The only reason I encouraged Pi Chi to submit her paper to the Durban conference was because I wanted to go to Cape Town. And presenting it at such a conference would make it easier to publish. But mostly I wanted to go to Cape Town.
Every so often Pi Chi rattles off a list of places where such conferences are held. They are mostly in cities or countries I have no desire to go, or are in exceptionally expensive areas at rather inconvenient times. There is almost always a conference in Hawaii at the end of April. Nurses seem to like going there, and April is a good time for Hawaii. Unless you have to fly through Japan, as we would. The end of April is Golden Week in Japan. Several public holidays are all smashed together and a shitload of Japanese hit the road. It is like flying through China during what the Chinese do not call Chinese New Year. When not going to Disneyland, the Japanese love going to Hawaii. We could get cheaper flights if we flew to Australia or California and then to Hawaii, but I am morally opposed to taking the absurdly long way around.
There is usually a conference in Scandinavia in January. I am always up for a trip to Denmark or Sweden. Or any of the lesser Scandinavian countries. But they get a little chilly in January. I like snow as much as the next person who does not have to live in it, but I prefer to stay as far away from the Arctic Circle in January as possible.
Turkey has recently shown up as a conference site. I could do Turkey. The odds of my accidentally hiking near the Syrian or Iranian border are pretty thin. But the cheapest flights from here to there require stopping in Johannesburg or London. Johannesburg is not what one would call close to Turkey. And the flights from London to Ankara cost as much as the flights from Hong Kong to London. I am cheap enough to find that inexcusable.
When Pi Chi said there was a conference in Durban I said yes, emphatically.
“Durban good?” asks she.
“A mere pittance on the world stage,” says I, “But a brief sojourn to the wondrous metropolis that is and always will be the Cape Town.”
“Captown good?” asks she.
“Aye, verily,” respondeth I.
I do not remember the exact conversation, but I am sure it went something like that. I think one of us was holding a parrot.
We rented a Honda at Cape Town International that looked just like the Toyota we rented at OR Tambo, and drove to our house on False Bay. Obviously, this meant a good deal of driving. Especially since the N2 was under serious construction for the World Cup next year.
I put more effort into finding our Cape Town house than any accommodation I have ever used anywhere. Cape Town has relatively few traditional hotels and more guest houses than most cities its size. It also has a wide variety of houses for rent at amazingly low prices. Unless you go during the World Cup. Fortunately, we were a year ahead. The low prices threw me off, and I was suspicious of the first few houses I saw. Common sense told me that a four bedroom house with a swimming pool for US$100 per night must be a rat hole and/or in a horrible neighborhood. The more I looked into it, the more I saw that $100 was the high end and most of the houses looked pretty nice. At least according to the websites.
I eventually chose a house with great views of False Bay that looked pretty good on several websites. The good news in renting a house rather that going to a hotel is that there are no hotels overlooking False Bay. If you want those postcard views you have to rent a house. The bad news is that the person who claimed to be in charge of the house did not take credit cards. I had to send half of the payment in a bank transfer and pay the rest in cash when we got there. All of my research told me that this was standard operating procedure. Apparently South Africans are trusting enough to rent out their very nice fully furnished houses to total strangers, but not trusting enough to take anything besides cash.
If I lived in a normal country, it would probably be very easy to send bank transfers. I could probably do that sort of thing online with today’s e-technology. But I live in a place where computers are used almost exclusively for playing extremely violent and graphic games that depict women as very small, save for their enormous breasts. Business is rarely transacted via computer as all Chinese business requires a Chinese hand stamp before anything is official. A personal seal outweighs a signature and most of the computers around here cannot produce either. I do not even know if my bank has any computers. Everything is done with paper and stamps. Sending money from my bank to another requires filling out several very long forms. When I found that the information provided by the person who manages the house in Cape Town was insufficient, I had to ask him for more information. He told me that what he gave me should do the trick. I agreed, but it did not. After several attempts and far too many e-mails, I was finally able to send him a big wad of cash. Or not.
He was supposed to send a confirmation e-mail upon receipt of said wad. After a time, I sent him an e-mail asking if he indeed had my easily earned cash. When there was no response I considered the options. The money might not have gone through. If not, where is it and can I have it back? Sending money from an Asian bank that no one outside of Asia has ever heard of to an African bank that no one outside of Africa has ever heard of could be risky. But if the money went into some interdimensional banking void, why was this guy not answering my e-mails? The second option was that he had my money and I would never hear from him again. That would be inconvenient. I could find another house and go through the entire process again, hoping for a better result, and hunt this person down once we got there. But I only knew where the house was, not where the person who said he managed it was. Also, I tend to think that when something goes horribly wrong I should probably not repeat the process. Excluding marriage, of course.
A third option was that he had received the money and had simply not yet had a chance to send an e-mail. This was my bank’s opinion when I went there to see if I could get my money back. They guaranteed that the money went through successfully. When a Chinese person guarantees something it means that they think there is a fair chance that something might be as they possibly say it is. They also say that things are impossible if they are unlikely, unusual or require some effort.
With the money gone forever, I did what I could to look into this person who may or may not have gotten it. I had his name, bank account number and business address. Apparently with the e-technology, that is enough.
I found his Myspace page with plenty of photographs of him surfing and skiing, some college information, his work address and quite possibly his mother’s home address. When I found out that he is the manager of a tile company, I was a little worried. It did not seem likely to me that the manager of a tile company was authorized to rent out houses to visitors. The tile company is located very close to the house, which only made me more suspicious. Anyone who drives by a house for sale every day could easily take pictures of it and advertise it as rentally available. The fact that this same house with similar pictures was on several different websites recommended by the South African tourist board did nothing to assuage my concern.
Surfer Dude eventually sent an e-mail saying that he received the e-money and all systems were go, but I was never confident that any of this would work out. Before we left the Silk Continent for the Dark Continent, I printed out a large list of alternate accommodations should this one turn to the absolute shit pile I assumed it would. I also brought along every piece of information I had on this guy just in case legal action and/or Molotov cocktails were required.
I told none of this to Pi Chi. I generally like to avoid telling her about such speed bumps because she always “has a feeling” that only the worst outcome is possible. Once she has her feelings she will either nag me until I do whatever she wants me to do or I smother her in her sleep. In this case she would have insisted that I book another house. But I preferred to keep her in the dark and be optimistic. And I really did not want to go through all the paperwork for another bank transfer.
I also neglected to tell Pi Chi that half of the house payment was to be paid in cash on arrival. Since Cape Town was at the end of our trip, this meant I wandered around South Africa with a big wad of cash in my pocket. This would have sent her into apoplectic shock. The last thing the Chinese will have on them when facing Big Black Men is money. And there were all those animals at Kruger that might have eaten me. Not to mention the Indians. One should never get a Chinese started on the Indians. When I lived in the filthy little farm village of 崙背, one of the locals told me that he would never want to visit India as it is too dirty. Most Chinese do not get irony.
When we drove up to the Cape Town house, it looked just like the pictures on all the websites. That was encouraging. But the address was wrong. The number that I had been given was the house next door. That was discouraging. While we waited for Surfer Dude to show up with the keys, I was still willing to believe that this situation could go either way. When he actually showed up, I was more than a little surprised, and Pi Chi was relieved as she was in desperate need of the facilities.
When Surfer Dude told me that the house next to the house that was featured on all of the websites was indeed the rental house, I could feel my eyebrows involuntarily fall. But this was the same jock on Myspace and he had the keys to one of these houses, and with Pi Chi in the bathroom, that was good enough for me. The actual rental house turned out to be bigger and nicer than the one on all those websites. We did not need bigger, but nicer was nice. Lamentably, the actual rental house did not have a pool. But it was winter, and whether I would have actually used the pool is debatable. Since Pi Chi cannot swim, it is likely that she would not have. The pool at the fake rental house is also clearly visible from the actual rental house, so naked time would have been problematic. And the actual rental house had a large stoep spanning the length of the house from which one could watch whales in the bay and suns setting. I spent more time on the stoep than I probably would have in the pool.
When Surfer Dude left, he had my big wad of cash and we had keys to a very nice house that he may or may not have been authorized to rent. If anything went wrong I could always call his mobile phone that always goes to voice mail or write an e-mail to which he would take weeks to respond.
The entire time we were there I expected a surprised family to come home from vacation. But it was a nice house.
The great thing about Cape Town is that it is lekker topgallant. Dude. Specifically, it has friendly natives, excellent food, great weather, well-paved roads and outstanding scenery.
With no conference to occupy Pi Chi’s attention, I had no free days to see Cape Town my way. But Cape Town is not a popular travel destination amongst the Chinese. This means that they do not watch television shows that tell them where to eat, or buy travel books that tell them where to shop. What this meant for me was that I could suggest going anywhere or doing anything without Pi Chi wanting to visit the famous commemorative thimble shop. If we go to Paris, she has to buy a €25 Eiffel Tower statue that is worth about 50c. If we go to Amsterdam, she has to buy bags full of tiny porcelain shoes that probably cost far more than they should, but I could not tell you the price since I likely walked away in disgust. But if we go to Cape Town, she does not know what famous souvenir she is supposed to buy.
But somebody told her about Century City, in which lies Canal Walk, “Africa’s premier super-regional retail environment”. It advertises “the most comprehensive and compelling lifestyle shopping experience in South Africa”, “spectacular architecture and an unparalleled array of local and international retail brands” all in a “majestic setting”. It looked like a mall to me.
Once again I found myself in a city with a unique culture, history and scenery, but I got to spend the day standing around oblivion while Pi Chi looked at purses. Fortunately, she was unimpressed with the food court so we spent less time there than we could have. The best thing about Century City for me was that it is on the way to Bloubergstrand, from which one gets the most famous view of Table Mountain.
Table Mountain would have always been at the top of my list of things to see in Cape Town were I to make such a list. It is not the tallest mountain in South Africa. It is not even the tallest mountain near Cape Town. But it has great views of Cape Town and is as flat as one of those mites that kills citrus fruits, or as flat as a table, if you will. When I visit a city, I like to go to the top of the tallest building or observation tower and have a look around. Cape Town is not known for its skyscrapers, but it happens to have a big flat mountain right where you would want a tower. The flat part is convenient for those of us who are not too terribly keen on hiking up rocks and dirt and other horribly natural surfaces. The people in charge of Table Mountain were also considerate enough to put in a cable car that stretches from a paved parking lot to the top of the mountain. Those who wish to hike up the mountain may do so, but those of us who wear comfortable shoes can take a ride in a little box that dangles precariously over a sheer cliff. And the cable cars rotate 360 degrees so everyone can get a good view of their impending death.
Cape Town is a popular destination for hikers, surfers, fishers, divers, snorkelers, sky divers, kayakers and general outdoor sporting activity enthusiasts. These are not things that Pi Chi and I do. Cape Town has a wide variety of beaches, and each might have completely different water temperatures on the same day, thanks to the city’s jagged coastline and two different oceans. But there was one beach that was always at the top of my imaginary list.
Boulders Beach is a tiny patch of sand and rocks on the eastern shore of the Cape Peninsula. It gets its name from the giant rocks on the beach and in the water that keep most waves and surfers out. It would be a very good beach for small children if not for the thousands of penguins that invaded several years ago. And that is what I wanted to see. I cannot think of anywhere else in the world where you can swim with penguins. Most of their beaches in South America are protected, and swimming around Galapagos is probably an excellent way to get eaten by sharks. I suppose you could swim in Antarctica but that would be stupid. As it turned out, the water of False Bay in winter was too cold for me. Yet I think Antarctica might be colder.
But Cape Town was not too cold for a drive. Our rental car had somewhere around 20km when we drove it away from the airport and over 1000km when we returned it, and we never really left the False Bay/Cape Town area. Unlike our drives to and from Kruger, we never got lost in Cape Town. I am not really sure how anyone can. The roads are in excellent condition and everything is well marked. In English, no less. Afrikaans is the dominant language, which means the government has been changing everything to English since 1994. In Durban, they are changing everything to Zulu, which is probably good for the people who speak Zulu, but does nothing for me.
The first time I rode the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Tokyo Disneyland I felt an odd tinge of familiarity. The ride looked, sounded, smelled and felt so much like the one in California that I felt for a second like I was in California. It was kind of spooky. The first time I drove up the M4 near the University of Cape Town I felt as though I could be driving in California. This is unusual for me since I usually drive amongst Chinese people who obey no rules of the road or common sense and on Chinese streets that could not possibly remind any sober person of California. But the palm trees, mountains and oceans of Cape Town could remind one of California, especially the superior southern part.
There is also the issue of climate. Cape Town’s and Los Angeles’ temperatures are comparable, though Cape Town can get colder. They get about the same amount of rain in winter. The humidity levels feel similar and it all just generally feels the same, though I would say that Cape Town has much cleaner air. If international terrorists ever blindfold me and put me on a plane, I will immediately know where I am if I get off the plane in Southeast Asia, Eastern Africa or Western Europe. But if they let me off in Los Angeles or Cape Town, I will probably have a difficult time sensing which it is.
But they would likely take me to some Middle Eastern desert wasteland anyway. There I would be bathed in rose petals and water collected from the morning dew on lovegrass bushes while nubile handmaids feed me fresh dates and tahini-filled dark chocolates with just a hint of mint. After all, this is what international terrorists do. If pirates can be wacky madcap heroes, I imagine there will come a day when we treat terrorists as big lovable teddy bears. Maybe a Broadway musical with jovial songs about global jihad and honor killings.
(Photograph not by me)
One of the great things for me about traveling to and fro is the food. I live in a place and time where everyone eats Chinese food. All the time. Chinese breakfast, Chinese brunch, Chinese lunch, Chinese afternoon tea, Chinese dinner, Chinese dessert, Chinese midnight snack. I have nothing against Chinese food on principle but I like to eat other food as well. Despite what Chinese children learn in school, there is a larger world out there. Some of it has some good food.
South Africa has an outstanding variety of food thanks to its long history of submission and oppression. What should be at least 15 different countries are crammed into one. Add to that the Nederlander and British conquerors and a disproportionate proliferation of Indians and you get some nice recipes. The larger grocery stores in the larger cities are about as international as you can get.
We had a very large kitchen at the Cape Town rental house and I always assumed I would cook most of our meals. But we also went out a lot and Pi Chi has to eat when Pi Chi has to eat. This was never a problem as Cape Town is littered with enough restaurants to suit practically any of her whims. But as often happens, her favorite restaurant was not some small hole in the wall with excellent food and a pleasant atmosphere. Those are always my favorite. Hers was the snack shop on Table Mountain. They had packaged convenience store food, though far superior to 7-11, and a basic cafeteria. All at much higher than average prices because, on a mountain, where else are you going to go. Pi Chi thought their potato salad was one of the great wonders of the world. I thought it needed more mustard.
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