Driving Sales

Yesterday The Parents signed the agreement to buy their parking space – refer back to my blog entitled ‘Spaced Out’, August 30th for more on that – so, soon, they will be the proud owners of their very own rectangle of concrete. This may not seem very exciting to most of you but in Hong Kong, parking spaces are like gold dust. It’s a savvy investment and means that they will no longer have to pay the monthly rent on their old space. Plus, this space is enclosed by a wall on three sides, meaning that they will not have to park next to anyone else – it will be their own little cocooned space. Ironically, although this is one of the things that attracted them to this particular space (there is so much to consider when buying a parking space) as it means that they will no longer have to put up with inconsiderate drivers parked right up against the line and they are less likely to be knocked, scraped or scratched by others, it actually made it a whopping HK$300,000 less than other spaces. Other spaces that were in fact in worse positions. Apparently, this is because many Chinese drivers do not like to be enclosed by wall as they worry that they will bash the doors of their huge BMWs and Mercedes against it. The space is plenty big enough to accommodate such cars (even if most of Hong Kong isn’t – monster ‘look how rich and successful I am’ cars are completely unsuitable for driving in a crowded city but of course they hold the most status and driving, as is most things in Hong Kong, is all about the S word) but most Hong Kong drivers are crap. Fact.


There are a few things you have to learn in order to be a competent driver in Hong Kong:

1) Your indicators are purely for decoration - you do not have to employ them at any time, and especially not when turning.

2) By contrast, your hazard lights should be used as often as possible – they are a brilliant multi-usage tool and can be used to indicate that you are slowing down, turning left or right, stopping in an inappropriate spot, having a conversation with your children, or changing your the station on your radio.

3) On a highway, you can drive in any lane you like, whenever you like. Fancy having a bit of a spin in the outside lane, even though you are pootling along at your own leisurely speed? Go ahead. Don’t want to move lanes at all? Just stay in the middle lane. There are a whole four lanes – just pick whichever one takes your fancy!

So you can understand why most drivers would prefer to pay thousands of dollars more in order to park their very expensive cars more easily. I am personally slightly worried about my own driving skills – with lanes in Karratha as wide as two lanes back in the UK and parking spaces big enough to fit the biggest of 4WDS, I think I might get a bit of a shock when I return to the narrow streets of Reading. Tight parallel parking on our street is not going to be fun. And, just remind me, what are traffic lights?