I left home at
7.40am in a Careem Taxi, the local version of Uber, which is much
more convenient than walking all the way to the main road to flag
down a yellow cab, especially in rush hour. I arrived at the car dealer at about 8 o’clock
to buy our new car. After handing over payment in cash and signing a
contract of sale, we headed off to the vehicle licensing department
to register the vehicle in my name.
A vastly improved process
The last time I
bought a car in Jordan, the process took most of the day, but as a
result I had made friends with the previous owner of the car, who is
still a very good friend. The dealer had assured me that I’d be
able to get to work before my 11.30am start time. We got to there at
9am and I was immediately amazed at how much they’d improved the
system since the last time I did this. Everything was very well
signposted, so you don’t need to go around asking people which
office to go to next. Everything is now computerised and efficient
and we were finished by 9.30. We went back to the
dealer, sorted out the insurance. I took our new car from there to my work and got there by 11am.
Buying second hand cars in Jordan
It’s a
Nissan Leaf electric car. Normally, cars in Jordan are double the
price of the UK because of very high import taxes, but the government
here recently decided to encourage greener vehicles by announcing
that electric vehicles are exempt from import tax, sales tax and
registration fees, which probably halves the cost of the vehicle. Finding a good second hand car in Jordan can be tricky because of the erratic driving, high number of crashes and poor vehicle maintenance of many Jordanian drivers, but this dealer imports second hand vehicles straight from America, so that they have not been driven before by any Jordanians.
Kanafa time
The following day,
we bought some Kanafa for our neighbours, which is the tradition here
when you get a new car or a new house. It is a dessert made from
cheese & butter with sugar and pistachio nuts on top, baked in an
oven. We found out that this is supposed to protect you from the
‘evil eye’ which the local people believe can bring bad luck if
people look at your new car or house jealously. Our neighbours really
appreciated that we embraced this tradition of their culture, and
they know us well enough to know that we don’t believe in or have
any fear of the ‘evil eye’
There are a few charging points in Jordan, and it only
takes half an hour to charge but we heard that you have to queue for
about 2 hours to use one. Later on, an
electrician arrived to install a charging point for our car on our
driveway. With the mileage that we do, we should only
need to charge it once or twice a week.
