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: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.

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.

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.

New Stuff

One thing you have to consider when moving from one country to another is what to do with all your stuff. I originally moved to China with a suitcase and backpack. I have far more crap now. When we moved into the Yau Ma Tei apartment, we all threw away more than a few boxes full of clutter. Moving from China to Taiwan, we knew we would have to get more drastic.

Shipping boxes of stuff between countries is fast and easy. Both Hong Kong and Kaohsiung are port cities with large airports. It takes two days by sea and two hours by plane, not including all the sitting around and waiting time. Given that Hong Kong and Kaohsiung are so close to each other, we calculated that it would be cheaper to ship everything rather than unload in China and buy new in Taiwan.

The exception being large appliances. There is no benefit to shipping a refrigerator internationally. They are large and heavy, which means expensive, and brand new Japanese or Korean refrigerators in Taiwan are pretty cheap. Our washing machine was getting old anyway. And, not an unimportant point, Hong Kong and Taiwan sockets and voltage mostly do not match.

We sold and/or gave away our old refrigerator, washing machine, TV, sofa, beds, and all kinds of tables and chairs. That meant one pretty expensive shopping spree at the new place. We have been good to Taiwan's economy. As a city of almost three million people, Kaohsiung has more than a few places to buy a few things.

We bought our new refrigerator, washing machine and TV from Carrefour, which is probably not the ideal place to buy electronics. But they had what we wanted at a good price and delivered everything at a convenient time. Since we were in the middle of moving between countries, delivery time was important to us. And by getting several big ticket items at the same time, we were automatically made members of their super special VIP club. Realistically, that will probably only save us a few dollars a month, but we will likely use Carrefour as our main grocery store, so why not.

Buying furniture did not get us any special membership, but when you buy an apartment's worth of beds, tables and chairs at the same time, stores tend to be extra attentive. They also knock down the prices of everything. The sofa was custom made by some guy who makes sofas. I was more than a little skeptical at first, but he did a great job and delivered on time and in the rain what turned out to be larger than I expected. It is also far more nappable than our previous sofa.