Since January, we've been borrowing cars from other people that have been off the island. A couple of weeks ago, our borrowing streak ran out, and we had to head out and find a car. Cars are a funny thing in Bali. They tend not to lose much (if any) value over time. In some cases, they actually will appreciate in value. For instance, we bought a car in 2007 for 76 million, sold that same care in 2010 for 78 million, and then I just recently came across an ad for that same make/model/year and it was being sold for 77 million. 8 years later and it still has roughly the same value!
The car we settled on is a Suzuki APV. It's an "everyman's car". It's not expensive, is fairly reliable, and is easy to fix. They are everywhere.
The only problem is that we were wanting an automatic, and automatics are very hard to find. The overwhelming majority of cars in Indo have a manual transmission. The search was going on for weeks with no results.
During this time, Kaelen had been praying for a pink car. We would have been happy with any color, as long as it was an automatic. The first one that popped up on the radar had this purplish hue, and it made me think of Kaelen's prayer. I told Kaelen that purple and pink are very similar colors...
Despite some minor issues, it is a decent car and ended up being the one we got. The kids have called it Huey, the Purple People Eater.
