Today I embarked on an adventure to mainland China to the Shenzhen special economic region.
I last went here in May 2010, getting in can be an adventure.
Today I had no problem getting in, the visa part took seconds for me, but some Canadians seemed to get a few extra questions and one girl (a 20 something girl) burst into tears and exclaimed 'I just want to get out of here!' which led to one of the female visa workers to come around and console her.
There were also a heap of Australian backpacker students who seemed to have taken the cheap flight from Hong Kong which really leaves via Shenzhen on Xiamen airlines. They were fairly confused as to why they needed a Visa to get their flight.
Once I had my Visa, which costs nearly $20 now, You still have to go through customs, the lady there said 'you have long hair' to which I said 'yes I do' she typed something into the computer and let me through.
Thats enough text for here, onto the pictures, I did my best to not add 1000 pictures of cool looking buildings.
Last time I came here, I walked about 100 miles, its hot today so I am going to ride the shiny new metro. Wikipedia says you can use your Hong Kong octopus card on it...wrong. They are still planning that.
So now I have added to my collection of RFID train cards.
The metro is extensive, all brand new, very clean and has English signage. This seems to be largely for the 2011 Universiade games, whatever that is, which has the tag line 'it starts here, make a difference'.
Universiade 2011 advertisements are absolutely everywhere.
I stared at this for a while before I realised it was an actual map. I thought it was an ad for a new version of the game sim city.
This is the dongmen shopping district, I am on the lookout for any dong men.
Very quiet I thought, I went back later in the day and it was quite busy. The main sales tactic is still to stand out the front of your shop and clap your hands slowly.
I caught the metro to the Futian area, which is near another border crossing. It has this giant mall which was all but abandoned.
Strangely, it has a Costa Coffee store.
I tried to order food in a few places, but failed!
The main food courts you needed some card thing I didnt have which they scan at the store, then you take it to the cashier. There was no English signage at all in the food court.
I was dying of thirst by now, so I found a supermarket in the basement for a huge bottle of pocari sweat. This supermarket had not only a KFC but a Dairy Queen and an Orange Julius in it.
As far as lunch goes, it was starting to look like fast food or something out of a packet from a convenience store, none of the stands selling pickled duck tongues could understand a word I was saying, no amount of pointing seemed to help.
The actual picture here is of a restaurant that seems to sell only rabbit!
By now I needed a rest, so I ended up back at Costa Coffee. The coffee was really good, but even better there was a German man arguing with a Chinese woman in English about how she had ripped him off over 100,000 euros!
It seems she is his financial advisor and an intermediary in investments in Shenzhen. They were very loud.
It was fairly apparent his business was not totally above board, cause when he told her from now on he was going to ask for invoices for everything he deposits with her, she said 'you want invoice, I give invoice to the money police!'
Theres plenty of rich people in Shenzhen. Overall it seems quite a bit nicer than Hong Kong, everyone seems a lot more stylish, less conservative. Of course I didnt go beyond the limits of the metro system, my visa doesnt actually allow me beyond a certain point.
An impressive huge new building, 100 storeys.
It was very clear today, but strangely quiet. I think most people were escaping the heat. I didnt suffer too much, but most locals were fanning themselves ferociously and carrying umbrellas.
Deng Xiaoping is keeping an eye on us.
Turns out giant new building isnt finished yet. I of course wandered over to check on the construction style. It seems they dont use bamboo here like in Hong Kong.
Nearby is this huge park with fake ancient chinese architecture and a big artificial lake.
The gardens were really impressive, and there was an army of old people forced to clean it non stop. They should be proud of their work.
My photo didnt turn out too well, shitty lighting.
One of a few solid gold buildings off in the distance.
An example of apartment housing. The bars on all the balconies dont look too inspiring.
Back at Lo Wu checkpoint running the gauntlet of prostitutes and pickpockets. The pickpocketing world championship is staged here every year.
I have leftover Yuan to spend, so I rewarded my day of walking with my 2 favourite things. There is no Pepsi Max in Hong Kong.
This shopping centre joins onto the border control point, and its hilarious fun to walk through here and get followed by people trying to sell you dvd's.
Who still actually buys dvd's? They might as well be selling beta videos. They need to get with the time and start selling USB keys with 200 dvd's on each one.
Another guy tried to not only sell me an iphone 5 (not released at time of writing), but also an iphone 6, which led to the guy from the stall across the hallway to laugh and yell in English 'look at him, he knows iphone 5 not out yet! hahahah'
On the train on the way back, it was clear enough to see the tops of some of the impressive mountains in Hong Kong. I dont know if you can climb up there, but I would like to.
I got back pretty late from Shenzhen and was pretty exhausted.
As such I just wandered around the local area for a couple of hours.
Since I have stayed here and done that before, I dont have many photos worth showing, so bad luck.
I had to stick a couple in so I dont break my web page, whoever designed the content management thing (me) is an idiot, I also have to rememer to escape single quotes or the entire thing breaks.
Tomorrow I am going to Korea. I feel as though I could have spent a few more days in Hong Kong, I used the entirity of each of the 3 days I was here and theres lots of places I didnt get to.
Seriously, I ate the exact same meal in the same place in the same seat that I have sat in before. Once I decided thats where I was eating it then became a mental challenge to remember what I ate and where I sat last time.
Heres a random shot of my street.
Tomorrow I am travelling all day, first Hong Kong airport, the Taipei airport, then Seoul airport.
You can expect a new world record for number of boring airport photos!