Bird poop, tree saps, etc stains are an ongoing concern.
Unlikely wax able to protect if left to bake under sun for long/ a few days.
Wax is a temporary layer that buys u time. Best it to remove it soonest. Keep the "tools" in your boot for the quick job.

Protection is keeping a sacrificial layer over the paint and removing the contaminants soonest. Simple as that.

Yes GC is definitely good enough for a car shampoo.
Depending on how serious u want to get, you'll need more products..

Simple startup..
- Soft microber cloths - lots (the key is to change the cloths as they wear out.. use a few times then throw)
- wash mitt (u can use microfiber cloths if u wanna save a bit)
- Buckets with grit guards
- shampoo (GC or equivalent)
- spray wax (get a multi purpose one like the ultimate spraw wax/ xpress wax.. makes your life easy rather than jugging too many products)
- tyre shine (get water based)
- paste/liquid wax
- applicator sponges
- leather conditioner/cleaner if u have leather upholstery

Have fun!

I don't think it takes long to hand wax (we are talking wax only.. not those AIO).. to me it is faster than using machine... Maybe half to an hr at most, depending how thorough one wants to be.
The key is to apply a very thin layer. Then its easy to buff off. Pls do NOT apply thick layer... thats why some complain a lot of the effort required.
Only when you talk about compounding and polishing do the machine comes to real use.

No need to get those expensive branded microfiber cloths imho.
Most important is u feel the material that its soft and plush enough. Can get those 3pc/rm10 or so.. sometimes mr diy has decent quality ones for around that also.
Then you can treat those cloths like disposables.. use few times then pls throw away. Any microfiber cloth degrades after a few uses, no matter how expensive.

wait for meguiar's direct malaysia year end sale or try lazada with discount code

Did you park your car under any tree + bake under hot sun?
It doesn't look like water stains for me, plus etched water stains will not give you a "sticky" feel.

You can try out with claybar approach first. If it's not working, you may try out other alternative as below:
- Tarspot remover which contains petroleum distillates to remove the sticky dirt
- Cleaner wax (eg: Soft99 Meta Clean,etc.)
- Finally, polish it

Give a good cleaning and wax it. Next time cleaning will be easier.

is your door handle and side mirror plastic? if yes, try giving those parts a good clean.
once in a while i will use degreaser to clean, then a multipurpose cleaner and brush to clean it. it's quite common with handles (even with non-plastic part) and near plastic parts.

if you do apply dressing on those plastic parts, it could be it.

I do not recommend Gold Class wax. It is carnauba based. However, this is solely my opinion.

I applied mine. For the next 2 weeks I washed my car on a weekly interval. The beading effect of the wax is gone which indicates the wax is gone. After doing some online checking apparently carnauba melts under the hot sun. Not recommend for use in Malaysia.

Try synthetic sealants.

Result from yesterday 5h work

2 passes of polish
Ipa wipe and Duragloss Environment Shield

Already clayed it the previous day before polish.

sell the DA and sent to shop 

China brand DA tend to me noisier than branded one. Same goes to RB too.

Personally I shut off from the noise after a while. Whenever I do polishing, its only 3-4 hours a day, and the break intervals are longer. Minimize annoyance to neighbours. Besides, its not as annoying as actual wall drilling, because wall drilling is hard impact on walls and the vibration noise is much louder.

Yes , polish will mostly remove OLD ceramic coat  , u may need to compound to remove those scratch
U can put any sio2 sealant on ceramic coating eg carpro reload

Hmm, your question seem to have alot of different angles, so I will try to break them down one by one.

Polish may not entirely strip coating, but it will definitely degrade your coating. Compounding (which in lay man is aggressive polishing), will strip your coating.

Key scratches are abit more unique in it own way because it is done on purpose and someone pushes a key onto your car and drags it across the panel. There is a strong possibility that such a scratch will penetrate through your coating, clearcoat and colour coat, sometimes all the way to your base primer or even reaching bare metal. For such an extremely deep scratch, there's actually nothing u can do except either touchup paint yourself or repaint the panel.

For other scratches, if they are on your coated car, then the scratch is probably on your coating and not on your car's clearcoat (unless the scratch is very deep and have penetrated your coating).

It will ultimately depend on what is your mindset about car care protection. A coating is applied to protect your car's clearcoat, and if u want to polish off the coating to remove the scratches then topup your coating again, it kinda feels like a waste of coating as chances are all the other properties of the coating (like water beading, ease to clean, etc) are all still there.

Whether to apply a topcoat on top of your ceramic coating, I believe there was a discussion on this thread some pages back. Maybe u can check it up and see.

Just a side note though, rightfully prior to applying your coating, the detailer (whether its u doing DIY or a shop) should do a thorough polish to the car and bring its shine to as perfect as possible first before applying coating. Failure to do so means u still have defects underneath your coating which will probably show after coating is applied. Something to bear in mind.

You dont always need "polish" to remove waterspot , u can try acid base cleaner like carpro spotless first . Btw if you always use sio2 sealant on ur ceramic coat , it will reduce waterspot.
If you want to polish off stubborn watermark , tape it off the section , polish , reapply ur coating/sio2 sealant  in that section. really quick and easy

I believe I would be one of those that complain about coating being a watermark magnet in the past.

Just putting things into perspective, car care isnt a perfect art. Most of us here that drive cars use our cars as daily drivers. There is only so much we can do to protect our cars from the elements.

Yes, coating is highly durable, very hydrophobic, quite easy to wash, but its a waterspot death sentence if u are not diligent enough in doing regular cleaning. Yes also, wax and sealant are weaker and wear off faster than coating, but they are sacrificial layers meant to be washed off eventually and take the waterspots and other grime with them, just that u have to apply them more regularly.

So ultimately, it depends on what type of detailer u are. Are u diligent in washing, or are u diligent in waxing/apply sealants?

Just a side note, the more recent pages of this thread have talked plenty of new generation spray sealants, which are much more durable than the old ones in the past. If u are in no rush to join the coating bandwagon, why not consider buying a spray sealant and try it out first? For all u know it could be the right stuff for ur detailing style. If it works, then u save buckets of money from doing coating, if it doesnt then u can still strip your car naked and apply coating.

Anyways, just my 2 sen.

nice work!

Impressive work bro! Kilat!