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Senor P. posted:Not to sound like a douche, but what about Namibia? I have not been to SA, but Namibia striked me as rather clean and having low crime. And being pretty drat affordable. Namibia is tiny and isolated, even Windhoek is miniature and there's (e.g.) literally only one cinema in the entire city. And Windhoek is by far the largest city in the entire, huge country, so it's not like you can get anywhere else easily, you might as well be living on an island. Comparing SA to Namibia is like comparing apples and peas. In SA you can live in a modern, Western city, albeit with high crime. In Namibia you can either live in somewhere that feels like the surburb to a minor city (Windhoek) or you can live in the middle of nowhere (any other city). My girlfriend's family is German-Namibian and they love it, but there's no chance they'd move back for dozens of reasons, including how absolutely small-town island-fever it is.
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Sep 22, 2014 10:18
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Senor P. posted:Not to sound like a douche, but what about Namibia? I have not been to SA, but Namibia striked me as rather clean and having low crime. And being pretty drat affordable. Namibia is to me the most boring place on earth, I actually stayed in Windhoek for 3 months and it simply isn't for me. Otherwise, Saladman has it spot on. If I move from Johannesburg, it'll propably be to Cape Town but that's more long-term, as it would necessitate a house in Durban / JNB as well, because gently caress winter in Cape Town.
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Sep 24, 2014 08:48
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I'm one of those weird guys who prefers pretty much any weather to the dry as hell weather in Gauteng. The Durban summer gets so humid walking around technically counts as swimming and the Cape Town winter is so rainy and grey you'd just have to put out some marmite toast to make a Brit homesick, but man at least it doesn't feel like you're evaporating. Tip for Gauteng: Take lip balm.
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Sep 25, 2014 20:03
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AtomD posted:I'm one of those weird guys who prefers pretty much any weather to the dry as hell weather in Gauteng. I can agree on the dry air but really JNB is a nice middle ground between Durban and Cape Town. There is no place more glorious than a perfect day in Cape Town in Summer, in winter Durbs is king as I can still wear shorts/T-shirt. Johannesburg in winter beats floods in Cape Town any day, and humidity melt-down in Durban in Summer. The real problem with JNB is that when I go out for some drinks or dinner, I am forever looking at a loving parking lot for scenery rather than a beach or table mountain.
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Sep 26, 2014 16:10
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caberham posted:How is the Cape Town goon scene? I love this thread Checking in. BlueBull posted:The real problem with JNB is that when I go out for some drinks or dinner, I am forever looking at a loving parking lot for scenery rather than a beach or table mountain. Exactly this. Cape Town is where it's at. Below is the view from our local hangouts. 
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Oct 28, 2014 12:08
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Crazy C posted:Checking in. Cape town has the mountain (and the nice views of the mountain) but (un)fortunately Johannesburg has the jobs and the money. What I love most about Cape Town is that people in general are just more relaxed. Johannesburg really has that rat race feel about it. If it wasn't for the whole money thing, I can definately see myself living in Cape Town.
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Oct 28, 2014 15:54
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Deadclown posted:Cape town has the mountain (and the nice views of the mountain) but (un)fortunately Johannesburg has the jobs and the money. I dunno, I stayed in JHB for a year (for the money) and just couldn't take it anymore, ended up moving back. I guess Capetonians maaan...
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Oct 28, 2014 17:15
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Good timing on the thread. I'll be in South Africa from Dec 2-26th. You say you'd recommend at least a week in Kruger National Park? If I only had the time/budget for a few days, is there anything you'd recommend over another, or do you have any good tour companies you could point me to?
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Nov 2, 2014 13:42
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mintskoal posted:Good timing on the thread. I'll be in South Africa from Dec 2-26th. You say you'd recommend at least a week in Kruger National Park? If I only had the time/budget for a few days, is there anything you'd recommend over another, or do you have any good tour companies you could point me to? Yeah Kruger Park is a must. For tours try http://www.rhinoafrica.com/ they are pretty good and do all the popular SA tours.
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Nov 3, 2014 12:49
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Deadclown posted:Cape town has the mountain (and the nice views of the mountain) but (un)fortunately Johannesburg has the jobs and the money. Wasn't that a line from some terrible Leon Schuster song or skit or something? True, though.
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Nov 4, 2014 07:19
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What do you SA guys think about Orania? The community is pretty fascinating, and I wonder how locals actually view it.
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Nov 19, 2014 04:24
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How's the internet in SA?
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Nov 19, 2014 11:18
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Original_Z posted:What do you SA guys think about Orania? The community is pretty fascinating, and I wonder how locals actually view it. I suppose it's nice that the people living there aren't living here. Anti-Hero posted:How's the internet in SA? Oh boy, it's bad but getting better. You're either getting connected via ADSL or 3G/LTE for the most part. Roll-out of FTTH is starting pretty soon to "select" (rich) areas, coming in at 100 mbps. It's still expensive compared to the rest of the world. A 4 mbps ADSL uncapped line will set you back about $70 a month, while 40 mbps will go for $240 a month. 3G/LTE data is sold by the gig at about $10-15 a pop. That's all bad, but it's nowhere near as bad as it was 5 years ago. While last mile is still controlled by either the four mobile operators or the single fixed line provider, we've seen a lot of new players in the backbone network business.
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Nov 19, 2014 13:11
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Original_Z posted:What do you SA guys think about Orania? The community is pretty fascinating, and I wonder how locals actually view it. Apart from what Atomd said, Orania, and the Volkstaat concept more generally, is a marvelously, fantastically absurd idea that a bunch of idiots fervently believe can be turned into reality. The government even funded a task force to investigate its feasibility back in the 90s, as a conciliatory measure towards Afrikaner nationalists (right-wing crazies). It turns out that to create a homeland for the descendants of white colonists to live peacefully apart from other races requires evicting members of those other races.  Strangely enough, a government acting under a constitution that guarantees equality to all its citizens wasn't too keen on forcibly removing some of its citizens so that others could reenact the Hitler youth. Even Orania had to be built on a ghost town, and it emerged some years back that it wasn't such a ghost town after all. They've had to pay compensation to the small Coloured community who they kicked out of their homes back in the 80s. Anti-Hero posted:How's the internet in SA? The problem with the internet (other than being a long way from everywhere), is that in the 90s, the government sold the phone company (Telkom), which had a complete monopoly, to foreign investors. Those investors, unsurprisingly, proceeded to milk South African phone and internet users for all they were worth. I guess it's getting better now, though.
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Nov 21, 2014 18:38
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Lead out in cuffs posted:
Oh yeah, the National Party knew they were likely to lose the 1994 elections and so quickly privatised a bunch of things because they thought the new government would gently caress it up. Now Telkom isn't just bad, but expensive to boot! The miracle of privatization!
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Nov 22, 2014 16:27
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I may find myself in Lesotho in the near future. It would be a long-term stay. Any experiences or knowledge you can share would be greatly appreciated!
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Feb 25, 2015 13:13
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mrgoodtrips posted:I may find myself in Lesotho in the near future. It would be a long-term stay. Any experiences or knowledge you can share would be greatly appreciated! I don't think I could tell you much that you can't look up online, but hey: It's mountainous. 95% of the country is higher than 3,000m above sea level. It's really poor, much poorer than South Africa. Expect low levels of infrastructure and a lot of begging. There's only one road into the country that regular cars can drive, and that's on the western side (although they are currently paving Sani Pass, the previously 4x4-only road on the east side of the country). I don't think there's any rail, and while Maseru has an airport, I doubt there are that many flights. Maybe check out Wikitravel and get yourself a guide book. http://wikitravel.org/en/Maseru http://wikitravel.org/en/Lesotho There's lots of useful info in those, and some hilarious contradictions: Lesotho is so safe, much safer than South Africa. So safe you have to drive through every red light at night to avoid car jackings.  (Do these even happen much any more? I thought the advent of GPS trackers more or less eliminated them.) Anyway, it's quite beautiful (although I suspect the Drakensberg escarpment on the eastern border is the most beautiful). If you're up for a rugged adventure, you should have fun.
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Feb 25, 2015 18:16
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