It had been five and a half years since I last
traveled to Africa. Then I had gone in
the summer, and that trip culminated in the wedding of my friends Brett and
Claire, whom you shall meet later in this account. This time I decided to go in the southern
winter, mostly to get away from the oppressive heat of the Taiwanese
summer. I further elected to approach
this trip as a tourist, which is something I’ve not really done in my own
country. Having bought my ticket, I
informed Tonya, an American friend who’d expressed an interest in visiting
South Africa. She promptly purchased a
seat on the same outbound flight, though she chose to limit her visit to three
weeks, while I’d stay longer.
It was both fun and somewhat difficult booking
accommodation. Hotels were out of the
question considering that I would stay for just under five weeks. So we looked for self-catering units, and the
assortment was dazzling. I came upon the
websites SA-venues, CapeStays and the most intoxicating of all, LekkeSlaap. This latter website was available only in
Afrikaans, and what was more, it seemed intolerant of colloquial Anglicism that
has seeped into that language. It tested
my memory, and I am happy to say that I did understand almost every word.
Booking was easy enough, but paying deposits
proved troublesome. This is likely
(though I am not sure) due to the prevalence of fraud in my stunning
homeland. Some places insisted on bank
transfers, and it was only then it came to my attention that South Africa’s FICA had frozen the funds in my account!
I had to give up on a spot or two as a result. Other places needed me to email my
handwritten credit card details and secret code. Gosh, what a scary thing to send to South
Africa! The remainder accepted online
credit card payments, which just makes the most sense to me. Anyhow, there were hiccups with two bookings,
and one of those blamed me for misunderstanding their booking procedures, after
they had confirmed receipt of my booking request! We did not stay there, of course.
In hindsight, though, I must say that I was
very impressed with South Africa’s choices.
I paid about the same on average per night as I had in the Baltics, and
on this trip, the standard was much higher.
Each place was neat, clean and had more creature comforts than one might
anticipate from budget accommodation. In
fact, the rooms were without exception much nicer than hotel rooms at three
times the price. We did stay in one
fancy hotel on our second night – the Gold Reef City Casino Hotel. The rooms were plush, but compared with the
other accommodation, not worth the cost.
July 27th finally arrived and Tonya
and I made our way to Taoyuan Airport.
Cathay Pacific carried us to Hong Kong.
Waiting there, we walked a little to ward off boredom. On this walk, we stumbled upon this very cute
decorative idea:
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| Recycled Motherboards - how creative! |
