July 23 2006 Lynn Drives in Hong Kong

This morning (with a little encouragement from Lee) I decided that I was ready to try to drive in Hong Kong. The hardest thing for me, by far, isn’t the traffic, congestion or the narrow twisty roads; it’s driving on the LEFT! People that have gotten used to it say “oh come on, it’s not that bad” but unfortunately I know myself. I am uncoordinated, spatially challenged, and easily rattled. But we have the stupid car, and it would be nice to be able to drive it to the grocery store, and to Mahjong, so what the heck.

My task was to get the car out of the parking garage (car park that is), drive to the grocery store, park the car there, pull it back out and then drive around the “block” a couple of times. First of all we are on the 7^th floor of the car park. I sat down in the driver’s seat, adjusted the seat and the mirror, found the ignition (the pedals and the ignition are all in the same place at least) and started the car. Thank goodness we have an automatic – it was strange enough just putting the car into gear with my left hand – and I’m left-handed!

When you start driving on the left you don’t have a clear idea at all of where the car is on the road. It’s like learning to drive all over again in that respect. Lee said to make sure I kept myself as far to the right as I could and then I would have plenty of room on the left. The danger is definitely that you’re going to hit the curb (or the side of the garage or some shrubbery) on the left side at first. I cautiously pulled out of the car park and on to our street. First confusion – the signal and the windshield wipers are reversed, so every time I went to signal a turn I turned the wipers on by mistake. First scary thing – our street is very twisty and narrow, and winds its way down the mountainside rapidly. If you meet another car you have to do it on one of the little straight-aways and one of you has to stop. Guess who stopped – me!

The next thing that’s fun is mastering turns. The danger of course is that you’re going to turn onto the right side of the road by mistake. I had to consciously think “driver should be toward the center line” each time I made a turn. I made it to the grocery store without any mishaps, except for irate taxi-drivers honking behind me because I was going so slowly. Pulling in and out of car parks is no fun. They just seem so narrow and I’m sure I’m going to hit something, but I made it.

Then we drove around the block. Block is a misnomer, around in a big circle on the side of the mountain is a better description. It gave me some good driving practice without worrying about traffic. I even got up to 25 kilometers an hour several times (15mph)!

I’ve promised Lee (and myself) that I will do this every day this next week. If by next weekend this much has started to seem easy and maybe even boring, then MAYBE I’ll drive to Stanley on the ocean side of Hong Kong Island. Maybe.