Ye Olde Tyme Tokyo

When I booked our hotel I was a little concerned by how cheap it was. Especially being so close to a major attraction like the Imperial Palace. It was actually very nice. The rooms are small, but so is every hotel room in Japan. It was on a small residential street, directly across from a subway line. It was nowhere near all the pop and parties, but we liked the neighborhood.

The day was half over by the time we checked into the hotel. I had a list of things I wanted to see and I knew we would be wasting an entire day at DisneySea. Pi Chi was recovering from the flu, so she was not as hungry as usual. This gave us much more time. She also must have been a little delirious because she readily agreed to go wherever I wanted to go. I told her there would be shopping, which there was, but I had an ulterior motive. I knew there was also a Krispy Kreme.

The Krispy Kreme in question is very hard to find when you have no idea where it is, but very easy to get to once you know. I knew it was near a station but that was all, and none of the subway maps happened to mention Krispy Kreme. That may seem obvious, but sometimes they mention 7-11 or McDonalds, so it is worth a try. There was also heavy construction between the station and Krispy Kreme, which did not help.

When Pi Chi found out we were looking for donuts, she was less than excited. We walked around the very large subway station and through at least two shopping areas. Pi Chi gets a little grumpy when she has not eaten in several minutes, even if she has the flu, and she does not especially care for donuts. She repeatedly wanted to give up, but I was persistent. She had never had a Krispy Kreme before so I could forgive her lack of enthusiasm.

We eventually went over a bridge and I saw the green and white sign in the distance. It turned out to be rather close to the exit where we originally left the station. Had we simply turned right instead of left we would have found it much earlier. Such is life.

The “hot now” sign was on, so Pi Chi’s first ever Krispy Kreme was less than a minute old. She was unimpressed. I thought about how I should pack my things when I move out. But it must have been the flu because we went to that and another Krispy Kreme a few times on this trip and she ate almost as many as I did. And I found the other Krispy Kreme by accident.

How dough becomes ambrosia

Pi Chi wanted to eat department store basement food for dinner after we left DisneySea, so we went to the Ginza. It is easy to get to by train from the Disney area, and there are more than enough department stores to satisfy Pi Chi. Interestingly enough, everything was closed. Even the seizure lights were off. We left DisneySea a few hours before closing time because it sucked so much, so we assumed finding dinner would be easy. The Ginza is arguably the most popular shopping area of Tokyo. But it either closes at 8pm on Sundays or it was some special holiday we knew nothing about.*

Pi Chi wanted to give up and go back to the hotel. Ordinarily, she would never give up on finding her dinner, but that flu was still lingering. I knew of a restaurant near another subway stop, but it could have just as easily been closed as well. I thought it was worth a try, and I was still confident from my Krispy Kreme triumph. We never found the restaurant, but we found a Shakey’s Pizza. They are almost completely gone in California, but apparently there are quite a few in Japan, and more in the Philippines than anywhere else in the world. This particular Shakey’s was very open. It looked and sounded like a Shakey’s, although with Japanese signs. They had the Dixieland music and lunch buffet. They even had mojos. The most amazing part was that the pizza tasted like a genuine Shakey’s pizza. In my experience it is unusual when somebody opens an American restaurant and the food actually tastes American. But Tokyo Shakey’s has that distinctive Shakey’s sauce and crust. They also have toppings like squid and chocolate and marshmallows, but I generally stick to mushrooms and olives anyway.

It may seem strange to travel to a place like Japan and seek out Shakey’s and Krispy Kreme, but I live in Asia. I eat Asian food all the time. Japanese food is not at all hard to find at home. You can even get bad Japanese food at any 7-11 if you are so inclined. But prior to this trip, Seoul was the only place on the continent I knew to find Krispy Kreme. There is a reason everyone says they are the best donuts in the world. And I grew up on Shakey’s pizza. For me, eating a Shakey’s pizza is probably what it is like for other people to eat their mother’s cooking. I may never be quoted by the tourist bureau, but those pizzas were the highlight of my trip.

Westernland
The Frontierland of Tokyo Disneyland

You may think that we went to the Imperial Palace as soon as we got DisneySea out of the way. You would be mistaken. The next day we went to Disneyland. Nobody knows why. But it was nice to see a real Disney park after that travesty of an imposter. Walking down Tokyo Disneyland’s World Bazaar is just like walking down any other Disneyland’s Main Street. Except the name is different. And it looks different. But there are still millions of Japanese people running around.

I think I already described Tokyo Disneyland, but this trip was different. The park was relatively empty the first time we went. Not Hong Kong empty, but California empty. This time there were a few more people. The ride lines were almost as long as the popcorn lines. If you know anything about the Japanese you know how long they are willing to wait in line for popcorn. The wait for any food was ridiculous. Fortunately, we thought ahead and brought our own. We ate our leftover pizza and department store food next to the vending machine at Space Mountain. This is notable not only because there is only one vending machine in the entire park (in a city that elevates vending machines to an art form), but also because sitting on a concrete bench near the vending machine next to Space Mountain and eating leftover pizza and department store food (and probably a few donuts) was worlds better than that lunch we had the day before sitting in real chairs at a real table in a fake Italian restaurant.

Outside of Hong Kong and Paris, you are going to get crowds when you go to any Disney park. But Tokyo Disneyland on this day was completely absurd. We had been there before and it was reasonable. On this day you could not see the ground. I went to California Disneyland on a Christmas Eve or possibly Christmas Day when I was in high school and the park was so crowded that we spent some of our time in a walk-in phone booth just to get away from the people. That was empty compared to Tokyo. I understand that the purpose of the park is to make money and the more people you let in, the more money you make. But eventually there is a satiation point. If the park is too crowded, the people in it do not enjoy their experience. If they do not enjoy it they are less likely to return. This is an aspect of business strategy that many Asians simply do not understand. Customer satisfaction is meaningless to people who are only looking at how much money they can make today. Repeat customers are not something you worry about when you do business in a very crowded marketplace. Tokyo Disneyland has lost two potential customers because of their greed. Pi Chi and I shall not return.

There is still plenty of room to cram in more people

When we finally spent an actual day in the actual city of Tokyo, Pi Chi wanted to go shopping. I wanted to go to one of the skyscrapers and see the city. I like to find the tallest building in whatever city I am in and look around. Pi Chi likes to go shopping. I like to go to thousand year old temples and cathedrals. Pi Chi likes to go shopping. I like to walk through city parks and see the juxtaposition of trees and grass against tall buildings in the background. Pi Chi likes to go shopping. If I am somewhere that has a river cruise, I want to take it. If she is somewhere that has shopping, she wants to go shopping.

When Pi Chi and I travel together there is a constant struggle between what I want to do (culture, history, get some sense of what the place is about) and what Pi Chi wants to do (shopping). In this case she agreed we should go up the building first and go shopping later after I convinced her that the shopping is open all night (except Sundays) and the view from the building is very different in daylight. There was a threat of rain the entire time we were in Tokyo and it was mostly cloudy. But it was relatively clear at this point so I decided we should go to the tallest building, which also happens to have a free observation deck. Free is a good thing in Tokyo.

It is rare that I get to do what I want to do when Pi Chi wants to do what she wants to do. What really does not help matters is when she agrees to do what I want to do and it turns out to be the weakest observation deck I have ever seen. It was all indoors, which is bad enough, but the glare on the windows from what little sunlight there was made it difficult to see much of anything. It was not the most exciting area of Tokyo anyway. The harbor was covered by other buildings and Mt Fuji was lost in the haze. Pi Chi spent more time in the tiny gift shop than I spent looking out the window.

Diligent readers may have noticed that I might complain about Pi Chi’s shopping. I do that more to her than I do to you. Believe me. But this shopping excursion brought us to Shibuya, which we had never been to before. If you know anything about Tokyo, you know how strange it is that a shopper like Pi Chi had never been to Shibuya. The lights of the Ginza will give you seizures at night, but Shibuya is shopper’s paradise. It has the overpriced department stores that Pi Chi prefers and the cheap little shops that I prefer. And it has food. All kinds of food. Everything from Pi Chi’s department store basement food to my pizza and donuts. And plenty of Asian food, but we pay less attention to that.

We eventually saw a temple and more than enough shopping. We saved the Imperial Palace for the last day because of lack of time and the constant threat of rain. The last day was the sunniest and our flight home did not leave until evening. Our hotel was right around the corner and it was an easy walk. The nearest gate into the park to our hotel was closed, so we walked around to the main gate. It was also closed. I knew a reservation was needed to get into the inner grounds, but most of the park is usually open to visitors. This day it was not. So I have still never seen the Imperial Palace. And I think I know why our hotel was so cheap.

We knew that we needed two tickets to take the express train back to the airport, but I still have no idea how to do that with the ticket machine. There is an English option, but it has far fewer choices than the Japanese. The woman who operated the machine that got our tickets pushed many buttons from many screens that simply did not exist in the English version. I have bought many train tickets from many machines in many languages. This was not my first pony ride. I have read several times how difficult Tokyo’s subway system is. I find it very simple. It is no more difficult than New York’s or Seoul’s. It is simply in a different language. But I have no clue how to get a train ticket to Narita without dealing with a person.

Our return flight arrived too late to take the train home. It was delayed because the plane was falling apart. There were problems with the radio and electricity that kept us on the runway longer than is generally comfortable, and later at 30,000 feet the window at my seat leaked water from outside. I think that might be bad. So we spent the night at another airport hotel before taking the train home the next morning. And I had to work that day. Pi Chi wisely took the day off.

In the end, our travel voucher for a free plane ticket cost us one round trip plane ticket, three hotel rooms in two countries, eight train tickets and several taxi rides getting from one to the other. This is why I do not do coupons.


*[Update: It was some special holiday we knew nothing about.]

A wedding procession at Meiji Jingu in Shibuya

One If By Land, Two If By Sea

Tokyo is about a million years old with more culture than anyone can stand. The history alone is enough to drive one to seppuku. There is so much to see and do in Tokyo that you need at least 10 years to see it all. So on our first trip Pi Chi and I stayed for a few days. And what is the first thing we saw? The Imperial Palace? Meiji Jingu? Shinjuku Gyoen? Nicholai-do? Mt Fuji?

We went to Disneyland.

To make up for this cultural oversight, I booked a hotel near the Imperial Palace for our second trip to Tokyo. On our first full day in the city we went to DisneySea.

While at Disneyland during our first trip we discovered that next door is DisneySea, a water-themed Disney park. Most of the world’s Disneylands are essentially the same. DisneySea is completely different. We decided that if we ever went back to Tokyo we would give the sea park a try.

Through accident and coincidence, I have been to every Disney park in the world. This was never a goal and I have little respect for the Disney empire. They made Kurt Russell a star. Need I say more.

My favorite parks are the original Disneyland in California (probably because I have been there the most) and Disneyland Paris (probably because all the Mickey Mouse spiel sounds somehow sophisticated in French). My least favorite before this trip was Hong Kong Disneyland. It is too small and does not have many of the best rides. They only recently built a small world. There is more than enough space to make a California sized park, but they have yet to use it.

Now I can say that DisneySea is easily the worst. It may not be a Disneyland, but it is part of the rat’s empire and they want you to think it is a different version of a Disney park. Overall, it blows. Even Pi Chi was unimpressed and she is the kind of person who is easily impressed by short people in animal costumes. But DisneySea does not even have any of the familiar characters running around. The A-lister while we were there was some dog named Duffy. I still have no idea who that is.

Mediterranean Harbor

DisneySea is divided into sections just like Disneyland, but the names are all water based. Main Street is Mediterranean Harbor, which looks like a hotel in Las Vegas and is the most like Disneyland. Like Main Street, it is essentially shops and food. It is also one of the docks for the boat that goes around the entire park with docks in each section. This was far and away the best ride at DisneySea.

American Waterfront 

To the left is the American Waterfront. Part of it is supposed to be New York Harbor at the turn of the 20th Century. Except that it is clean and full of Japanese people. The only rides are a train that goes from one section to the next and a free-fall ride in a faux Gothic building that is supposed to look like it is falling apart and has nothing to do with 1900’s New York. There is also a full-sized reproduction of an old ocean liner that holds more shops and restaurants. On the border of the American Waterfront is a tiny Cape Cod that looks nothing like Cape Cod (especially with the volcano) and only has shops and food. Most of the people there were in line for popcorn.

Port Discovery

Beyond the American Waterfront is Port Discovery, their Tomorrowland. But the vision of tomorrow looks like something out of a Kevin Costner movie. I would not be surprised if the people who designed it also worked on “Waterworld”, or at least watched it more than once. The moral question being whether it is worse to have been paid to make “Waterworld” or repeatedly paid to see it. Port Discovery has all of two rides and is one of the two places to get on the train that goes to and from the American Waterfront. One of the rides looks like tiny helicopters without rotors that ride along a water track and spin around in circles for about a minute. This ride is probably best for children or people who smoke questionable herbs that should not be smuggled into Japan. You can ask Paul McCartney about that.

To the right of Port Discovery is the Lost River Delta. This has the Indiana Jones ride, the only Disney-familiar ride, and seems to be based around it. There is also something that might be a roller coaster, but we did not go on it because the line was ridiculous. This section looks like Adventureland, but there is no Jungle Cruise or any of that tiki crap because they are at Disneyland across the street.

Arabian Coast

On the far right of the park is the Arabian Coast. When I first heard about DisneySea, this was the place I wanted to see the most. It seemed like it might be the most interesting. It was not. The two rides are the carousel, which is sufficient as carousels go, and a small worldesque ride about Sinbad. Only it did not seem like a Disney version of it’s a small world. It was like some cheap state fair version. While on this ride I imagined how much Walt Disney would vomit in disgust. In case you were wondering, imagining Walt Disney vomiting violently while on a cheap theme ride is not the best of combinations for such a sensitive soul as myself.

Mysterious Island

In the middle of the park is Mysterious Island, centered around a large volcano. This is the castle. The entire section has a Jules Verne theme, but both rides had a waiting time of at least two hours and the only restaurant served Asian food. The uniformed person at the end of one of the lines said that the waiting time was 2000 minutes. I decided that this was not true.

While I was explaining to Pi Chi who Jules Verne was and giving a painfully brief synopsis of the two books represented (Journey To The Centre Of The Earth and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea), we discussed the differences in our native educational systems. Children in my country were always encouraged to read books, and most people probably know who Jules Verne was even if they have never read any of his work. In her country they did not and do not. I probably read more books in high school than she has read in her entire life, and I was a lazy reader. Ask Mrs Orsinger.

DisneySea is nothing if not educational.

Next to Mysterious Island is Mermaid Lagoon, the Fantasyland. This had all the children’s rides based on jellyfish and koi. There was an indoor Toontown type area that was interesting. Mostly because it was indoors and heated. We went on what turned out to be one of the coldest days of the month and as a sea park, almost everything is outdoors. The park’s location in Tokyo Harbor is a great way to get free water, but not so great when spring takes its sweet ass time coming.

We had lunch at an “Italian” restaurant in Mediterranean Harbor. Since this was a Disney park, I was not expecting much, but Pi Chi was disappointed that we waited an hour in line for undercooked Disney food. One of my main complaints about Disney food has always been that it is much more expensive than food outside the park. The great thing about Tokyo’s expensive food is that their Disney food prices seem reasonable.

Pi Chi and I both found DisneySea lacking. Most sections were little more than shops with a few restaurants here and there. They also had various shows in various sections, but they were all in Japanese, and I do not even want to watch them in English. The novelty of some dude in a plushie costume screaming in Japanese wears off quickly.

There were plenty of popcorn carts with extremely long lines, usually longer than the lines for rides. But we were unimpressed. Each section had about two rides and none were any good. The boat that goes around the park was the best only because it lasted longer than 30 seconds and it is the only way to really see anything. There is no monorail at any of the Asian Disney parks, probably because the locals ride similar trains to work every day and may not be as excited about the concept of mass transit as Americans.

When I first heard about DisneySea, I thought it was a good idea. The problem is that it does not feel like a Disney park. As soon as you walk into any Disneyland you know you are at Disneyland, whether the Haunted Mansion is in New Orleans or Fantasyland. Even the lesser Hong Kong Disneyland has that Disney feel if you give it a chance. DisneySea feels like a Las Vegas impersonation. And not a good one like Steve Lawrence or Scatman Crothers. DisneySea is like a Charo impersonator.

Waiting in line for popcorn at Old Cape Cod

Goin’ Tokyo

When Pi Chi went to Minnesota, her flight home was overbooked and the airline asked her to take the next day’s flight. This happened to us in Amsterdam, and KLM gave us a nice wad of cash and a room close enough to the city for me to show Pi Chi one or two of the sights in the very limited time we had. This was a good experience for her so she did not hesitate when Northwest asked her to spend an extra night in Minneapolis. The airline booked her a small room at an airport hotel and gave her a travel voucher for future flights with Northwest. The hotel was nowhere near the city and too far away from the food she likes for her comfort. The travel voucher was not quite as good as a wad of cash for obvious reasons, one of the least of which is that Northwest flies directly to only two cities from an airport two hours away from our house by train. There is an airport about the same distance from us as the train station, but Northwest does not go there.

We found that the voucher was enough for two tickets to either Tokyo or Bangkok, the only two cities available. We could fly elsewhere, but then we would have to connect with another airline and the prices went much higher. I have been to Thailand repeatedly and Pi Chi has been to Japan almost as much. We already went to Tokyo together once, but only for a very brief stay. I could easily show her around Bangkok since I consider myself familiar with that city in the way foreign tourists do while the locals laugh at our ignorance. Given the choice, we opted for Tokyo since it is a much more expensive town than Bangkok and if we have any kind of discount we might as well use it at the place it is needed most.

After reading everything I could find on Northwest’s website about their travel vouchers I felt that using it would be a simple operation. I was as wrong as a Republican who thinks they represent family values. Despite everything I had read to the contrary, their travel vouchers can only be used for the person in whose name it is printed. If you have a voucher for $100 and want to buy two tickets for $50 each, the voucher can only be used toward one of those tickets. According to the website, the remaining $50 is lost.

Being us, we decided that one free ticket was better than nothing. We would go ahead and pay for the other one and fall right into the airline’s web. The punishment for making Pi Chi miss her return flight from Minnesota was that the airline sold an extra ticket to Tokyo they would have never otherwise sold. KLM foolishly gives away cash, which customers can easily spend on frivolous things like food and shelter. Northwest is clearly better at making money.

Yet Northwest Airlines is no more. They are now part of Delta. This change took place while we were trying to book our flights. When I tried to use the travel voucher online, their website was under redecoration from one company to another. What was available to me would not recognize the voucher. This forced me to do something I had thus far had the rapturous pleasure of avoiding for years. I had to call an American customer service office.

Where I live, companies are backward. If you need to talk to someone, you talk to that person. If your electricity is off, you call the person who can turn it back on. If you run out of gas for the stove, you call the guy who brings a new tank. For more complicated situations, you let Pi Chi make the calls. I have not been on hold in years.

After listening to recorded messages about how important my call is for a good 20 minutes, I was greeted by a Northwest customer service operative. I asked him if he was a real person. He assured me that he was and I took him at voice value. During our conversation he explained that the voucher could only be used for one ticket, regardless of the balance, and I explained why that sucked fat ones. He laughed knowingly when I made some derisive comment about working for a soulless corporation and said that he was impressed by my “good English”. At that point he knew where I was calling from and where I wanted to fly from and to. I told him that I watched a lot of American television growing up. I never bothered to mention where I had watched these shows. How is that any of his business. 

With an electronic confirmation number from a website that was closing and a company that was no longer in business, I went ahead and found us a hotel. Pi Chi and I have been to Tokyo together. She has been there by herself. Neither of us has seen the Imperial Palace. This is like going to New Jersey without visiting a shopping mall or Paris without the Eiffel Tower. The Imperial Palace is the only prominent part of Tokyo that has never been bombed by Americans. It is an important historical, cultural and architectural part of Japan. And it looks pretty in pictures. So I booked the cheapest hotel I could find within walking distance. It was very cheap by any standards. Alarmingly cheap by Tokyo standards. I assumed there would be something wrong with it, but had no intention of spending much time in the room anyway.

When you fly to most countries, they want your passport to be valid for at least six months. Mine expires in five. Renewing it before the trip would have been the smart thing to do. But Pi Chi’s travel voucher was about to expire and if my passport was still in the mail I would not be able to go anywhere. I decided Japan would let me in anyway since I have always had such good luck with uniformed officials in the past. As usual, the immigration clerks dutifully stamped my passport and sent me on my way while I had to wait for them to question Pi Chi and her motives. Because of the seal on my passport, I can go almost anywhere in the world without suspicion. Because of the seal on her passport, every country Pi Chi wants to enter questions her at length. The only revenge she gets is when we get home. If there are 1000 foreigners and 10 locals waiting to pass immigration, they will still open more lines for the locals. While I wait behind 1000 foreigners to enter the country where I live, she waits behind one or two of her own kind.

Since our flight to Tokyo left very early in the morning (by my standards) we took the train to the airport the day before and spent the night at a sex motel. Pi Chi booked the hotel. Not because it was a sex motel but because it was close to the airport and cheap. It was cheap because it was cheap. We have stayed at other sex motels and none were as bad as this.  

It is worth mentioning that Chinese sex motels are nothing like the dirty cardboard smoking rooms you rent in Hollywood while cruising for hookers or those tiny pay-by-the-minute closet-rooms the $5 Thai hookers take you to. Or so I am told. Chinese sex motels are where businessmen take their “little wives” since so many business meetings are met at the usual corporate hotels. They are also some of the few places in the country you will ever find your own private parking space. Not that that mattered to us on this trip.

What I hate the most about traveling pretty much anywhere is all the hurry up and wait. You wake up early to wait around for whatever vehicle takes you to the airport. If it is a train, you hurry to the station and buy the tickets to wait around for the train. At the airport you hurry to the check in line where you wait. After you check in you wait in the security line so they can take away your 12 ounces of liquid. And it is a good thing they do. There is no telling what damage I can do with a can of Pepsi and a tube of toothpaste. Appropriately, the airlines have us put our tiny bottles of lotions in plastic bags, thus thwarting our MacGyver abilities to turn soap into an atomic bomb. Without those little plastic bags we would all be doomed. I hope the evildoers never realize that items placed in plastic bags can be removed.

If you and your lethal shampoo make it through security, you have to wait at immigration. This is one of my favorite lines for reasons you would know if you were paying attention. After immigration, you get to wait some more, even if your flight actually leaves on time. When they call your row (or “zone” lately), you hurry up and wait in the line to get on the plane. After you hurry on to the plane, you wait for the plane to hurry up and wait in line to take off. Once airborne, you have no control over the hurrying, but you do get to wait. And when it lands you get to repeat the entire process in reverse.

I decided long ago not to let all of that bother me. The journey is half of the trip and sometimes the most adventurous part. I keep telling myself that while I wait in line between the screaming toddler who thinks everything within a 10 meter radius is his own personal playground and the sweaty fat guy behind me who thinks sneezing is a distance competition. I assume someday that I will believe it.

On my first trip to Japan I took a taxi from the airport to the hotel. If there is one rule about visiting Japan it is that you never take a taxi anywhere as long as there is some other mode of transportation. Japanese taxis are clean, efficient, and have those cool passenger doors that the driver can open automatically. But they are apparently the most expensive taxis in the world. A taxi ride in Thailand will cost you less than a bottle of any liquid that can be taken on a plane. A taxi ride in Japan will cost about as much as the flight to Japan.

On our first trip to Tokyo, Pi Chi and I took the hotel’s shuttle bus from the airport. It was free and easy, but time consuming. I think it took a good 15 years to get from the airport to our hotel. We might still be on that bus and everything I have experienced since is a dream.

For this trip we took the train to the hotel. It costs slightly more than a bus, but takes far less time. The Japanese were kind enough to build their international airport nowhere near their capital. No matter how you get into the city, it will take at least an hour. The express train is a good option, but buying tickets from the machines is an exercise in futility. We found out the hard way that you need two tickets per person to get on the train. One ticket reserves your seat and the other allows you to ride the train. You cannot get on the train with only a reserved seat ticket, which makes me wonder what the point is in selling it individually. How does it benefit anyone to have a seat if they cannot get on the train? But since the Japanese are generally helpful people and the people at the station probably see this sort of thing all the time, a small woman in a shiny uniform took us to a nearby ticket machine and quickly pushed all the appropriate buttons to get us the appropriate tickets.

The express train into the city was quick and clean, but I still like Hong Kong’s airport express better. And you only need one ticket.

The Eighth Wonder Of The World

Boulders Beach

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.

Boulders Beach

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.

False Bay

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.

Table Mountain

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.

They were murderers and rapists, right?
(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.

False Bay

Betty And The Jets

Golden Mile

Durban is the largest city in the Zulu Nation. The current king is a direct descendant of Shaka. He holds absolutely no power in government but does more to combat the spread of AIDS than the people who are actually supposed to do something about it. Durban is famous for several things I do not care about and has some of the best beaches in the republic. I generally spend very little time at beaches.

Durban also has the largest shopping mall in Africa and the Southern Hemisphere. Supposedly. I can believe it is the largest mall in Africa, but I have to assume Australia has a larger mall or two. I have no doubt that Pi Chi has seen larger malls. I know that I have.

We spent an entire day in this mall because that is Pi Chi style. It is home to a wide variety of crap I could not care less about and Pi Chi’s favorite juice stand in the world. That is saying something since Pi Chi has lived her entire life in a country that has at least one juice stand every five feet. It also has a very nice Superspar where we bought entirely too many groceries. Despite not having a car in which to take them away.

We rented a car for Kruger because not having one would have put us at the mercy of drivers and guides who know what they are doing but tend to charge money for their time and services. They also have schedules that are hard to keep when traveling with Pi Chi. And we stayed outside of the park, which would have added extra complications with regard to said fees and schedules. We rented a car in Cape Town because our lodging of choice was not entirely in the CBD, or Central Business District to you and me.

We chose not to rent a car in Durban because we stayed relatively close to the Indian Ocean and not too terribly far from the pop and parties. This left us at the mercy of taxi drivers since Durban, and indeed most of South Africa, has virtually no public transportation. There are no metro systems anywhere, the buses rarely follow any schedule or route, the kombis are shared taxis that go wherever the driver wants to go and there is no guarantee that he will speak any language that you speak. Visitors are discouraged from using most public transportation since the system makes sense only to locals. Cape Town is slightly better since it has a local train system, but the trains only go around half of False Bay. This may be why renting cars in South Africa is much cheaper than anywhere else that has international chains and a highly developed highway system.

The taxi driver who picked us up at the airport told us that he could take us wherever we wanted to go for the duration of our stay for a very reasonable fee. This seemed too convenient for comfort, but it turned out to be standard practice since almost all visitors either rent a car or rely on taxis. Somewhere along the line, the taxi drivers realized that repeat business was more profitable than picking up random strangers. Much as I did when I met Pi Chi. Another benefit was that where we stayed seems to be very hard for anyone to find.

The new Moses Mabhida Stadium
Built for the 2010 World Cup

Rather than stay at a traditional hotel in the CBD or something more expensive on the Golden Mile, we chose a guest house in a quiet suburban neighborhood which was a few rooms above someone’s garage. But it was so much nicer than that sounds. From the outside it looked like a few rooms above someone’s garage. From the inside it looked like a small house with an average size bedroom, living room, dining room, very large closet and changing room next to the bathroom, and one of the best kitchens I have ever used anywhere in the world. It was not the largest kitchen, but it had everything we needed and was very comfortable. Like the rest of the loft, the kitchen was almost completely surrounded by windows. The living room and bedroom had floor to ceiling windows with sliding glass doors that opened to the wrap around stoep. The sunlight penetrated every inch of those rooms like something not vulgar even though only vulgar similes are occurring to me right now.

The owners of the loft were a friendly old couple, much like the owners of the rondavel in Hazyview. Except that instead of showing any interest in birds, they were endlessly fascinated by military history. The small library in the bedroom was full of books about the Boer Wars (or Freedom Wars, depending whose side you are on), Voortrekkers, the British Raj and Churchill’s entire History Of The English-Speaking Peoples. The owners were also Hungarian, so bereft of that goofy South African accent.

When we arrived at the loft, the kitchen was stocked with enough food to tide us over, all the condiments, herbs and spices we could need and even a chilled bottle of wine. We appreciated the attention to customer service, but I do not drink and Pi Chi gets drunk before finishing a single glass. Lamentably, she is not an entertaining drunk, so I like to discourage her from imbibing. But I like to visit the local grocery stores wherever I stay, and since we had that great kitchen, I was determined to use it. We were going to call our airport taxi driver, but the Second Mr Owner offered us a ride to the nearest store, which he claimed would more than suit our needs. And it did.

The local Kwikspar was only slightly larger than a large 7-11, but instead of dead open spaces and a bunch of stale Chinese crap, it was packed with fresh produce, fresh bread, fresh pasta, and a variety of African and European food. It was within walking distance of the loft, but carrying uphill all the groceries we bought would have been a chore. We were grateful for the free ride and surprised when Mr Owner II apologized that he would not be able to give us similar rides in the next two days as he had previous engagements. But we had more than enough food and noticed more than a few restaurants during our short trip down the hill. We also planned to go out on the town from time to time and thought it unlikely that we would starve.

Yet again, these African innkeepers were displaying hospitality unheard of in Asia. They were treating us like their guests.

The hardest thing to get used to at the loft was the housekeeper. Employing domestic workers is common amongst white middle class South Africans. The fact that all of their housekeepers, cooks and drivers are black does not seem to bother anyone. Everybody is used to the system that has been in place for generations. It was only when the black population started to make more money and wanted their own help that things got awkward. I have never met a single African who had a problem with black people serving white people, but some find the idea of a black person serving another black person unnatural. And a white person serving a black person would probably cause the universe to crack.

I am not comfortable with domestic workers of any ethnicity. I cannot see my home as a workplace for someone. Home is where I can take off my shoes, close my eyes and blast music until the neighbors bang on the walls. Living amongst Chinese, home is the only place in the entire country I can go without anyone staring at me. Unless Pi Chi is home. Chinese people are endlessly fascinated by whitey. And rightly so. We are an unusual breed.

Hotels never feel like home, but they are the closest thing applicable whilst traveling. And even then I do not like being in the room while housekeeping is keeping house. It just seems wrong to be lying on the bed and defacing the Gideon Bible while a middle aged woman is on her knees scrubbing the toilet. Unless you are into that sort of thing. Who am I to judge.

The loft’s housekeeper was an older Zulu woman who lived in Mr and Mrs Owner’s house. We were determined not to give her any extra work to do, but one day we left the loft in a rush with a dish or two in the sink. When we came back, the dishes were washed, dried and put in their proper receptacles, and the entire sink was scrubbed spotless. We had been told beforehand that Betty would be more than happy to satisfy our laundry needs for a small fee paid directly to her, but since there was a washing machine in the kitchen we decided to be self-sufficient. However, as often happens on vacations, we had better things to do and ended up giving her a pittance to do our mentionables. We returned to find our clothes neatly folded in the changing room and cleaner than they have been in a very long time.

Betty was also an incredibly friendly person who proved invaluable during our stay. Mrs Owner was called away on family business just before we arrived and Mr Owner was not entirely sure how things worked around his home. He had his own semi-retired business going on and the loft was Mrs Owner’s project. Betty knew where everything was and how it all worked. When the heater in the bedroom chose not to cooperate, it was Betty who brought in a portable device. Winters in Durban are not exactly cold, but when one lives with thirty degrees year round one tends it find it a bit nippy at ten. Pi Chi puts on a coat at twenty.

After our second or third taxi ride, we assumed that the driver who picked us up at the airport would be our driver for the duration of our stay. He seemed more than happy that we not use his competition, and he was very prompt in the beginning.

I originally assumed that while Pi Chi was at her conference I would be free to do whatever I wanted to do. This is usually how we operate. But the taxi ride to the convention center required going through a neighborhood of Big Black Men. There was never any danger since downtown Durban is relatively safe for a city its size, the neighborhood between us was more working class than post apocalyptic dystopia, and our taxi driver knew where he was going. But Pi Chi is Chinese. So I had to go with her in the morning and pick her up in the evening. This often turned two taxi rides into five since whatever I was going to do was not necessarily anywhere near the convention center. Having our own personal taxi driver was convenient, but renting a car would have been cheaper.

On Pi Chi’s first full day off she wanted to go to the largest shopping mall in the Southern Hemisphere. Supposedly. I had already told her about some of the more interesting parts of Durban I had seen, but a large shopping mall will always be her top priority. Our regular taxi driver was unavailable so he sent someone else. This was not a problem as we were going somewhere famous that any taxi driver should know how to find. Unfortunately, Someone Else could not find the loft. It is tucked away on a tiny street away from any large streets. It is very easy to miss the street. And if you find the street, it is very easy to miss the loft. And that is what the other taxi driver did.

Eventually, we made it to the mall and bought too many groceries. The second taxi driver gave us his card and wanted us to use him, but we felt a sense of loyalty to the first driver and called him when we wanted to leave the mall. He was still unavailable and sent someone else. We slowly realized that we had no idea what this other driver’s car looked like and he had no idea what we looked like. Since this was the largest shopping mall in the Southern Hemisphere, supposedly, there were more than a few cars going and coming and more than a few people waiting. At home it is easy for taxi drivers to find me. Look for the tall white guy. In South Africa there are quite a few tall white guys.

In the end we called the second taxi driver since we knew what his car looked like and he knew what we looked like. He picked us up within fifteen minutes and we decided to use him from then on.

Until the next time we wanted to go to the convention center. Thirty minutes after we called him, we called the first taxi driver. He was unavailable yet again but said he would send someone else. When we reached the point where Pi Chi was going to be late no matter what we did, we called a third driver. Mr and Mrs Owner kept a book of local phone numbers in the loft. There was a page for taxi drivers that they considered reliable. None of our drivers was on their list. So we called one of theirs and he knew exactly where the loft was. He seemed to know Mr and Mrs Owner personally. We thought he was probably the best choice, but Pi Chi wanted to get there as quickly as possible. Whoever showed up first would get our business.

Mr and Mrs Owner’s recommended driver and our second driver showed up at the same time. We chose the recommended driver since he had not let us down. Yet. Our second driver was more than annoyed and felt that he should be compensated for making the effort. I pointed out that had he made any effort we would have never been in this situation. He was uninspired by my logic and gave the impression that he wanted to express his dissatisfaction with life in greater detail, but Betty looked at him and he got back in his car and drove away. Since she was facing away from me, I could not see what she communicated, but I have to assume that she meant business.

The recommended driver took me back to the loft after we dropped off Pi Chi, and I arranged for him to pick us up at the convention center when she was finished. I would make my way there in my own way at my own time. After the arranged time came and went I called him and he said he was on the way. Much later I called him again and he said he was on the way. We took a random taxi back to the loft. That driver gave us his card and said he would be more than happy to drive us around during the rest of our trip. We threw away his card. From then on we called a taxi company that sent different drivers each time. None of them could find the loft and all of them showed up.

Betty, as seen on Google

Pi Chi likes to shop. I might have mentioned this already. She likes to shop at famous department stores and the supposedly largest shopping malls in various hemispheres. I prefer local street markets. The Gateway in Umhlanga, Pacific Place in Hong Kong, CentralWorld in Bangkok, Sarit Centre in Nairobi and Westside Pavilion in Los Angeles all seem the same to me. At least the CentralWorld did before the Red Shirts burned it down. But Fa Yuen in Hong Kong, Shibuya in Tokyo, Myeongdong in Seoul, der Graben in Vienna and Cuypsmarkt in Amsterdam all have their own character. Pi Chi wanted to do some authentic African shopping, so I took her to the Victoria Street Market. She hated it. There were no department stores, no designer clothes and no ridiculously expensive purses. And it was populated and surrounded by Big Black Men and tiny Indian women.

Pi Chi’s conference was the only reason we went to Durban, and it was the conference that really made it worthwhile for me. While she was busy talking shop, I was able to see the town the way I wanted to see it. And when she had free time I was able to go with her to the things I do not care about. Since she spent several days in her conference, I almost had enough time to visit Durban my way. The more I do what I want to do, the less I bitch and moan about going to yet another shopping mall. At least until I write about it later. Have I mentioned that she made me wait for ten hours at Louis Vuitton in Paris while I was hobbling around on a cane? That has to give me at least a few more years of bitching rights.

Sunset over Clare Hills

Two Violins And A Cello With Red Hair

The view from God’s Window

After about 13 hours in a tiny space on a large plane, we landed in Johannesburg and “hired” a car at the airport. The funny thing is I have no driver’s license. My American license expired last year even though the card itself says it expired several years ago. There is a long story behind that but it has nothing to do with South Africa. You can drive legally in South Africa as long as you have a valid license in one of its eleven languages.

In other words, English.

Pi Chi’s license is in Chinese, and if you do not read Chinese you would never know it is a driver’s license. It looks more like a library card. I could not get an international license since they have this rule about not letting you get one when your license that expired last year says it expired several years ago. We decided that driving illegally on another continent might not be the best of ideas so Pi Chi got an international license in Chinese and English. We assumed this would be good enough in South Africa.

I still did most of the driving.

The people at the car rental place seemed a little suspicious when I did all the talking and assured them that the silent Chinese woman next to me would be the only driver. I assume it had nothing to do with their innate ability to stare into my soul and see that I had no valid license yet was planning on driving the entire time. It was probably more about the fact that they charge a fee for extra drivers. Since the “carpark” was just outside the rental office, we thought it prudent that Pi Chi drive the car away and then I take over once we were away from prying eyes. But this car had a manual transmission and Pi Chi only knows how to drive automatics.

And someone put the steering wheel on the right hand side of the car.

And everybody in South Africa drives on the wrong side of the road.

Driving in South Africa was an interesting experience. Not because I had already been awake for 24 hours when we began our ten-hour drive. What struck me as strange was how much open space there was once we got out of Johannesburg and onto the “nationals”. Driving at home is all about dodging trucks, buses, cars, blue trucks, farm vehicles, motorcycles, scooters, ox carts, bicycles, pedestrians and dogs from every possible direction, and a few impossible directions, while trying to occasionally move forward. The streets at home are a mix of uneven and narrow two-lane highways, uneven and narrow one-lane city roads and uneven and narrow dirt lanes. Every road is made narrower by the cars parked in the middle of the street, scooters and bicycles veering too far left and traffic from the opposite side swerving violently into oncoming traffic. The streets at home are torn apart whenever there is an election. Apparently this is to show the little people that their betters are doing something useful. The streets are put back together once the election is over, but they always look and feel like they were chopped up for no reason and pieced together haphazardly.

In a more civilized land, the national highway system was evenly paved, clean and mostly uncongested, if you ignore some minor roadwork in Cape Town for the World Cup. I immediately noticed that the inside lane was used as a passing lane and vehicles in that lane actually moved over for faster cars. Cars and buses generally stayed in the outer lanes. On our way back to Johannesburg from Kruger, a rather large truck pulled aside even though we were on a narrow winding hill road. I did not think there was enough room for him to move over, but he made it happen and all the cars behind him calmly and safely went about their business.

This is unheard of where I live. Here, there is no such thing as a passing lane, regardless of how many lanes there are, and trucks and buses go out of their way to block as much traffic as possible. If one truck is moving one kilometer slower than the truck behind it, the second truck will invariably swerve violently into the next lane and very slowly pass the first truck, blocking all traffic for miles. I cannot say if this is done intentionally or simply because the Chinese are completely oblivious to all the people around them. I used trucks as an example because I find them the most dangerous when violently swerving into other lanes, but all vehicles do the same thing.

In South Africa, the courtesy that I witnessed time and again became contagious, and whenever I let another car pass I saw their hazard lights flash briefly. I asked a local what that was all about and he said that they were thanking me for letting them pass. This is unheard of where I live. You will never see a Chinese driver thanking anyone for anything. Mostly because you will never see a Chinese driver let anyone pass them. The Chinese are personally offended when anyone tries to pass them, even if they are driving five miles per hour. Especially if they are driving five miles per hour.

Chinese driving, much like anything else done in public, is all about being first. If someone is in front of you at the post office, simply jump in front of them. When driving, you must be first or you will lose face. This does not mean driving faster than everyone else, but if you see that someone is about to pass you, apparently the rule of thumb is to jump in front of them and hit the brakes. At least this is my experience every single day. As much as I think they go out of their way to be the worst drivers in the world, it is more likely because the Chinese are completely oblivious to all the people around them. Whenever I honk at a scooter that I almost hit because it blatantly ran its red light without any regard for the dozen cars all trying to be first to run their green light, the scooter drivers are all either appalled that someone dared honk at them or are completely surprised to see other people on their planet.

At the beginning of our 10-hour drive I mostly stayed in the outer lane because I was unfamiliar with the roads and mostly obeying the posted speed limits. When I saw a police car following closely behind me, I moved over into the passing lane so that he could pass. When he changed lanes behind me, I moved again. As did he. This was when I realized that he was not trying to pass.

Police cars at home never pull anyone over. If you are drunk as an Englishman, driving in the middle of the center divider and throwing garbage bags out of your car, the police car behind you will do nothing. I was unsure if South African police were equally lazy and corrupt, and I knew better than anyone that I had no legal authorization to drive this car in this country. I thought about pretending not to be able to speak English, but South Africa has eleven official languages, so the police might know more than one. I wondered if I could pass for Chinese since it is highly unlikely that they would understand any of it. But no language in the world would make up for the fact that I had no driver’s license in any language.

Fortunately, the police car soon pulled over and sped away. I assume they were simply checking the license plate. I appreciate the fact that they did not pull me over to do so.

Pinnacle Rock

The six hour drive from Johannesburg to Kruger took ten hours because we took the scenic route. It is also the route without tollbooths. Probably because it is not the six hour route. This meant that we got into our hotel near but not in Kruger well after sunset.

The hotel was actually a rondavel near a large house that was converted into several guestrooms near the house of the couple who own and operate the property. It is close to one of the entry gates to Kruger and tucked away between the park and the tiny town of Hazyview. Consequently, it was a bitch to find in the middle of the night after I had been awake for over 30 hours and driving for 10. I had contacted the owner before arriving on the continent and after google maps told me that it did not exist, and he gave me very detailed directions, which I followed even after we found ourselves on a dark road that meandered through a rural residential neighborhood and melted into a very dark dirt road that seemed to lead nowhere.

We came to a gate with the proper address, but it looked nothing like any of the pictures on their website. I have stayed at very few hotels that look like the pictures on the website, so I pushed the little intercom button on the gate and waited. Then I pushed it again and waited some more. It was late, very dark and we were very far from any civilization. The nearest possibility of finding alternate lodging was several hours away. After being awake for over 30 hours and driving for 10, I very much wanted this to be the right place and I wanted that little button to work.

Before we left home we had the good sense to tell the phone company to turn on the international switch on Pi Chi’s cell phone. We used hers because she was going to bring it whether it worked out of the country or not. That phone goes everywhere she goes. I generally leave mine at home and turned off. When we “rang up” the owners of the broken intercom button, the phone rang and rang.

And then it rang some more.

The good news was that we could hear their phone ringing. This was indeed the right location and phone number. The bad news was that no one answered the phone.

Eventually, the gate opened and an old man wandered toward us. He apologized abundantly for the broken intercom and seemed not to notice that we had arrived far later than the arranged check-in time. He guided us over a surprisingly high dirt mound that was fun to drive over in complete darkness and to a dark parking space where I hit some type of potted plant. He then offered to take our luggage out of the “boot” even though he was older than Pi Chi and I combined. The reception desk was the old couple’s kitchen and the Mr offered us tea while the Mrs dealt with the paperwork. It was obviously past their bedtime, but they could not have been nicer. We asked them some questions about Kruger and they offered to loan us an expensive looking book on birds, but we were there for the cheetahs.

While guiding us to the rondavel, Mr Owner told us about the other guests that were currently there and a young couple who had recently left. I have no idea how many hotels I have stayed at in my life, but most of them offer the same reception experience. You go to the desk, show them your passport, hope they can find your reservation (if you have one), give them a credit card or a wad of cash to ensure that the television stays in the room, get the key card to the room (unless they have those quaint, old fashioned key-type devices), drag your crap to the room, return to the reception desk when the key card does not work, get a new key card and drag your crap back up to the room. There is very little personal conversation besides the obligatory “how was your flight”.

As Mr Owner was telling us about his other guests, I wondered why we were having this conversation. Then I realized that this is what they call being friendly. This is just the kind of thing that would come up again and again on this trip. It was a little disconcerting in the beginning since most of the people during my first African trip were friendly in languages I do not understand. South Africans are friendly mostly in English.

As we locked all the doors of the rondavel and closed the curtains, it occurred to me that Mr Owner would probably ad us to the discussion for the next guests.

Safari life requires one to wake up and go to sleep dreadfully early. Since Hazyview is little more than a pit stop to the park, everything was very closed by the time we arrived. So our hosts gave us some snacks and drinks to tide us over and offered us free breakfast the next day. They were even willing to pack a picnic breakfast since we said we wanted to get to the park as soon as it opened. This was really above and beyond the call of duty since our room was self-catering and no meals were included.

Our plan was to wake up and head out before the sun rose so we could get to the park before it opened and have as much time inside as possible.

That never happened.

After ten hours on the road after 13 hours on a plane after a full day, Pi Chi and I slept in a little later than expected. We woke up after the sun and after the park opened but still early by most accounts. In the daylight we noticed that the rondavel and surrounding grounds looked exactly like the pictures on the website. But we had no time to admire what turned out to be a very nice place. It was almost like a tiny resort where one could lounge at the pool or on the “stoep” and enjoy the natural surroundings. Inside the rondavel was a full kitchen, separate living room and a bathtub large enough for a questionable number of people. Sadly, we had limited time and we wanted to spend it inside the park.

Kruger National Park is an enormous chunk of land between Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Mozambique and South Africa’s Lowveld. Seeing all of it in the time allotted was physically impossible. Since they have this pesky rule about not letting anyone in before the gates open or out after they close, we had to keep track of where we were lest we stray too far from any of the gates without enough time to get back. This is why I wanted to stay in a lodge within the park itself. This is what I did in Kenya and it could not have gone better.

Kruger could have.

In Kenya, I had a driver who really knew what he was doing. I saw things I never would have seen otherwise. At Kruger, we drove our rental car. We went to a few of the places that the park rangers suggested. I do not think they are called park rangers but I know what I mean. We went to a famous bridge and a famous dam and stopped for lunch at a famous rest camp. By the end of the day we saw a wide variety of flora and fauna, not to mention a lot of plants and animals.

But Pi Chi still had not seen a cheetah.

We took some time out from our large mammal quest to give Pi Chi a driving lesson. She has been driving since she was 18, but she learned to drive amongst the Chinese. This means she has no concept of right of way, courtesy, common sense or spatial relationships. Her driving skills do not translate well in a nation where people actually know how to drive. She has also always driven automatic transmissions. Our rental car had a manual transmission and that whole clutch and shift maneuver perplexed her at first.

But Kruger is an excellent place to teach someone how to drive. There is almost no traffic, there are no pedestrians save the occasional animal crossing, the paved roads are well paved and you can stop in the middle of the road whenever you want. She panicked a little when another car approached us, but overall she was a quick study, as long as she never had to drive in reverse, which she always confused for fourth gear.

When I convinced her to drive outside of the park later in the trip she asked me if she should stop at red lights and then asked if it was ok to go when they turned green. She eventually stopped asking about the green lights but continued to show doubt about the red. Her problem was not learning how to master the clutch but following basic rules of the road and common sense. Just making a simple left hand turn, which is like a right hand turn in normal countries, was an ordeal. She would come to a complete stop regardless of traffic conditions and look around her in every possible direction. This is a good idea around Chinese drivers because they really will come at you from any conceivable angle, but completely unnecessary in Africa.

We left the park as the sun set and made it back to town just as it started to get dark and all the businesses started to close. We thought it might be a good idea to put some food in that big kitchen, so we headed to a grocery store that was on the main route from the park into town. Mr and Mrs Owner had given us directions to a better grocery store but this one was closer and on the way. It was also what one might consider a lower income property.

We never went inside because Pi Chi did not like the look of some of the Big Black Men loitering in the “carpark”. They were fairly far away and did not appear to give two shits about us, but I had previously told Pi Chi that following one’s instincts is the first step to personal safety. Her instincts said to get back in the car and hope that the other grocery store was still open.

It was, but I was disappointed that the clientele was as white as the other store’s was black.

“If lions and gazelles can live together in harmony” Quoth I to she, “Why can all the colours of humanity’s rainbow not”? I said, complete with improper punctuation because we were in one of those Commonwealth nations.

“Lions eat gazelles,” she replied. I should probably marry her some day.

But Mr Owner was right; the white store had everything we needed.

Park hippos

Our second day at Kruger started earlier, and we decided to follow our own path. This was both a brilliant idea and probably pretty stupid.

We stumbled on a large watering hole or small pond where we got an excellent view of all kinds of large mammals, large reptiles and whatever birds are. Avian, aviola, aryan. That reminds me of a joke about two violins and a cello with red hair. “A viola is a large bird” is somewhere in the punchline.

While driving along one of the dirt paths and generally minding our own business, either Pi Chi or I spotted something deep in the brush. We shall say it was I. It looked like a lion. Pi Chi thought it was a lion. We had seen few lions up to this point so we stopped to have a look. It was difficult to see and mostly moving away from us, but it turned out to be a cheetah. Again, I am sure that I am the one who first noticed.

Deep in the brush, far away and mostly hidden was Pi Chi’s only cheetah sighting. I felt bad for her. I have been close enough to touch a family of wild cheetahs; something I tell everyone until their eyes glaze over as if their grandfather is telling the story about how he had to carry buckets of water uphill in the snow when he was five just so the family could wash the one dinner spoon they shared between 18 people during that big cholera epidemic back when you could get a brand new teal Studebaker with a straight-six for a nickel and still have enough change to buy one of those prefabricated houses.

On our first day we went in and out of the park at the Phabeni gate near Hazyview. That forced us to stay in the foot of the park.

We chose to go further afield on the second day. Obviously, that made getting to the Phabeni gate by closing time impossible. We went out the Crocodile Bridge gate near Komatiepoort at the Mozambique border. It is a very interesting area but not nearly as close to Hazyview as it seems on the maps. The N4 to Nelspruit is a scenic and quick drive. Even at night. But things started to fall apart when we turned north.

From White River you can either take the R40 north or the R538 north, of course. They both go where we wanted to be. The R40 is more scenic and the R538 is faster. At this point it was too dark for scenic to matter. Faster was better. But from Nelspruit it is the R40 that goes to White River. Everyone knows that. To take the R538 to White River we would have had to turn north from the N4 before Nelspruit. We did not do that.

The first time.

When driving through downtown White River, you are already on the R40. If you keep going straight, it becomes the R538. That seemed simple enough to me so that is what we did. Unfortunately, there are absolutely no signs that tell you that this R538 will eventually turn south. None of the signs anywhere bothered to mention directions. The only options when it turns south are R538 and some smaller road that leads who knows where. Taking the R538 seemed the thing to do.

It felt like we were going in the wrong direction, but it was dark and late and I assumed that the signs would know better than I. When we found ourselves back on the N4 our suspicions were confirmed. The R538 that we had just taken was the R538 that goes to White River before Nelspruit. If we turned around and took it back to White River we would just end up on the R40 heading back to Nelspruit. We were going in circles, but the only turns we made were onto the R40 from Nelspruit, which was correct, and that questionable turn at the choice of R538 and that unknown road, which was not. So we went back and tried to take the unknown road but ended up in downtown White River from a completely different direction.

White River was the key to this mystery and we knew that as long as we could find it we could find our way to that big, comfortable bed in Hazyview. From downtown White River we went back to the R538 and followed it until it told us to turn. Every map says that the R40 goes directly north from Nelspruit to White River and the R538 directly north to Hazyview. It is practically a straight line. So instead of turning to follow the R538 which we knew would head south we kept going straight. That took us onto a smaller road that went up a hill and led to a dirt road. We knew this was wrong but we were driving in a straight line and that was the right direction according to all the maps. Eventually, the dirt road turned 90 degrees left and went up a very steep hill. We chose not to do that.

It was well past Mr and Mrs Owner’s bedtime, but we “rang” them anyway. We were running low on options and “petrol”, and Pi Chi had not been to a restroom in hours. I think this little “trek” was the longest her bladder has ever waited in her life. But she never complained, which more than surprised me. Though later she pointed out how awesome she was for not complaining.

Trek, an Afrikaans word, does not mean what we think it means in English.

Chinese cellphone reception is not at its best up in the hills of Somevillage, Darkest Africa. I could barely understand Mrs Owner, and this time it had nothing to do with that accent that sounds like the bastard offspring of a mixed Australian/British couple that, unlike all Australians, knows how to pronounce vowels. What I did hear was her gasp when I asked if the route from White River to Hazyview ever turns into a dirt road. She knew that we were well off the mark. She suggested going back to White River, to which I explained that that was where all our troubles seemed so far away. As an afterthought, I asked her just before hanging up if the correct road from White River is a straight line from the R40.

“Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.” Picture Terry Jones as a Pepperpot saying that. She said that there is a definite turn onto the R538 in White River. This was the exact opposite of our experience, but our experience was not turning out how we would have liked. We assumed that she would know, and went back to White River yet again.

Back on the R40 in “central” White River, we stopped at a “petrol” station because at this point, gas in the car was a good idea. The stereotype is that men will never ask for directions while driving, but this was the first place we actually stopped since leaving Kruger. I was ready to ask anyone and everyone long before this, but we only passed the occasional pedestrian in middle of nowhere spots.

The gas station attendant told us exactly where to turn. He was patient, very detailed and never looked at us like we were complete idiots wasting his time. This is the kind of customer service I always find in Africa and would like to see at least once at home. Tipping is not customary at South African gas stations beyond the spare penny here and there, but this guy got a full “buck” or two, generous as I am. I was skeptical of his directions since we had driven past that spot several times, but again I deferred to the knowledge of locals. They live there. Who knows where the map makers live.

At the intersection where the R40 becomes the R538 is a tiny sign surrounded by hotel and spaces “to let” signs that says “R40 Hazyview”. Blink and you miss it. As we did more than once. Every other major road sign on our long journey was large and green and filled with reflectors to catch the headlights. The sign to Hazyview was dark and at least a fifth the size of the other signs. But once we found it it was a very fast and easy drive back to familiar surroundings. No dirt roads necessary.

The drive back to Johannesburg after we bade farewell to Hazyview was quick and simple. We took the faster route which took us back through White River and Nelspruit. The roads were much easier to navigate in daylight.

We booked a room in Johannesburg since our flight to Durban left early in the morning. In hindsight, we could have driven to Durban since it would have added fewer miles onto the car than we had already driven, but it looks too far away on the maps. Had we driven, we could have spent an extra night in Hazyview and avoided Johannesburg altogether. That would have been better for several reasons.

When I booked all the flights, rooms and cars a few months ago, I looked at a lot of hotels and lodges. There are very few traditional hotels near a place like Kruger. You are more likely to stay in a lodge or in some privately owned guest house. Durban and Cape Town have far more hotels, but they also have plenty of rooms above garages and more than a few houses for rent. South Africa’s Tourism Council has lists of registered houses for rent all over the country. I spent a good deal of time trying to make sure that the places we stayed would be nice.

Except in Johannesburg.

Since we were only in Johannesburg overnight and it was merely a place to rest before going to the airport, I spent less time looking at hotels there. I picked a guest house that advertised fresh rusks for breakfast and seemed to show respect for its indigenous domestic servants. I do not ordinarily eat hotel breakfasts unless it is a bed and breakfast situation, or I am only there to catch a flight in the morning. This place was both. What I did not know was that the rooms were very small, which was irrelevant, and the bathrooms were teeming with ants, which was a bit of a nuisance. And the rusks were stale.

When the owner showed us our tiny room, I wondered if maybe there might be some kind of key involved. He insisted that we would not need it. I insisted otherwise. While it was true that we had no plans to leave before we left completely, I still like to have the key to any rooms in which I happen to be staying. That is how I roll.

After we greeted the room ants, Pi Chi turned on the television. That is how she rolls. She likes the background noise. It told us that Michael Jackson had died a few days earlier.

“Well, there you go,” I said to Pi Chi. I assumed he killed himself.

During our “free shuttle bus” ride to the airport the next day which cost us five Rand and was more like the owner’s broken down piece of shit car, the radio (point C-O point Zed-A) rambled on about Mr Jacko. They also played the Jackson 5 version of “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”. I thought it odd. This 50-year-old man-child who is as famous for his fondness of 12-year-old boys as he is for his music is dead. Now here is a Christmas song in the middle of July that he recorded when he was 12.

Shamon.

Sabie River hippos