Tuesday, September 16th – Car shopping

School was OK, as usual. Afterschool, we started car shopping. We currently have a rental but are looking to buy something as the rental is expensive and we feel that we are just throwing our money away as you do not get anything back when you return it. Owning a car, on the other hand, allows you to sell it when you leave, giving a chance to get some money back. The monthly payment are also lower (after a 20% deposit) than those encountered by renting a car. Our question is now: What do we buy? Do we buy a used car which has a cheaper price, but comes with a history and its possible problems, and which will also have a lower resale value at the end of our stay, or do we go new, which means a much higher down payment, but no worries about breaking down as everything is covered by warranty, a much higher resale value, and probably a nicer car than a used one. We’ll have to think about it. So today, we visited the Volkswagen dealer and the Mazda dealer. The first one had a 2014 Jetta for sale while the second one had a 2014 Mazda 6 that looked pretty good. Those two sold for about 7000 Rials (approx. $20000). Older cars were cheaper, approx. 4000 OMR for 2012, but I’m not sure if we really want to do that for the reasons mentioned above. I’ll have to crunch some numbers on the weekend before we figure out what to do.

We went out to Trader Vic’s for dinner afterwards. I had a beef dish that they prepare at your table. It was cool to see and very, very good to eat.  Jacqui had a salad which was made with the heartwood (the inside) of small palm trees. That too was very good.

Cooking at our table (picture taken with Iphone with no flash-sorry)