African Tour: Cape Town part 2

As with Johannesburg and Durban, there were plenty of guided tours scheduled in Cape Town. When you take an entire company to a strange new world across the planet to work for a couple of months, it is always a good idea to provide some diversions in between rehearsals. I understood why we had so many guided tours. I simply preferred to wander around on my own or with a few friends. I skipped most of the guided tours in Cape Town, but a few sounded interesting, and one or two are pretty much required of all visitors.

Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden

By far the best botanic garden in all of Africa. Or at least of the three I saw in Cape Town, Durban, and Johannesburg. Since it was spring, everything was in full bloom. Since I know pretty much nothing about horticulture, all I saw were a bunch of pretty flowers. They also had an exhibit on the geology of the area and how the Cape Peninsula was formed. It was all rocks to me. I thought the flowers looked nicer.

As with the Durban Botanic Gardens, there were birds all over the place. Unlike failing to identify flowers, I could tell the difference between the geese and owls. Just before sunset, something called an African dusky flycatcher goes to town on any insects flying around their territory. If they eat mosquitoes, we should import these guys to Taiwan. Cape Town is probably a better place to live if you are a bird. The city is surrounded by nature, and if you get hungry, there are plenty of people eating in trendy outdoor cafés. Kirstenbosch is proud to be a haven for butterflies, though the Durban Botanic Gardens had far more.

Something we saw in Kirstenbosch that I do not remember ever seeing in Durban were tiny tortoises. These were not the jumbo 100-year-old tortoises that really hate it when you put your children on them for your Facebook pictures. They were cat sized grass assassins. People must find them cute and/or delicious because there were also signs reminding everyone that taking a tortoise home is highly illegal.

Canopy Walkway
Something Kirstenbosch had that I have never seen at any other botanic garden was the tree canopy walkway through a 130 meter stretch of the arboretum. What made it unique was that the walkway got as high as 12 meters in some places. Rather than walk along the trees at ground level, we walked through the trees at monkey level, sometimes standing above a few tree tops. The idea was to give us a unique point of view. It clearly worked. I have walked around a million trees in my life. This was the first time I walked in the trees.

One of the most obvious differences between the Durban Botanic Gardens and Kirstenbosch are the locations. The Durban gardens are downtown, surrounded by city. Kirstenbosch is in Table Mountain National Park, near the bottom of the mountain. Being inside a national park makes for a far more natural environment. Since Kirstenbosch is inside the borders of a national park, you can hike from the gardens into the mountains all day. More than a few of the most popular trails up Table Mountain start at the botanical garden.

Castle of Good Hope
The Castle of Good Hope is a 17th century Dutch fort about as downtown as you can get. It is right next to Cape Town City Hall. The history of the fort is interesting even if the building is not much to look at. I could have missed this one and it would not have detracted from my time in Cape Town in any way whatsoever, though I certainly do not regret going.

District Six Museum
Next to the Castle of Good Hope is the District Six Museum, an old church turned museum. It honors the history of District Six, a multiracial community of artists who were evicted by the government after someone realized the potential for profit so close to the bay and decided it should be a white neighborhood. More than 20,000 residents were forced out of their homes and taken to various townships. Every building that was not a church was bulldozed. Thanks to grassroots protests, the area was never developed. After apartheid died, District Six started to build up again, with a few of the evicted residents returning.

Iziko South African National Gallery / South African Jewish Museum / Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre

Iziko South African National Gallery
The Iziko South African National Gallery, next to the District Six Museum, is a small fine arts museum. I did not recognize the name of a single artist in the collection, even though it had 17th century Dutch and 19th century British art. The Dutch Golden Age has some of my favorite artists, especially Rembrandt. None of them were at the South African National Gallery. Most of the museum is modern art by contemporary South African artists. It is right next to the South African Jewish Museum, which I went to on my own later. Next door is the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre, an odd mashup of the holocaust and apartheid. The worst part about combining the two is that right after the holocaust when everyone said we should never forget and never let anything like that happen again, the first apartheid laws were passed. While it was nice to see a European genocide from an African point of view, there was no way the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre was ever going to compete with Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. I suppose we are not supposed to rate holocaust museums against each other, but Yad Vashem is a truly world class memorial and museum. It is easily one of the best museums I have ever seen anywhere in the world.

Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa

Photograph by Iwan Baan
Just a few feet from the water at Table Bay Harbour is the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. It is even more modern than the South African National Gallery, and is the “largest museum in Africa”. The building is only a few years old and looks like old science fiction's idea of the future when the colonies on the Moon are under attack in the distant year 2000. The South African National Gallery reminded me of the Getty Villa in Los Angeles. MOCAA, as the kids call it, seems like an incredibly well curated museum. But I have to admit that modern art goes right over my head. I can generally get what the artist is trying to say, until I see a bunch of cinder blocks hanging from the ceiling. I have no doubt that it represents something about society and our ills, but it looks like bricks hanging from the ceiling to me.

Victoria & Alfred Waterfront

Across piers from MOCAA is the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, an outdoor tourist shopping mall on the harbor. Like Pier 39 in San Francisco, it is worth a visit. Once. People call it the V&A or V&A Waterfront, which made me think it was named the Victoria & Albert Waterfront. But it was named after Alfred, one of Victoria and Albert's sons. Brits probably learned about all of these people in school, but South Africans do not seem to care about that entitled family at all.

Canal Walk Shopping Centre
The only other group shopping I did in Cape Town was to the Canal Walk Shopping Centre in Century City because it is next to China Town and built on a canal. Both were disappointing. The mall is supposed to look Venetian, but it looks like something in Las Vegas. It is more upscale, so my colleagues liked it, but it was just another mall to me. The tiny Venetian canal looked neither Italian nor Californian and it led to a bit of a swamp, which was surprising to see in an area that is obviously a high priced residential and retail development. China Town was a smaller shopping mall and had absolutely nothing to do with anything even resembling a Chinatown. Everyone was disappointed in that one, especially since it was low end, dollar store shopping.

Robben Island

Photograph by T Holi
A quick ferry ride from the V&A Waterfront gets you to Robben Island, a small chunk of flat land in Table Bay. No one goes for the beaches. The main compound on the island is now a museum and was a prison for 300 years. The most famous prisoner, by far, was Nelson Mandela, who spent 18 years in a surprisingly large cell. His cell had a window, but the view is of a solid gray wall and the gray prison yard. There was no green anywhere in sight. While the island itself is mostly green and brown, the prison yard is concrete and stone. What I liked about the prison/museum tour was that it was conducted by a former inmate. Since it only closed in 1996, there are still plenty of people alive who experienced in firsthand. They can tell their stories much better than a park ranger at Alcatraz.

Something I will remember until the day I die was listening to a Shoah survivor tell her story at Yad Vashem. Her generation is mostly gone. Soon there will be no one to tell us what they witnessed. There is no point in human history without crimes against humanity. We will always treat the people we categorize as different from us like animals. After enough time has passed, we read about all the atrocities in history books and watch documentaries. We are spoiled for choice when it comes to man's inhumanity to man. But listening to someone who was actually there speak about their personal experience is infinitely more powerful than reading a historian's thesis. Yad Vashem will be a moving place even after all the survivors are gone. I only hope Robben Island will not lose some of its power when there are no longer any former inmates to speak to visitors.

Rhodes Memorial

The Rhodes Memorial is a controversial site because Cecil Rhodes was a white supremacist who helped oppress the indigenous South African population. With his fortune from mining blood diamonds, he got into politics and championed laws that would hurt the people of South Africa for the next century. Though a reprehensible human being, he died wealthy enough to remain famous today. He has memorials in Cape Town and Kimberley, Northern Cape. Through his mining monopoly, he helped make diamonds ridiculously expensive and bought large chunks of land throughout southern Africa, including what is now the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden and Nyanga National Park in Zimbabwe, and started the Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University. Rhodes University in Makhanda, Eastern Cape was named after him, as was the entire country of Rhodesia until they changed it to Zimbabwe.

Still, it is a good looking little stone building at the bottom of Devil's Peak, right next to the University of Cape Town. Monuments to horrible people can be nice places to visit. Chiang Kai Shek was a murderous dictator who got rich making his people poor, but the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall is one of the best pieces of architecture in all of Taiwan.

Stellenbosch

Most of our guided tours were within the Cape Town city limits. The biggest exception was when we had a look at some vineyards.

The Cape Winelands region is South Africa's wine capital. Like California's Napa Valley, France's Val de Loire, and Israel's Galil, it is not the only area with vineyards, but it is where most of the award winning wine comes from. We went to Stellenbosch, the largest town in the region surrounded by 150 vineyards. Just outside of Cape Town, Stellenbosch was a quick drive from the City Centre, though it was twice as far away for those of us in Simon's Town. Coincidentally, Simon's Town and Stellenbosch were both named after the same person, Simon van der Stel.

Though practically the same place geographically, Stellenbosch felt different. Cape Town is a large international city with a healthy mix of pretty much every language and ethnic group South Africa has to offer. Stellenbosch is a small town of mostly white people who all speak Afrikaans. As with the rest of South Africa, almost everyone understands English, but the accents were stronger in Stellenbosch. Or at least seemed stronger since they were all mostly the same.

A guided tour through a vineyard would be fascinating for anyone interested in how wine is made. Some in our group loved wine. Some liked it from time to time. Most were indifferent. I used to drink the occasional glass on holidays and during special events. Since I lost my sense of smell, I have had maybe four of five glasses.

Having said all that, the price of wine in Stellenbosch is dirt cheap. We went to a few tastings, none of which did me any good, but everyone else said that every vineyard had some pretty good wine. The Cape Winelands are known for world class wine, and every vineyard told us they had some of the best wine in the world. Little did they know that they were dealing with customers from Taiwan, where every single merchant claims to have the best merchandise. Boasts go in one ear and out the other. Even so, almost everyone in our group bought a bottle or two. It would have been rude not to, and the price was too low to ignore. Wine does nothing for me these days, but I know people back home who might like it, so I bought a few bottles myself.

Table Mountain National Park

The most eagerly anticipated guided tour in Cape Town by pretty much all of us was at two different spots on the Cape Peninsula. Though any of us could have gone to either at any time, and most of us returned a few times, having a guide who knew their way around the first time we went was invaluable.

Cape of Good Hope
Our first stop was the Cape of Good Hope, the southern tip of the peninsula. Part of the Table Mountain National Park, anyone can go there on their own. With a guide, we walked down trails I would have thought were closed or too dangerous for visitors, and got a crash course in the local flora and fauna. There were flowers and plants on the peninsula that could not be found anywhere else in the world. The people of Cape Town are especially proud of their peninsula sandstone fynbos, which all looked like desert plants to me, even though Cape Town is nowhere near a desert. There were small reptiles and mammals that can be found everywhere, as well as the dassie, a cat sized varmint that looks like a Disney cartoon character. The biggest surprise to our guide was when we ran into a sea otter. Though they burrow and sleep on land, they spend most of their time in the water. Our guide speculated that the one we saw might have been sick since it was out in the open and making no effort to hide from us.

What did not surprise our guide at all were the ostriches. They walked around like they owned the place. They are not afraid of humans, and we were warned not to get too close. Their bark is worse than their bite, which is more like a gentle peck, but they can kick you into next week if threatened. They have serious claws that could easily ruin anyone's day. Fortunately, an ostrich is more likely to run away than attack. And they can run circles around whoever holds any Olympic records.

What surprised no one were the baboons. We were told about their behavior before we left Taiwan, so some of my colleagues were terrified of them. Others suggested no one show any fear. I have no idea if a baboon can sense fear in humans, but I know they are not even the tiniest bit afraid of us. There are only a few hundred baboons on the peninsula, even though it seems like they are everywhere. They even greet visitors at the parking lot. The biggest rule, obviously, is to never give them any food under any circumstances. They are selfish creatures and if you give them a crumb, they will take the entire cake. Not that anyone needs to volunteer food. If you have food on you, they will find it and leave you with nothing. The largest monkeys in the world, they can easily kill a human. For some reason, they almost never do. Humans are far more likely to kill them. Baboons are protected in the Table Mountain National Park, but when they roam into nearby villages, they tend to get shot by people who have a problem with anything breaking into their homes for food.

Ironically, there would be fewer baboons digging through trash if humans had not already killed off all of their predators. The Cape Peninsula used to house lions, leopards, and hyenas before men hunted them out. There were also elephants and rhinoceros, which were not a threat to baboons, but hard to image walking around the cape. Elephants need wide open areas to roam. I cannot picture them on the rocky trails or climbing the mountains.

Table Mountain Cableway
Our second destination on the Cape Peninsula was the most famous, and arguably the most famous landmark in all of South Africa. Table Mountain takes up only a tiny fraction of Table Mountain National Park, yet it dominates Cape Town's skyline. Not only is it the highest point in the city, its flat surface makes it stand out more from a distance than a traditional peak like Lion's Head. That flat surface also makes it an incredibly easy mountain to walk across. You need special equipment to reach the summit of most mountains. For Table Mountain, you need to hike for three hours or take a five minute aerial cableway ride. They can cram more than five dozen people into each cable car, but the cars rotate a full 360 degrees during each ride, so everyone gets a view of everything on the way up or down. Riding the aerial cableway reminded me of the ropeway up Mt Misen on Miyajima. Not that the Miyajima cable car rotated. But at each stop, people got off the cars and huddled around the station, taking pictures and taking in the view. At both locations, if you keep walking for a few minutes, the view gets infinitely better.

Walking around the top of Table Mountain felt like walking on an alien landscape. I assume. I have never actually been to another planet. The sky looks just like Earth, but the ground is rock and scattered fynbos. There is a type of aloe that is only on Table Mountain. Unless you know it is aloe, it could be any alien plant. On most of the mountain top, you cannot see that you are even on a mountain. It looks like a vast rocky plain in every direction, except you can tell that you are at a higher elevation. It feels nothing like Kansas. Other than birds, most of the animals are tiny. The biggest creature I ever saw on Table Mountain was a dassie. Baboons used to roam the flat top, but they all left 30 years ago to find easier food, the experts decided. If you go at the right time, you can find yourself in the middle of the table cloth, a thin layer of clouds that drape themselves over the mountain, like cloth over a table. From the City Centre and Harbour, it looks like a white waterfall pouring over the mountain. On the mountain, it looks like sudden fog rolling in. I almost expected to hear some John Carpenter synthesizer music. I highly recommend it, though it takes some lucky timing. I went up Table Mountain a few times and only got covered by the table cloth once.

From any of the ledges on the plateau, you can definitely tell you are on a mountain. They have walkways and viewing platforms at the northern ledge because that faces downtown Cape Town and Table Bay. At over 1000 meters above sea level, there is no better vantage point anywhere in the city. From the western ledge, you look down on Clifton, Camps Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean. The rocky eastern ledge faces the vast Table Flats. It also holds Maclear's Beacon, a rock mound set up by an Irish astronomer almost 200 years ago. At five meters tall, it is the highest point on Table Mountain, which makes it the highest point in Cape Town. The southern side slopes downhill, with more mountain than table, so there is no dramatic ledge from which to stand in amazement. But it is the infinitely easier side to hike up and down.

Camps Bay and Lion's Head from Table Mountain

Lion's Head, Signal Hill, City Centre
with Robben Island, Table Bay, Bloubergstrand
Photograph by Tom Podmore

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Just a reminder, I did not take any of these photographs. These are placeholders until I can replace them with my own. I am attempting to give credit to the photographers when I know who they are.

African Tour:Cape Agulhas

Cape Agulhas
Photograph by Job Thomas
About a week into Cape Town, a few of us decided to go to Agulhas National Park. As national parks go, Agulhas does not have much to brag about. Apparently, it is the smallest national park in South Africa. That was a little refreshing. Everything else claimed to be the largest whatever it was on the continent. Agulhas has no need to overcompensate for how tiny it is. There are two reasons to go, which happened to be the two reasons we wanted to go.

Cape Agulhas is as far south as you can possibly go in Africa. It is also where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans crash into each other. I doubt I will ever go to the southern tips of Argentina or Chile. Unless I go to Melbourne or New Zealand someday, this is about as south as I am ever going to get.

Since Agulhas National Park was not on any scheduled guided tour, we had to find our own way. Since it was over 200 kilometers from our house, taking a taxi was not an option. Something we found incredibly easy to do in South Africa was rent a car. Or hire a car in the local lingo. In some parts of the world, renting a car can be difficult when you have a foreign driver's license. I have had an international permit for years, but using it is always hit and miss. Since my Taiwan license is entirely in Chinese and my Hong Kong license has a lot of Chinese on it, people in English speaking countries get confused. Oddly enough, it never bothers anyone in Israel, a country whose language looks absolutely nothing like English or Chinese.

In South Africa, a country that speaks English and a dozen other languages, no one cared about all the Chinese. Their big rule was that only one person could drive the car, unless we paid for additional drivers. That turned out to be unnecessary since all of the lower priced rental cars had manual transmissions and I was the only one in our little group who could drive a stick. And as terrible as it sounds to say, everyone else was Taiwanese. They had no business driving in a country that obeys basic traffic laws and common sense. Most stereotypes are beyond ignorant, but Chinese drivers truly are horrible. The biggest reasons for that, in my professional opinion, are that no one has to learn how to drive before taking the driving test and none of the existing traffic laws are enforced. Why learn how to drive properly when no one cares whether you do or not. There are no police patrolling the streets of China/Taiwan, so you will never be pulled over. As long as you stop at the red lights that have cameras and only seldom crash into anyone, you can drive as incompetently as you want.

I learned how to drive in Minnesota. I realize how American that makes me sound, but we had to demonstrate an ability to operate the vehicle in traffic in order to get a license. And we had police cars all over the place, any of which could pull you over at any time for a million different reasons. Unlike Taiwan, you can actually lose your license, or even your car, by being a bad driver in the United States. There is ample incentive to do better.

In Cape Town, we rented a shiny blue 2022 Volkswagen Polo 5 speed. Back before I owned a car, I used to love renting cars. It was an opportunity to drive, usually in an unfamiliar place. Now that I have my own car and drive to work every day, some of that magic is gone. There is nothing wrong with the Volkswagen Polo, but my car at home is better in every measurable way. The only thing I would change about my car if I could is that it is not fully manual. The rental car was. So even though it was a much weaker car, it was fun to drive.

The drive from Cape Town to Cape Agulhas was scenic, once we got out of the city. Cape Town is a beautiful city surrounded by nature, but unless you are looking directly toward one mountain or another, the view from most freeways is grass or suburbs. Beyond the city limits, we went up into the Hottentots Holland Mountains. They actually named them that. It was mostly winding hill roads going up and down with a few small towns here and there. Just before the cape, there was an endless stretch on a flat road that went in a straight line. We went from a scenic mountain drive to Interstate 5 in Central California. I almost fell asleep. When the road followed the coast, we drove between the shore and some comfortable looking houses. There was a nice mix of new and overpriced to older beach cottages. They all had great views of the ocean.

The last residential area before the cape was the little laid back beach town of L'Agulhas. Rather than overcharge tourists for the food, every shop owner seemed genuinely friendly. The cashier at the local grocery store told me that they rarely got any foreigners. Given its distance from Cape Town, I could see why. That also explained why so many locals were curious about where we came from. Taiwanese are not the most demonstrative people in the world, and my friends were uncomfortable at first with total strangers coming up to us and asking questions, until they saw how relaxed I was. Since they knew I was from a place with infinitely more crime and chaos than anything they could imagine, they generally looked to me when trying to decide if any given situation was dangerous or not. That was a lot of responsibility, especially when I had never been to South Africa. The country was just as foreign to me as it was to everyone else. Even worse, my last real boyfriend was from South Africa. That gave my colleagues even more reason to assume I knew anything about the place. He told me stories of his homeland, of course, but I was as much out of water as he would be in the United States.

I felt at home in L'Agulhas. It is a tiny village of only a few hundred people. I could never imagine living somewhere so small, yet like Courseulles-sur-Mer, Normandy and Lisse, South Holland, there was something about it that felt innately comfortable. It also would have been an exceptional place to ride a bicycle, called a boney for some reason. Coincidentally, I rented a Volkswagen Polo in Normandy, though a much earlier model. Other than the name, I would never know they were the same car. I could not have planned that even if I wanted to. When we made the reservation, we booked a Toyota Yaris “or similar”.

Almost the entire route from Cape Town to Cape Agulhas was well maintained highways and roads. Until we hit the Cape Agulhas Lighthouse. The lighthouse itself was pretty small and not much more than a pit stop right around the corner from our final destination. Beyond the lighthouse was a dirt road leading to a small dirt parking lot. There was also a wooden walking path from the lighthouse to the ocean. I was expecting some kind of monument, and was delighted to see that they left everything natural. Other than the wood boards and a small sign pointing out that the Indian Ocean was on the left and the Atlantic Ocean on the right, the area probably looked the same as it did a few hundred years ago. There were some serious waves while we were there, but no one went to surf. The shore is several miles of jagged rocks. Even swimming would be suicidal. The only real reason to go to Cape Agulhas is to say that you went to the southern tip of Africa.

One of the first things I noticed about driving in South Africa was how polite the other drivers were. In China and Taiwan, it is kill or be killed. Everyone wants to be first, all the time. There are no stop signs because there is no right of way, so we all get to spend more time at stoplights. There are no passing lanes because everyone has to be first, all the time. In South Africa, drivers actually changed lanes so I could pass them. Not only did they not try to block me, they actively moved out of my way. At one point, a big rig truck moved into the next lane so I could pass. We were going uphill. Changing lanes must have slowed him down, but he made the effort for no other reason than for my convenience. And maybe the law. I was blown away. That would never happen in Taiwan. You either find your own way around the truck or stay behind it until it gets off the freeway. The first few times I let someone pass me, I wondered why their emergency lights were blinking. Something I have never encountered anywhere else in the world was drivers thanking each other for pulling over by turning on their emergency lights. That seems like a pleasant little habit we could easily make universal.

Most of the driving rules in South Africa were pretty straightforward. All of the road signs were in English, which was convenient. My Taiwanese friends found it disorienting, or disorientating, that traffic flowed on the left. Since I have been driving in Hong Kong for almost 12 years, it felt normal to me. My car at home is right hand drive, even though Taiwan is traffic right. If I can get used to that, driving a car with the steering wheel on the correct side relative to traffic is easy. I still prefer to shift with my right hand, but I will take what I can get.

Filling the car with gas was almost the same as Taiwan. The people who work at the station do it for you. Except in South Africa they also wash your windshield and check your tires, or tyres. It was almost like full service in the United States, without any self service option. I can't remember the last time I actually pumped my own gas. It might have been in Spain.

L'Agulhas, South Africa

African Tour:Cape Town part 1

Cape Town International Airport
Cape Town, South Africa
The flight from Durban to Cape Town took a little over two hours and was the opposite of eventful. As with Durban, we were all driven by car to different apartments/houses. The biggest difference was the size.

King Shaka International Airport is in the suburbs of Durban, outside of the city limits, but no more than a half hour drive from downtown. Cape Town International Airport is smack dab in the middle of the city, but it took us over an hour to get to our house. Not only is Cape Town ten times larger than Durban, but our house was in Simon's Town, about as far south as you can go on the Cape Peninsula without hitting protected wilderness. Getting to the house from the airport required three different freeways. When we finally got off the freeway, we were on a long street along the coast. The street got noticeably smaller as we passed through downtown Simon's Town. With most of the city behind us, we turned onto a smaller road that went gradually uphill and then dramatically uphill. We turned onto a tiny lane that looked more suitable for Taiwanese scooters than South African pickup trucks. From scooter lane, we turned onto a slightly wider road that went even further uphill. An hour and twenty minutes after we left the airport, we turned onto a dead end alley. Had this happened in the middle of the night, and had our driver been even close to menacing, this could have been a spooky ride. But we left the airport at ten in the morning, the drive along the coast was cheery, and our driver could not have been friendlier.

From the alley, it looked like we would all be staying in a tiny cottage not nearly large enough for seven people. The house was on a slope, so we had to go indoors before we fully understood its size. The top floor was a two car garage that could only fit small cars. The garage interior was large enough for an American SUV, but the separate garage doors were barely wide enough to fit a Volkswagen. Half a floor down was the tiniest front yard, the front door, a half bathroom, and what could only be described as the mudroom. They probably call it something else in South Africa. The next floor down was somehow four times larger than the floor above. What we came to call the second floor had a large living room, an enormous kitchen, a decent sized dining room, and a full bathroom. There was also a balcony across the entire rear of the house. The bottom floor had three bedrooms and four full bathrooms. The large backyard could be reached by a sliding glass door from each of the bedrooms. Beyond the backyard was a plot of empty land not quite large enough to build another house. Without the fence between the yard and empty land, we would have assumed the entire thing was the backyard. From the street, the back of the house looked like it should have been the front, except there was no front door and the address was posted on the alley side. All of the houses on the street were similar, with inviting backyards on the larger street and small entrances on the alley.

The bedrooms were nothing like what I expected. Instead of a master bedroom, the largest looked like a dorm room. It had four bunk beds, enough for eight people. We only had seven staying at the house, so the four youngest shared that room. At first, we thought the house only had four and a half bathrooms. Then someone opened one of the closets in the largest bedroom and discovered the door to another bathroom. It was an odd design. From the room, it looked like a wall of closets. If you opened the doors on the left and right, you got closet. If you opened the middle door, there was a tiny hallway that led to a full sized bathroom behind all the closets.

The medium sized room looked like any other bedroom with its own bathroom. Two of our more senior dancers shared that one. As the highest ranking person in the house, I took the single room. It was pretty small, but it had its own bathroom. I never really cared about the size of the room since most of the time I spent in the house was either in the kitchen or on that large balcony.

I liked the Durban kitchen better. It was smaller and felt more like a home. The Cape Town kitchen was large and had every appliance we could ever need, except a rice cooker. The kitchen was fully loaded with a stainless steel refrigerator, oven, stove, dishwasher, toaster oven, toaster, microwave, blenders, mixers, pots and pans, dishes and utensils. But it was all western style. There was not a single chopstick in the house and we all missed not having a rice cooker. The Cape Town kitchen was larger, fancier, and obviously more expensive. It felt like it was designed for entertaining guests. I liked the Durban kitchen better because it was designed for making a quiet dinner at home.

The balcony was the best feature of the house. The view from the front yard was the house across the alley. The view from the backyard was the house across the street. Since all the houses were on a slope, they all had a balcony facing northeast. We had an unobstructed view of the northern tip of False Bay. The sunsets were nice, but the sun went down the other side of the Cape Peninsula. Sunrises were spectacular. Since I generally wake up before the dawn, I watched the sun come up over the mountains that surround Cape Town and reflect off the water in the bay almost every morning. Most of my roommates missed it.

Not the actual balcony, but pretty close.
I also saw a whale one day. I was standing on the balcony minding my own business when a whale just popped out of the water. It was too far away for me to even guess what kind of whale it was, but it was definitely a whale. There were more than a few dolphins in False Bay, but any movement from them just looked like waves at that distance. This was clearly a whale jumping halfway out of the water and crashing onto its back. My roommates spent a lot of time looking for their own whales, but none of us ever saw another one. At least not from that balcony.

Artscape Theatre Centre
Transportation in Cape Town was similar to Durban in that we were all picked up and driven to work. That was convenient, especially since we worked more in Cape Town than anywhere else. In other cities, we introduced a few traditional Chinese dance styles to the locals, everyone mostly got a kick out of it, and we moved on. In Cape Town, we learned a traditional African dance, a variation of the Makhibo. That required extra work on our part. Every other show was full of routines everyone knew backward and forward. The Makhibo was brand new to all of us.

Fortunately, we had some free time in between all the rehearsing, though finding our own transportation was more complicated. Since Durban is ten times smaller than Cape Town, it was much easier to get around. I could walk to the beach in less than half an hour, and walk the entire promenade in less than an hour. Cape Town was a harder city to walk around. Boulders Beach was only a few hundred meters away, but with all the winding hill roads, it took a good ten minutes. Downtown Cape Town was more than 40 kilometers from the house. I have no idea how long that would have taken to walk. When we arrived, it looked like staying in Simon's Town was going to be inconvenient.

Local transportation in Cape Town is not exactly admired the world over. The bus lines were convoluted and never really went where we wanted to go. The Metrorail's Simonstown Line went from the main station to Simon's Town. People rave about the view from the train, but that is only during the 20 minute stretch along False Bay. The rest of the ride is an hour in the suburbs. Since Cape Town was designed for cars, taxis were our primary ride off the clock.

And we had plenty of places to go. Cape Town has pretty much everything you need in a single city. You can climb a mountain, swim in the ocean, ogle birds, keep at least one eye on baboons, and run away from an ostrich all in one day. As long as you have transportation.

African Tour:Durban

Lanseria International Airport
Johannesburg, South Africa

King Shaka International Airport
Durban, South Africa
Our flight to Durban was short and easy. We spent more time in the terminal than on the plane, though there were no delays this time. Rather than fly out of OR Tambo International Airport, we left Johannesburg from Lanseria International Airport, a much smaller airport. It has international in its name, but I only saw signs for flights to other cities in South Africa.

The drive to the hotel was also faster. At least for four of us. Instead of piling everyone into a business hotel, we all stayed at apartments and B&Bs around town. I have no idea if that was a better arrangement, and I doubt it was more efficient, but I liked it a lot more. There was nothing wrong with the hotel in Johannesburg. It was a clean place to sleep and close to major thoroughfares. In Durban, I stayed with three other dancers in a nice little apartment in the Morningside neighborhood. We were an easy walk to Mitchell Park, a Spar grocery store, Florida Road, and Battery Beach.

The grocery store was convenient since we were in an apartment instead of a hotel. The apartment's kitchen was more than adequate and was even stocked with a few staples right before we arrived. The husband and wife owners lived close by and were happy to help out with pretty much anything we needed. Caroline brought us homemade rusks every morning, which we all appreciated even if we never ate them until later in the day. She even drove us to the grocery store when we made our biggest run. There was a washer and dryer directly below the apartment, but we found the washer difficult to use. Betty, the housekeeper, did all of our laundry for most of our stay. I felt a little bad about having an older black woman wash my clothes, especially in a South African apartment owned by a white couple, but she did an incredible job. Whenever we put anything in the laundry bags, it came back cleaned, ironed, and neatly folded. No one ever charged us anything for the laundry, so we left Betty a decent tip before we checked out. My Taiwanese roommates thought that everyone should do the best job they could regardless of their pay, but I convinced them that in tipping cultures, it is always a good idea to tip well for exceptional service. I had the same conversation every time any of us went to a restaurant.

Betty was the highlight of Durban. She probably had a fascinating life story, but was reluctant to talk about herself, so I never pushed her. Something she loved to talk about were her grandchildren, which made my roommates feel bad that she was cleaning up after us. The cultural differences were interesting. Where I had white guilt and never really thought about her age, they had generation guilt and never thought about her race. For her part, Betty seemed to have the meaning of life sorted out. I would not mind spending a day as content as she always was.

Florida Road is this week's trendy restaurant street. We saw plenty of tip jars. It had Spiga, a vaguely Italian café with a lot of penne dishes; Glamwich, a haven for avocado toast and bunny chow; Times Square, which always seemed more popular at drinking time than at eating time; Bird & Co, a chicken and pizza place that looked like fast food at restaurant prices; Paul's Homemade Ice Cream, which had confusing flavors, like the vegan “No Cow and Chicken”. I understand the no cow part, but never knew ice cream had chicken in it; House of Curries, with the largest bunny chow menu; the Firehouse, a pizza place with trendy toppings like avocado, toasted coconut, cashews, and teriyaki sauce; Sofra Istanbul, a Turkish restaurant with frozen french fries; Sabroso, with its generic Mexican menu; Fired Up Pizzeria, with pizzas so ugly, I did not even want to step inside; Flamin' Wok, a vaguely Thai restaurant with fortune cookies; and Tommy's Sushi, with “Chinese takeaway”. It was not Chinese. There were even more restaurants on the next block. The entire street was wall to wall restaurants. We could have eaten at a different place every day, even without going to other parts of the city.

The Thai place was noteworthy, even though no one thought it tasted like Thai food. They had fortune cookies, which I had to explain to my Taiwanese colleagues, who had never heard of such a thing. There is something surreal about sitting in a Thai restaurant in South Africa and describing American Chinese food to Chinese people. My colleagues were flabbergasted when I told them that everyone in the United States thinks Chinese people eat fortune cookies.

Bunny chow had to be explained to all of us. It is a loaf of white bread stuffed with curry. A quarter bunny is more than large enough for one person. Rabbits are not involved in any way. It was invented by Indian immigrants as an explicitly vegetarian dish. There are disputed theories about why they are called bunnies and which restaurant in Durban, if any, has the original. Fortunately, we asked what bunny chow was early in the trip. We would see it on more than a few menus throughout Durban.

Transportation in Durban was a little more complicated than Johannesburg. Rather than pick everyone up from one hotel in a charter bus, our drivers went to all of our different apartments and drove us around in cars. That meant we never all arrived at rehearsals at the same time, which meant more time in transit despite driving shorter distances. Guided tours were also more complicated. Everyone was driven by car to a meeting point and then driven as a group by bus to whatever tourist trap was on the agenda that day. I mostly avoided all of that, with a few exceptions.

Gateway Theatre of Shopping
Umhlanga, South Africa
When everyone else went to the Gateway Theatre Of Shopping in Umhlanga, a few of us took the bus and went to Umhlanga Beach. The Gateway Theatre Of Shopping claims to be the “largest shopping mall in the Southern Hemisphere”. Umhlanga Beach is famous for its lighthouse and rocky coast just beyond the soft sandy beach. With a long promenade right next to the beach, it is a great place to walk on sand or pavement, though a lousy spot for surfing or swimming. There was no way any of my colleagues would want to swim in an ocean anyway.

Umhlanga Beach
Photograph by LC Swart
When everyone took a bus to the Pavilion Shopping Centre in Westville, I walked down the Golden Mile. From the pictures I saw, the Pavilion looked a little like the Taipei 101 mall. One of the stores at the mall is a Christian bookstore called CUM Books. Being immature, this caught my attention. I was disappointed to learn that CUM stands for Christelike Uitgewers Maatskappy, which means Christian Publishing Company in Afrikaans. The Golden Mile is both a beach and several beaches along a seven kilometer stretch from Blue Lagoon Beach to the North Pier. It has none of the famous rocks of Umhlanga Beach up the coast, which makes it a much better place for surfing and swimming. It has the “longest beachfront promenade in sub-Saharan Africa”, which only made me curious where the longest promenade in North Africa was. The promenade and beaches were an easy walk from our apartment, so I went there more than a few times. The first time I went into the water, I thought it was my first time in the Indian Ocean. Then I remembered that I did some beach swimming in Bali almost ten years ago.

Not that I avoided all the guided tours. I went with the group to the Durban Botanic Gardens, which was far more botanic than the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens in Johannesburg. It had more flowers, which is probably a good thing. There was even a separate orchid house, the “largest orchid collection in South Africa”, naturally. It was closed that day. The butterfly habitat was open, and a great place to look at butterflies, if you are into that sort of thing. The garden was especially proud of its tree collection. They bragged about their palm trees, which are not so impressive for those of us who live on a tropical island. They also had a lot of jacaranda trees, which are common in South Africa and not something we ever see at home. Even though we were there while the flowers were in bloom, the locals did not seem to care. What we found different, they found ordinary, and vice versa. The best part of the gardens was probably the small lake, where we saw more than a few birds I could never identify.

The Durban Natural Science Museum is inside city hall rather than its own dedicated building. It might be the smallest natural science museum I have ever been to, but all the children we saw loved it. That is really all that matters. If you can get them interested when they are still young and care about things, maybe they will care when they get older.

The Umgeni River Bird Park near the mouth of the Umgeni River had even more birds I could never hope to name. I recognized the flamingos, pelicans, swans, owls, toucans, peacocks, macaws, vultures, and those little Australian birds that got Men At Work sued. If they have over 300 species, that means I barely knew any of them. The bird park is essentially a zoo, which is never my favorite place to go. I was in a part of Africa where you can see animals in their natural habitat. Gawking at them in cages is the last thing I want to do, but the Umgeni River Bird Park breeds 17 different endangered species. That has to count for something. It was also free.

The worst guided tour was to the Japanese Gardens, which is a waste of time for anyone who has been to Japan or a garden. It is a park with a few generic Japanese decorations here and there. The only interesting aspect to the Japanese Gardens are the monkeys that wander around. Something we were warned about before we left Taiwan, besides crime, were the baboons in South Africa. Apparently, they are even bigger troublemakers than macaques. The monkeys we saw in the park were smaller and much calmer. Though not at all afraid of us, they never tried to steal anything from anyone.

Next to the Japanese Gardens was Sun Sun Supermarket. Billed as an Asian grocery store “With Everything Asian Under the Sun”, some of my colleagues were excited to check it out. I was more than a little skeptical. Outside of Asia, “Asian” usually means dry noodles and soy sauce. Surprisingly, it looked a lot like a Chinese grocery store, only with far more signs in English. They even had Super Supau, which I have never seen outside of Taiwan. Everyone in the building except me could have been from East Asia, which is what most people outside of Asia mean when they talk about Asia. Nothing west of India ever counts. Though their inventory was much smaller than everything under the sun, my colleagues walked out with full bags.

Watching Taiwanese people shop is an odd experience. We were in a part of the world none of us had ever been to before. Yet instead of buying ceramic giraffes and zebra keychains, they mostly bought clothes made in China and Vietnam from stores similar or exactly the same as what we have at home. When it came to food, the less exotic the better. Even though I could never taste anything, I wanted to try the local dishes. I have no idea what bunny chow tastes like, but I have eaten it in a few different places. They could taste everything, and wanted the most familiar food they could find. Taiwanese would have been preferable, but Chinese would have to do. There was nothing in all those Sun Sun bags they could not buy at home.

The Playhouse Company Theatre
We also did some work with the Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre, who were all fantastic.
September to November is spring in South Africa, so I came prepared. Most of my Taiwanese colleagues did not bring bathing suits because we started in October. Several people pointed out the difference between the Southern and Northern Hemisphere, but to the Taiwanese, October is not bathing suit season. I am often baffled by their insistence on dressing for the season rather than the weather. If it is 30 degrees and humid in July, they wear t-shirts and sandals. If it is 30 degrees and humid in December, they wear coats and boots. I thought that being in a different country at a much lower latitude would change that. I was wrong. Almost everyone dressed for Taiwan October, not South Africa October.

We arrived in Durban at the tail end of a storm. You could tell it had been raining for a while, though it took a break before our plane landed. The next few days had scattered thunderstorms and the threat of rain around the corner. Then we woke up to sunny and warm almost every other day. There was one full rainy day in Durban and one day where it rained off and on. Otherwise, it was spring sun and clouds. Every night was colder than a Taiwan winter, but none of the days were nearly as hot. Even on the hottest days, which were always below 30 degrees, there was usually a nice breeze coming from the ocean.

Our apartment did not have a swimming pool, but the house next door did. I mentioned something about how much I like to swim to Caroline during a random conversation and the next day she told me we could use the swimming pool next door. I have to assume they had some kind of previous arrangement with their neighbors to let tenants use it. It seems almost impossible that we were let into a stranger's pool just because I happened to mention it in passing. Regardless of whatever went on behind the scenes, none of my roommates brought bathing suits. That meant I got the swimming pool to myself. The owners of the house with the pool were much older. I got the impression they had not used it in years. Eventually, my roommates wised up and bought bathing suits, even though it was almost November. One afternoon, some of Betty's grandchildren joined us. It did not seem like their first time in that pool. Though Betty never donned a bathing suit, she kept an eye on those children like a meerkat. I wondered what it must have been like for her to watch a white woman, a few Chinese women, and her black grandchildren all swimming in the same water together, and then to know that it would never be an issue for the children.

Johannesburg is much bigger than Durban and probably has more to see and do. I preferred Durban for a few reasons. Our apartment was in a quiet residential neighborhood instead of in the middle of a shopping mall. The people we worked with in both cities were friendly, but the people of Durban were less big city uptight and more small town relaxed. Durban is on the Indian Ocean and has several beautiful beaches. Johannesburg is nowhere near a large body of water. We spent twice as much time in Durban, so I had more opportunity to wander around and explore on my own without any tour guides. I usually wake up before sunrise at home. After adjusting to the time difference in Johannesburg, I did the same most days in Durban. Since Durban is on the east coast, the beaches are an excellent place to watch the sun rise over the Indian Ocean. Simply walking down the Durban promenade was a better day than any of the scheduled tourist stops in Johannesburg.

Photograph by Liesel Muhl

African Tour:Pretoria

Pretoria is right next to Johannesburg, so there were no flights or sitting around airports all day. The charter bus took less than an hour. We only did two shows, so there was no hotel. We left our Johannesburg hotel in the morning, drove to Pretoria, had a quick rehearsal, did the first show, took a break, did the second show, and took the bus back to the hotel.

State Theatre
Our very temporary home base in Pretoria was the State Theatre, billed as the largest theater in Africa. It did not seem all that big to us, but we quickly found more than a few places that claimed to be the largest of their kind on the entire continent. My impression was that it is similar to every Ray's in New York that claims to be the original. The theater had a decent stage and sound system, and more importantly, ample restrooms backstage, so it worked for us.

Union Building
With limited time between shows, we never strayed far from the central business district. We did some eating, too much shopping, and went to the Union Building Gardens, a hillside park outside the president's house. You cannot actually go inside the Union Buildings because it is the president's house. The park is nice, and since it sits on one of the tallest hills in the city, there was a nice breeze rolling downhill. That is always a good thing between shows.

Photograph by Clayton Majona
We saw why Pretoria is known as the Jacaranda City. Several streets were lined with Jacaranda trees in full bloom. We also saw why some of the locals see them as a nuisance. When thousands of people walk over the fallen flowers, they create a sticky stain that must be a pain in the ass to clean.

African Tour:Johannesburg

Taoyuan International Airport
Taipei, Taiwan

Suvarnabhumi Airport
Bangkok, Thailand

Hamad International Airport
Doha, Qatar

OR Tambo International Airport
Johannesburg, South Africa

Flying from Taiwan to South Africa is pretty simple. We took Thai Airways from Taipei to Bangkok, then Qatar Airways from Bangkok to Doha and a separate flight from Doha to Johannesburg. It was supposed to take 24 hours.

Our first delay was in Bangkok. We spent nine hours at Suvarnabhumi Airport. They never told us why. As other passengers were put onto other flights, we waited. We were a larger group, so it was probably more difficult to find something for us. I am not normally a fan of waiting in airports for nine hours, but something interesting came out of it. Our original Bangkok to Doha flight was supposed to be on a Boeing 777, which I have flown on plenty of times. Our new flight was on an Airbus A380, which I had never flown before. The A380 is that double decker plane that was supposed to revolutionize air travel and replace the 747. Except it never did. Airbus built fewer than 300 planes in 18 years, compared to more than 1,500 planes in 50 years for the 747. Airbus lost money on the A380. Boeing made a fortune on the 747.

We finally left Bangkok at three in the morning. Because of time zones and that whole spinning of the Earth thing, our seven hour flight landed just before six in the morning. Hamad International Airport in Doha seems to be pretty popular. It wins awards from organizations that hand out awards to airports. The first time I went to Hamad International Airport was on my way to Barcelona. That flight was also delayed, so I spent ten hours in the award-winning airport in the middle of the night when all of the things that won the awards were closed.

This time, we spent almost 15 hours at the airport, starting at six in the morning when everything was closed. The advantage to being in a larger group was that the airline put us up in one of the airport hotels. The last thing they wanted was for any of us to leave the airport, not that we had any visas for Qatar. I was the only one in our group with a passport that could get me out of the airport without any extra paperwork. Since I only had 15 hours, and I am not wild about spending money in a country where being gay is a capital offense, I thought it best to stay with my group and take a break in that free hotel.

After dinner, we took an eight and a half hour flight to Johannesburg on a Boeing 777. Our 24 hour trip from Taipei took 44 hours.

Melrose Arch
We arrived in Johannesburg at four in the morning and were at our hotel before six. Another good thing about being in a larger group was that we could check into the hotel as soon as we got there. Solo travelers usually have to wait until the normal check in time, which is nowhere close to six in the morning. The Johannesburg Marriott Hotel Melrose Arch was a standard business hotel just like every Marriott I have ever seen anywhere in the world. For some reason, I assumed all of our hotels on this trip would be similar. They were not.

Melrose is a more upscale neighborhood of Johannesburg. The Melrose Arch is a new office/retail development that looks absolutely nothing like most of the city. It is how business leaders want Johannesburg to look and how community leaders know Johannesburg will never look. I do not and should not have a dog in this race, but if I had a vote, I would say the city should try to keep its traditional feel and not look like a pedestrian shopping mall. The entire Melrose Arch area reminded me of the outdoor pedestrian part of the Southpoint Mall in Durham, though only in appearance. Johannesburg feels nothing like North Carolina.

One of the first things I noticed about the Melrose Arch was the overt security presence. One thing we had been warned about before leaving Taiwan was the high crime rates in South Africa, especially Johannesburg. From what I could tell, it was all private security. That did nothing to make me feel safe. I know nothing about South African police training, but anywhere else I have ever been, private security companies do not generally hire the best of the best. In Jerusalem's Old City, you sometimes see armed soldiers. If you want safety, they are the way to go. Their training is some of the best in the world. Any job that pays the bills is something to be proud of, but mall cops are not going to take a bullet for you.

Not that we ever needed anything that extreme. Johannesburg was like New York or Los Angeles. There are some neighborhoods you might want to avoid at night and some you should probably stay out of altogether. Most of the city is perfectly safe for anyone not walking down the street waving large wads of cash. To the Taiwanese, none of that made any sense. You can walk any street in Taiwan at any time with the Hope Diamond in your gold crown and no one will look at you twice. Unless you are a foreigner. Then they will stare at you all day, without any violent intent. I never noticed anyone staring at us in South Africa. Then again, Johannesburg has the largest Chinese population in all of Africa, and people who look like me are nothing special.

We were two to a room in the hotel, which was not a problem at all since we spent most of our time either at work or visiting some tourist trap. I can barely remember what the room looked like. There was a lot of gray and beige. I suppose those are the fashionable colors right now. By South Africans standards, it was exceptionally dull and lacked the vibrant colors we saw all over the country.

The biggest disadvantage to traveling with a large group of Taiwanese is that they love guided tours. The larger the group, the better. When I go somewhere new, I want to wander around and get a little lost. The things I have accidentally stumbled across are far more interesting than anything some stranger booked in advance. When Taiwanese go somewhere, they want to shop, see the most popular sights in the travel guides, and eat at mostly Chinese restaurants that have been approved by previous Taiwanese tourists.

Since Johannesburg was our first stop on this African Tour, and I am a supervisor of sorts, I chose to stay with the group more than I wanted. In between rehearsals, shows, and all the driving back and forth, we piled into a charter bus when we had some time off and saw tiny slivers of Johannesburg that taught us almost nothing about the culture or its people.

Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens
We went to the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens, which looked more like a park than a botanical garden. Apparently, they used to have a nursery, but it closed a few years ago. Its biggest selling point is a small waterfall that flows from a hill where some eagles live. I never saw any eagles, but we were in South Africa. Plenty of animals were right around the corner.

We went to the Old Kromdraai Gold Mine, one of the mines during South Africa's gold rush that put Johannesburg on the map. They still call Johannesburg the City of Gold, but only on brochures. No one actually called it that in person. While the history is important to South Africans, no one in our group was especially impressed by rusty old mine carts and the dirt entrance of a tunnel.

We took a walking tour of Sophiatown, a cultural and artistic haven at the beginning of the 20th century, much like Montmartre in Paris or Dashijie in Shanghai. At the time, artists of all races and backgrounds could mingle, drink too much, and discuss all the vast intricacies of life. Unfortunately, most of the original buildings were bulldozed when it became a white neighborhood and the black population was violently relocated to the Soweto township.

One of the better guided tours was the Alexandra bicycle tour. We rode bicycles around the Alexandra township, which is one of the poorest neighborhoods in Johannesburg and borders Sandton, one of the richest. There was a bit of a history lesson, but our guide mostly ignored the poverty around us and the fact that what we paid to ride bicycles could have bought books for a few families.

Soweto
The best and worst guided tour we took in Johannesburg was in Soweto. With a population of over one million people in two hundred square kilometers, it is by far the largest township in South Africa. The tour covered a small area while the tour guide tried to cram a lot of history into a short presentation. Most of my Taiwanese colleagues were completely unaware of South Africa's history. Apartheid was never something they studied in school, but it was a word they heard a lot in South Africa.

Our tour guide told us that Soweto was essentially a ghetto for black people, many of whom were evicted from their homes and forced to live in the township. They could only legally leave when going to work in the mines or other parts of Johannesburg. Someone in our group asked how the white people could control the black population that outnumbered them six to one. The convoluted answer was a long history of colonization and oppression by my ancestors. By the time Apartheid was the law of the land, the black majority was used to being treated like criminals. As the only white person on the bus, I did what my people have always done. I oversimplified a complicated situation for my Taiwanese colleagues and told them the whites had all the money.

As the only person on our tour group who knew anything about the history of South Africa, albeit not nearly enough, I was not at all surprised by anything our tour guide told us in Soweto. What surprised me were the living conditions. I expected a Hooverville of tin shacks with dirt floors, which do indeed exist. I thought Soweto would look more like Alexandra. But there were also plenty of paved roads, wood framed houses with tile roofs, lots of garages for all the cars, and ample electricity and indoor plumbing. At least in the daytime. Nelson Mandela's house is a small but sturdy brick and mortar building.

When I saw a tour group of white people strolling through the township, I wondered if their tour guide was showing them the real Soweto or the tourist version we were seeing. I never felt guilty while I was with Taiwanese people who had nothing to do with Apartheid. Had they lived in South Africa at the time, they would have been classified as Coloured, which sounds terrible where I come from and was even worse in 20th century South Africa. I could not help but look disapprovingly at the white tourists who were treating this home to a million people as some kind of tourist attraction, even though I was doing the same thing. My internal defense was that I never wanted to go there. I wanted to explore Johannesburg's vibrant present, not learn even more about its appalling past. When I go to Hiroshima, I visit the Peace Park, but I spend most of my time in the mix of near future and distant past.

In Johannesburg's present, we ate a great deal of food. That is unavoidable if you travel with a large group of Taiwanese. If they love anything more than shopping during their travels, it is easting. The food in South Africa was something I was not looking forward to at all. Most of the time, in my daily life, I can ignore the fact that I have no sense of smell and cannot taste flavors. When I go somewhere I have never been, especially somewhere as famous for its cuisine as South Africa, that reality hits me in the face at every meal. Had I been able to taste anything, I probably would have eaten like a Taiwanese.

Most of my colleagues wanted to try the local Chinese food. There was a basic, all over the place “Chinese” restaurant near the hotel. None of their dishes were familiar and no one was impressed. It never stood a chance anyway because it was not in the travel guides. Not the most adventurous people in the world, my traveling companions were really only interested in eating pre-approved food.

Oriental Plaza
Luckily for them, not so much for me, Johannesburg has more than a few shopping malls. They reminded me of every shopping mall everywhere in the world, except for the metal detectors at the door and private security guards checking bags before anyone could get in. The one mall I might remember in years to come was the Oriental Plaza, just down the M1 from our hotel. I thought the name was interesting because where I come from, it would be seen as insulting to the Chinese. The Chinese shoppers I was with could not have cared less. They were there for deals. Unlike most malls, shoppers could haggle on prices at the Oriental Plaza. Taiwanese love to haggle, even though prices are set at all malls in Taiwan. As for a taste of the Orient, nothing in the mall reminded anyone of home. They were mostly disappointed that it was run down and looked like it had seen better days.

Further east is China Town, several blocks of restaurants and shops that did not look the least bit Chinese. But there were Chinese signs all over the place, which I found strangely comforting, and most of the shops were owned and operated by Chinese immigrants. My colleagues loved it because they could speak to people in their language and eat food that was far more authentic than any of the upscale “Chinese” restaurants in town.

There were plenty of extremes in Johannesburg. We went to the poorest neighborhoods and some of the richest. We drove past car dealerships selling Maseratis and young men standing on the side of the road selling cell phone cases and plastic toys. There are roadside stalls selling fruit in Taiwan, but usually in rural areas. The most you will see in the city is someone selling flowers. In Johannesburg, larger than any city in Taiwan, you can buy anything at a stop light. Which are called robots, for some reason.

We also did some work here and there, but Johannesburg was more about adjusting and adapting. The work was nothing new. The audiences were, and they seemed to enjoy a look into a culture very different from theirs. Johannesburg will always be my gateway into Africa, which is probably not the best position to be in. I vividly remember my first visit to Tokyo, but the Ginza was sensory overload. There was too much to take in all at once. I get the feeling Johannesburg will feel the same way a few years down the road.

Johannesburg

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I took thousands of photographs in South Africa. It is going to take a while to sort through them all. But since I will be describing some photogenic places, it feels wrong to not show any pictures. I will use placeholder photographs until I can replace them with my own, and give credit to the photographers when I know who they are.