Saturday, 11 January 2020

What country is the hardest to drive in for a foreigner?

  1. India - This country is just pure chaos. Cities of over a million people with practically no stoplights, traffic that allegedly drives on the left but can utilize your lane for a risky pass at any moment, city buses with people clinging to the outside, their weight making the buses lean at such an angle it defies gravity (sometimes they even tip over), everything from speeding motorcycles to slow-moving ox-drawn carts are thrown together on the same road, and many streets are still made of dirt.
  2. Egypt - There are laws, but my tour guide said they simply aren’t enforced. Cars speed at 90 mph just inches past people walking on the roadways.
  3. Vietnam - There is a system, I just don’t get it. But it sure is fascinating to stand back and watch a four-way intersection in a major metropolis with traffic coming from all four directions but no stoplight and no stop sign. Somehow, without any direction of traffic stopping, the motorbikes, vans, bicycles, and tuk tuks all flow through the intersection without hitting each other! And it’s perfectly normal for someone to make a left turn right through oncoming traffic. The vehicles just flow around them like water!
  4. China - As soon as I landed in Beijing for the first time and was attempting to leave the airport, I crossed a one-way bridge only to see another car backing up toward me at about 30 mph! My friend said it was a very typical maneuver. After all, the bridge was new and most people weren’t familiar with where it took them. So why not back up against traffic? Much like Vietnam, the vehicles simply flow together just inches from each other, except at least China has stoplights.
  5. Scotland - I tried this last summer. Wow! Narrow roads, driving on the left (sometimes), cars drifting into your lane, cows and horses in the road, and small towns where everyone parks and obstructs traffic on both sides, so the car that gets through the narrow avenue between the parked cars is the driver with the most bravado. The other one has to back up.
(Traffic in New Delhi, India)


Is it possible to invest in real estate without lot of money ??

Yes you can, it’s actually even safer if instead of putting all your money in one property or asset, you build a diversified portfolio by investing in shares of different properties, crowdfunding real estate platforms such as SmartCrowd and Fundrise make that possible, I suggest looking at SmartCrowd.ae
It’s this simple, you can own shares in an investment property in Dubai using its state of the art digital real estate crowdfunding platform and build yourself a huge diversified portfolio of real estate investments each earning you a steady rental income from day one (That’s the beauty of investing in ready properties), the minimum investment in such platform is only AED5,000 (Approx about $1,300)
Benefits of SmartCrowd:
  1. Low capital starting from AED5,000/$1,300 only per investment
  2. Hassle-free (SmartCrowd does all the dirty paperwork on your behalf)
  3. You choose what to invest in from the properties given on the platform.
  4. Exit the investment whenever you want (if you wish to exit before the suggested lock-in period of 5 years, your shares will be put on the secondary market of the platform for other platform users to grab)
  5. Regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (same authority that regulates banks in Dubai)
  6. Complete transparency (You get all the financial and market data before even investing in a property by creating your free account)
  7. You get a certified copy of the title deed and certificate of ownership the moment the property is 100% funded.
  8. No fees in case the property is not funded on time, you can withdraw your money anytime from your secured wallet or use it to invest in another property.