hand drive cars. Those never go to Taiwan. Except this car. Someone custom ordered a right hand Panamera Turbo from the dealership and, for whatever reason, never bothered to pick it up. Maybe he went bankrupt. Maybe he died. I don't know. They were never going to give me a customer's private information. What they would tell me was that someone from either Hong Kong or Australia, maybe even the UK, ordered this car with all the details and extras he wanted, and now it was taking up space at the dealership. They could not sell it, I assume because the steering wheel was on the wrong side, and eventually, it got older. It is a 2019 and not at all used, but everyone wants 2021s now, and even the 2020s are falling out of favor. Time was not on the dealership's side. The older this car got, despite having no miles on it, the lower they would have to price it.
One of my first thoughts was that maybe I should wait a while. If I could be patient, I could really take advantage of their dilemma. Then again, it was always possible that someone else from Australia or Hong Kong might want to buy it. I have never actually met anyone here from Hong Kong, but there are more than a few Australians running around. Or the dealer might just return it to Porsche and take a bath, minus whatever the person who ordered it paid up front. There must be some kind of system for cars that never sell.
One of the first things I did was test drive a new 2020 Panamera Turbo. It was not the same car, obviously, but had the same type of engine and most of the same modern bits and pieces. It was also safer to test drive. Crashing the car they wanted me to buy would not have been good for anyone. Although, I suppose that would have solved their problem. I doubt they want anyone to crash their test cars, but they have plenty more. And the only reason crashing was even a consideration was because of that steering wheel. Right hand drive is nothing new to me, but driving closer to the curb is.
I can now safely say that the 2020 Panamera Turbo is an incredible machine. It looks nothing like a sports car. It is technically a sedan, though it has something close to a hatchback. It has a similar engine to the Mercedes AMG GT 63, though marginally less fuel efficient. It can supposedly go from 0 to 100 in 3.8 seconds. Not that anyone could ever get up to 100 in this traffic. When I was test driving the Mercedes, that salesman told me how fast it could go, but the cars in front of me when the red light turned green could probably do 0 to 40 in a few minutes. Other than freeway on-ramps, instant speed is useless here.
With the discount, I was definitely interested in the right hand 2019 Panamera. But the price was still too high, and I had done absolutely no research into this car until after I got home.
The next day, I got a call from the Porsche salesman's manager. After a year of trying to sell this car, they might have seen me as their last hope. Every car salesman wants to make a sale, but you are almost never their only customer.
Instead of waiting, I haggled like a pro. Or like someone who lived in Hong Kong for a decade. There was no way I could ever pay full price, but they had already marked it down considerably. I simply needed to see how low they could go. I always assumed I would buy a Toyota anyway, so walking away again was an easy option. We all knew I was in the driver's seat.
If the option ever presents itself, I wholeheartedly recommend buying a car that no one else wants from a dealer who cannot unload it to save his life. Because it is a 2019 and most people are waiting for 2021, and because that steering wheel scared everyone else away, I took home a brand new, more or less, Porsche Panamera Turbo for almost nothing. My bank seems to think it cost more than nothing, and it was more than any Toyota I would have bought, but far less than a brand new, more or less, Porsche should ever be.
The downside is that someone else ordered it, so it has everything someone else wanted. The exterior is “amethyst metallic”, which is dark purple, and the interior is “saddle brown with black trim and sweetgum wood finish”, also known as black and dark brown. I would have never picked those colors, but I have seen the available Porsche color combinations and it could have been much worse. It took a few minutes to adjust to a steering wheel on the right and opposing traffic on the left, but I am used to it now. The next time I drive a normal car, I will have to adapt back.
The good news is that Mystery Man ordered a 21 speaker Burmester 3D surround sound stereo. Since the car is extremely quiet, outside of sport mode, a good stereo is a nice touch. In sport mode, the car makes a lot of noise, which I suppose is what sports car people want. Instead of four seats, it has “4+1” seats, which is four seats with something of a seat in the middle. Anyone larger than a teenager might not enjoy that +1 seat. The other four are quite comfortable and supposedly adjustable 14 different ways, each with their own climate control.
Like probably all new cars, it has sensors everywhere. I thought I would never use the reverse camera, but I have found it convenient, especially at night. The rear window is large enough to see through, but that rear camera shows everything and knows exactly how close the nearest obstructions are. The car also beeps when another car is too close, but I have to find a way to disable that. This is Taiwan. There will always be another car too close.
Whatever car you drive in Taiwan, it will get hit by something. Maybe another car, definitely a scooter. I assume that whenever I park in public, sooner or later, I will return to a new scratch or ding. Fortunately, the dealer will take care of any minor issues, and they have a warehouse full of paint in my color. If they ever have to change the color, that would not be the worst thing in the world. When someone inevitably crashes into it, I will not have a heart attack. Instead, I will let all the airbags all over the place do their job, take whatever is left to the authorized mechanic a few kilometers from my apartment, and let insurance foot the bill.
What I like most about my new car is probably its most useless feature where I live. Though it looks like and is as comfortable as a luxury sedan, it has the engine of a sports car. When I am at a red light, I can feel in my hands how quickly I could effortless race to the next red light, if only all those other cars were not in my way.
One of the early contenders.
A nice enough car, but a little too weak.
A far more powerful car, and far too expensive.
Porsche has a website where you can enter your car's code and it will list every little specification and extra loaded into your car. Unfortunately, the pictures are always left hand drive, no matter where you buy the car. I thought maybe that was only because I bought it in Taiwan, but I checked the UK site and every picture there was also left hand drive.
Other than the steering wheel placement, and the background image, this is essentially my new purple car.
I was never going to buy a Mercedes, of any class, so I test drove an AMG GT 63, which is a four door sedan based on the E class. While it looks like an E sedan, it has a 577 horsepower 4.0 liter biturbo V8 and a top speed of 311 km/h. It is far more powerful than I need, and with a sticker price of $3,500,000 (元), it was never an option. But it was fun to drive.
It might seem like a bad idea to test a $3,500,000 car while shopping for a $700,000 car, but I figured as long as I was driving a bunch of cars, I might as well go all out.
Despite the power and excellent handling, I was a little disappointed in the Mercedes. A car like that should be fully manual, but this one had a nine speed automatic transmission. The driver can change gears when the car is in manual mode, but there is no clutch pedal or gearshift. You shift gears by tapping paddles on the steering wheel. I understand why they did it that way. That is how the Formula 1 race cars shift gears, and people like to think they are racing while they wait in traffic. But driving to the grocery store is nothing like winning the World Cup, or whatever trophy Formula 1 drivers get. I like the full tactile control of a manual transmission. Tapping a switch on the steering wheel does nothing for me.
The AMG GT also had something close to a stick for shifting, instead of the paddles, but it could not be moved in a standard H pattern, or any pattern. You slightly tap on it, just like the paddles. Touching the stick without actually shifting and not putting your foot on the clutch feels strange. The paddles make more sense. Unfortunately, Mercedes is not the only car maker to change from manual to fake manual. Finding a real stick in Taiwan is impossible, unless you go used.
The car had a lot of bells and whistles, and someone got paid too much to name everything. The interior was not dark gray. It was “dinamica microfibre black with red stitching and a matt carbon fibre trim”. The suspension and all of the sensors and cameras had their own trademarked names, though they were the same as everything on every other comparable car. You can open the doors with the remote, which every car can probably do now, but with Mercedes it is “keyless-go”.
As long as I was in the luxury neighborhood, I paid a visit to Porsche. I knew I was never going to buy a 911. They are far too expensive, and I need room for more than two passengers. I am usually the person who takes everyone to the airport. A tiny sports car is not ideal. I knew I wanted room for at least four people and maybe a suitcase or two. At Porsche, that means SUVs. The Cayenne is popular around here, but again, I want a car, not a truck. Not even a Porsche truck. While looking at a 911 Carrera Cabriolet that I was never going to buy in a million years, I got to talking with the salesman. He knew I was not going to buy his $5,800,000 car, especially when I complained about the lack of space for passengers and luggage. But he thought, as incorrectly as they all do, that I might be in the market for an SUV.
When I look like me and live in a place like Taiwan, everyone inevitably asks where I am from. When I told the salesman that I just moved from Hong Kong, he was far more interested than usual. For years, I have been telling people that Hong Kong is not all that exotic when you live there, and now I am surrounded by those who completely agree. But since I am from Hong Kong, the salesman assumed I would be familiar with right hand drive cars. And he was correct. Every car I borrowed or rented in Hong Kong had its steering wheel on the right side. When the salesman asked me if I might be interested in such a car, we both saw the opportunity in front of us. He saw someone who might actually want to buy this car and I saw a car that the dealership was having a hard time selling.
Taiwan, like most of the world, is left hand drive and right hand traffic. Hong Kong, like most of the former British occupied territories, is the opposite. Porsche, from a left hand drive country, is more than happy to make right hand drive cars. Those never go to Taiwan. Except this car. Someone custom ordered a right hand Panamera Turbo from the dealership and, for whatever reason, never bothered to pick it up. Maybe he went bankrupt. Maybe he died. I don't know. They were never going to give me a customer's private information. What they would tell me was that someone from either Hong Kong or Australia, maybe even the UK, ordered this car with all the details and extras he wanted, and now it was taking up space at the dealership. They could not sell it, I assume because the steering wheel was on the wrong side, and eventually, it got older. It is a 2019 and not at all used, but everyone wants 2021s now, and even the 2020s are falling out of favor. Time was not on the dealership's side. The older this car got, despite having no miles on it, the lower they would have to price it.
One of my first thoughts was that maybe I should wait a while. If I could be patient, I could really take advantage of their dilemma. Then again, it was always possible that someone else from Australia or Hong Kong might want to buy it. I have never actually met anyone here from Hong Kong, but there are more than a few Australians running around. Or the dealer might just return it to Porsche and take a bath, minus whatever the person who ordered it paid up front. There must be some kind of system for cars that never sell.
One of the first things I did was test drive a new 2020 Panamera Turbo. It was not the same car, obviously, but had the same type of engine and most of the same modern bits and pieces. It was also safer to test drive. Crashing the car they wanted me to buy would not have been good for anyone. Although, I suppose that would have solved their problem. I doubt they want anyone to crash their test cars, but they have plenty more. And the only reason crashing was even a consideration was because of that steering wheel. Right hand drive is nothing new to me, but driving closer to the curb is.
I can now safely say that the 2020 Panamera Turbo is an incredible machine. It looks nothing like a sports car. It is technically a sedan, though it has something close to a hatchback. It has a similar engine to the Mercedes AMG GT 63, though marginally less fuel efficient. It can supposedly go from 0 to 100 in 3.8 seconds. Not that anyone could ever get up to 100 in this traffic. When I was test driving the Mercedes, that salesman told me how fast it could go, but the cars in front of me when the red light turned green could probably do 0 to 40 in a few minutes. Other than freeway on-ramps, instant speed is useless here.
With the discount, I was definitely interested in the right hand 2019 Panamera. But the price was still too high, and I had done absolutely no research into this car until after I got home.
The next day, I got a call from the Porsche salesman's manager. After a year of trying to sell this car, they might have seen me as their last hope. Every car salesman wants to make a sale, but you are almost never their only customer.
Instead of waiting, I haggled like a pro. Or like someone who lived in Hong Kong for a decade. There was no way I could ever pay full price, but they had already marked it down considerably. I simply needed to see how low they could go. I always assumed I would buy a Toyota anyway, so walking away again was an easy option. We all knew I was in the driver's seat.
If the option ever presents itself, I wholeheartedly recommend buying a car that no one else wants from a dealer who cannot unload it to save his life. Because it is a 2019 and most people are waiting for 2021, and because that steering wheel scared everyone else away, I took home a brand new, more or less, Porsche Panamera Turbo for almost nothing. My bank seems to think it cost more than nothing, and it was more than any Toyota I would have bought, but far less than a brand new, more or less, Porsche should ever be.
The downside is that someone else ordered it, so it has everything someone else wanted. The exterior is “amethyst metallic”, which is dark purple, and the interior is “saddle brown with black trim and sweetgum wood finish”, also known as black and dark brown. I would have never picked those colors, but I have seen the available Porsche color combinations and it could have been much worse. It took a few minutes to adjust to a steering wheel on the right and opposing traffic on the left, but I am used to it now. The next time I drive a normal car, I will have to adapt back.
The good news is that Mystery Man ordered a 21 speaker Burmester 3D surround sound stereo. Since the car is extremely quiet, outside of sport mode, a good stereo is a nice touch. In sport mode, the car makes a lot of noise, which I suppose is what sports car people want. Instead of four seats, it has “4+1” seats, which is four seats with something of a seat in the middle. Anyone larger than a teenager might not enjoy that +1 seat. The other four are quite comfortable and supposedly adjustable 14 different ways, each with their own climate control.
Like probably all new cars, it has sensors everywhere. I thought I would never use the reverse camera, but I have found it convenient, especially at night. The rear window is large enough to see through, but that rear camera shows everything and knows exactly how close the nearest obstructions are. The car also beeps when another car is too close, but I have to find a way to disable that. This is Taiwan. There will always be another car too close.
Whatever car you drive in Taiwan, it will get hit by something. Maybe another car, definitely a scooter. I assume that whenever I park in public, sooner or later, I will return to a new scratch or ding. Fortunately, the dealer will take care of any minor issues, and they have a warehouse full of paint in my color. If they ever have to change the color, that would not be the worst thing in the world. When someone inevitably crashes into it, I will not have a heart attack. Instead, I will let all the airbags all over the place do their job, take whatever is left to the authorized mechanic a few kilometers from my apartment, and let insurance foot the bill.
What I like most about my new car is probably its most useless feature where I live. Though it looks like and is as comfortable as a luxury sedan, it has the engine of a sports car. When I am at a red light, I can feel in my hands how quickly I could effortless race to the next red light, if only all those other cars were not in my way.
Other than the steering wheel placement, and the background image, this is essentially my new purple car.
Thursday, August 6, 2020
New Car part 1
Do I really need a car? Probably not. I can get to work on the MRT. It takes a
while, mostly because the Kaohsiung MRT is pretty limited and I have to take two
separate lines. But it is possible. I can walk to the grocery store or Costco,
though it would be easier to carry more crap home with a car, especially from
Costco. I cannot get to my hospital on the MRT. That requires a 45 minute ride
on two buses. A car would get me there in 20 minutes. But it's not like I go to
the hospital every day. I can get to pretty much everything else with an MRT/bus
combo.
With a car, I could explore beyond central Kaohsiung. The city is
actually pretty big, and nowhere near downtown. Half of Kaohsiung is mountains
and a national park. That is one thing it has in common with Hong Kong. Most
people only think of the big city part, but there are large chunks of nature
without a single skyscraper.
Then there is what lies beyond Kaohsiung. The high
speed train quickly goes to Tainan and all the large cities north, but if I want
to go south or east, the best option is by car. There are buses to Kenting, but
they cannot compete with an independent exploration by car. I could always rent
a car whenever I want to head out, but I am new to this part of the world. It
might be cheaper to buy a car than rent every time I want to roam. Five years
from now, I might not care, and I would be stuck with a car that I only use to
go places in the city, but I can live with that.
Cars are not cheap. I recently
moved to a new country, put a deposit on a new apartment, bought new appliances
and bought several components of a new stereo system. All of those things cost
money. The apartment is in everyone's name and we split the bills. We also
bought the appliances together since we will all be using them more or less
equally. The car is in my name and I paid for every inch of it. One roommate
currently has no job and the other can easily get to work on the MRT. I'm the
only one who has much use for a car. Also, it turns out that you cannot buy a
car in more than one name unless both names are married.
I did the math. If I
take the MRT five days a week for the next 60 years, I will spend as much money
as a new Toyota. Clearly, riding the MRT is cheaper than buying a car. I think
I'm paying more for the convenience than the transportation. If you include gas
and insurance, the MRT is simply the smarter move. And if it went everywhere the
way metro systems in cities like Hong Kong, Paris, and New York do, I would not
bother with a car. Also, parking is impossible in Hong Kong, Paris and New York.
It gets a little easier in Kaohsiung.
The first decision you have to make when
buying a car is new or used. People have a lot of strong opinions about either
choice. I don't care about status or keeping up with the Chens, and I like how
much cheaper used cars are, but I am in a largely unfamiliar country. This is
not the place where I want to get ripped off by someone as honest as a
politician. I am not entirely sure what my options are in the event of buying
snake oil. I also have no mechanics that I trust anywhere within a 7,000 mile
radius. Any maintenance issues with a new car can be brought to the dealer who
sold it. Most dealers include standard maintenance for a few years, but only
with new cars. Insurance is actually cheaper with new cars. I assume because
someone with a new car might be more cautious than someone driving a piece of
crap, but there is probably a more convoluted bureaucratic reason. It is also
worth noting that it gets rather hot in Kaohsiung and there are more than a few
mountains nearby. A newer car is less likely to overheat going uphill and more
likely to have reliable air conditioning.
Shopping for a car in Taiwan was an
interesting experience. I helped a friend shop for a car in China last year,
making it easy to compare the two different countries. Like China, Taiwan is not
known for its automobile industry. Far more cars are made in Taiwan, but most of
those companies are based in Japan. The biggest difference is in the type of
cars. Hong Kong has a surprising number of British luxury cars. I used to see
Bentleys and Jaguars on the road all the time. Taiwan is more Mercedes and BMW.
There is a Bentley and a Jaguar dealership right next to each other in
Kaohsiung, but I have never seen either car on the road. There seems to be less
variety in Taiwan, with most of the cars looking relatively the same. Sedans all
look like Toyota Vios, Mitsubishi Grunder and Mazda Isamu, with plenty of
Mitsubishi Savrin and Toyota Sienta vans, and a lot of Honda SUVs.
Unlike China,
I did not need an appointment to test drive anything. I just walked in and
picked out whatever I wanted. Everything available was parked out back, while
the cars at the Hong Kong dealers were in some garage off site. As with China,
we were two women car shopping and no men. In Hong Kong, we were Chinese and
American. In Taiwan, we were Canadian and American. I don't know if that made a
difference, or if it was just another disconnection between China and Taiwan,
but as two obvious foreigners, we never had any issues with any salesmen trying
to get us to follow Chinese tradition. As long as I could produce a Taiwan
driver's license, which was required to test drive anything, they were happy to
make their sales pitch. We also got none of the condescending bullshit from any
salesmen in Taiwan. I can't confirm that Taiwan is less misogynistic than China,
but I was told that most Taiwanese know next to nothing about vehicle
maintenance. They still thought it was strange that I wanted to look under
hoods, but I think it was less about my gender and more about how seldom anyone
around here looks under the hood when they test drive a car.
I test drove a
Toyota Corolla and Honda Jazz in Hong Kong, and was not especially impressed
with either. Honda in Taiwan is mostly SUVs. I don't see the benefit of driving
a small truck here. Most of the parking spaces are tiny and you can barely
squeeze a sedan car in between the scooters and oncoming traffic on the smaller
roads.
Mazda was also mostly SUVs, but they had a couple of normal cars. The
Mazda 2 had one of those tiny back windows that you can barely see out of while
backing up. I reject those outright. The Mazda 6 is their standard sedan. I took
it for a test drive, and while there was nothing particularly wrong with it,
there was also nothing interesting about it. Every new sedan on sale in Taiwan
currently has all the latest bells and whistles, and most of them tend to look
the same, so the only real difference between one and the other is how they
feel. The Mazda 6 felt like a rental car that I would not mind driving around
for a while, but I would not want to own. Since I always assumed I would end up
getting a Toyota, I looked at all the other cars as practice.
During my month of
shopping, I rented a car, mostly to get a feel for the streets of Kaohsiung. I
felt that if I was going to buy a new car in a new city in a new country, I
should at least have some experience with the local traffic. The rental car was
a Nissan Sentra, so I never had to test drive anything at the nearest Nissan
dealer. I found the Sentra comfortable enough, but it was much weaker than the
Mazda 6. I liked how high the seats were. A lot of modern cars want the driver
as close to the ground as possible, maybe because it makes people think they are
in a sports car, but sitting a little higher up gives you more visibility. That
is one thing SUV drivers always brag about. The Sentra seats were not nearly as
high as an SUV, but it felt higher than most sedans without the bulk of a truck.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)