Shenzhen and Hong Kong

So 3 weeks ago I took a trip to Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Instead of getting my fresh opinion on it I decided to let it brew a bit, aka 3 full weeks! Regardless of my reasoning for the delay, I will do my best to give you the full scoop. This trip introduced me into two different interesting and awesome parts of traveling on the cheap in china. Hard Sleepers and Couchsurfing. Both were integral to my trip so I will explain them as I go along.

The trip started on Friday afternoon with me heading to the train station to catch my 5pm train to Guangzhou. Of course I met a Chinese university student who wanted to tell me his life story in english but it helped kill the hour wait I had at the train station. So I get on the train, and find my bed for my trip to Guangzhou. Trains in China have 4 different classes, Hard Seat, Soft Seat then Hard and Soft sleepers. While hard isn't actually hard it just is a thinner less luxurious option than soft. Given that the Hard Sleeper is half the price of Soft I'd say it's a good balance of value and comfort. For the hard sleeper there open ended compartments that contain 6 beds per compartment. On the way out I had a bed in a middle berth. I spent most of my time on the train playing games on my iPod and listening to music. Around 11 pm without announcement the conductors turn off the lights for the night. But even with the lights off the train still makes stops and so of course chinese being chinese when getting on and off the train have to yell at their friends to communicate opposed to whispering like you'd expect for etiquette on a train full of sleeping people. Another interesting thing, that is actually quite effective is when you get on the train a conductor walks through the train and collects everyones tickets and exchanges a plastic card containing your bed number. This is so if your stop is in the middle of the night and you are sleeping the conductor can walk by and wake you up to make sure you get off at the right place.

So after a less than satisfying night of sleep on the train I arrive in Guangzhou at about 7am. I drag my groggy self out of the train and go search for food. I could eat noodles from a street vendor, but I eat that all the time, luckily I found a McDonalds and feasted on an Egg McMuffin, hash brown and orange juice. Granted, like most things at McDonalds its never satisfies completely, leaving you about 7/10ths full. Regardless it was a good change of pace. After eating I go to buy my return ticket to liuzhou, and very typical of me when I go to the train station I know enough chinese to get to where I want to go but not enough to get the exact train I want. Granted, it was a major holiday weekend so the train I wanted could have been sold out, so I had to settle for one that departed two hours earlier. Next I go to a different office to buy my tickets for the bullet train to shenzhen. So 80 rmb later I have my ticket for that. In a span of about 30 minutes, buying 2 train tickets and buying mcd's i spent about 350 kuai. In the grand scheme of things not that much money, but still a good dent. So I go to the special waiting room for the bullet train and then board the train. The bullet train was really nice. The seats were arranged more like and airplane, granted with more leg room. What I was surprised about was how smooth the train was. I literally felt like you were floating compared to the standard trains that clunk along. With the combination of the smoothness of the train and my grogginess I slept for most of the ride to Shenzhen. Upon arrival in shenzhen I make my way to the exit of the train station. For the bullet train which I was not aware of you have to scan your ticket to get out of the station. While I was sleeping I must have dropped my ticket, not wanting to pay another 80 kuai I see if I can find it on the train. I go back to the platform and the train is already full of people going back to Guangzhou, so not wanting to get stuck back there I thought I had ran out of luck. But then I talk to a conductor, tell him my deal in my broken chinese and he talks to someone on his walkie-talkie and gives me a thumbs up. So I walk back down, go to the desk tell the lady I dont have my ticket and she points me to this side gate, which they let me through, to much relief.

After exiting the train station I needed to make my way to the Hong Kong border so I could get my passport stamped, keeping my visa legal. Luckily the Shenzhen train station is on the border so all I had to do was walk to customs. It was a little strange just walking over the border to what is essentially a different country. The customs check wasn't too exciting because, just quite crowded due to the holiday. So once I cleared customs wanted to just turn around and go back into China because I had plans to stay in Shenzhen the first night. But the border crossing was set so that you couldnt do that without getting on the subway (MTR) first. So I had to buy a fare to the closest station get on the MTR get off at the first stop, get the next train to the border. So that went without too much difficulty and I was back into Shenzhen.

In the day's leading up to my trip I had exchanged a few messages with my Couch Surfing (CS) host and I knew he had to work until around 5 so I had a day to kill. So I just started walking around the city just scoping the scene. Comparing Shenzhen to Liuzhou is night and day. Shenzhen was one of the first Special Economic Zones of China and has gone from being a small border town to a full on metropolis, of 10 million people. Everything in Shenzhen is relatively new and few things of historical significance. That being said shenzhen is incredibly clean and orderly, compared to the chaos that exists in Liuzhou. One of the things I first noticed was that people actually follow the rules of the road while driving, pedestrians cross the street at crosswalks and wait for the lights to change. If the chinese characters were removed from the sides of the buildings I would have thought I was in downtown Miami. So I start walking around, just trying to find anything of significance. I make my way into some very chinese styled shopping malls (aka stores the size of my closet full of knockoff goods). I keep walking around, take about a half an hour break sitting on a bench along the road where a chinese guy sat down next to me to try and have a conversation with me. After that I decide I wanted to go check out the main business district where all the tall skyscrapers are. So after a good 20 minute walk I make it there. I then notice this large shopping mall, and being in need of some AC I decide I could hang out in there for a bit. Going into this shopping mall was ridiculous it literally had every brand name designer anyone could think of. So walking through, checking out the stores and whatnot I make my way up to the third floor and happend upon this massive open space that contained something I'd never expect.....hockey rink. I couldn't really believe it so I had to just check it out. It was more of a skating rink with hockey lines painted on it and no glass above the boards. It was packed with chinese kids practicing their skating, they actually weren't that bad, I mean nobody was really an expert but there were several very competent skaters there. I pondered giving it a shot, but at 60 kuai and hour and the only skates available were figure skates I decided just watching was good enough. So I make my way around some more, going through more places. One thing of note that my Minnetonka friends might be interested in is outside of the Hyatt in Shenzhen is where I saw the Rolls Royce Phantom, a car that starts at 380,000 dollars, Communism in China anyone?? So after walking around for quite some time I needed to find a place to relax a bit, so I figured finding an internet cafe would be a good idea. I also needed to get in touch with my CS host because his phone must have been out of credit or battery. So I find a cafe near by and head in. I had never been in an internet cafe in china before and so it was interesting to see. First thing of note was that the place was massive filled with a good 200 computers of people mostly playing multiplayer games on the internet (counter strike and WoW for those who care). So I sit down hoping to stay for only an hour or so. But for the life of me I could not get a hold of my host, Santi. So I just start killing time on the internet reading news, facebook whatnot. Then this girl sits down next to me, and of course she tells me she wants to be my friend, typical chinese. But good thing I met this girl because she really helped me out. I still couldn't get a hold of santi, so I post a message on the CS page for shenzhen seeing if anyone could help me out, shortly later i got an address and the girl helped me get some food and tell the taxi driver where to go. I also got santi's brothers cell phone, i called that and everything was set.

So after a 30 kuai cab fare to the other side of town I meet Santi at a carrefour supermarket, where he was eating dinner at this italian restaurant with 7 of his friends from Guangzhou. I soon find out that they are also staying at Santi's place for the night. Needless to say the apartment was a little crowded but his friends were cool and a lot of fun so it was worth it. So after eating some terrible italian food, we headed to santi's place. He had a pretty cool spot on the 16th floor of a 30 story building. So we're there hanging out for a bit, more of Santi's friends come over and soon I start talking to this girl. Turns out she went to the University of Wisconsin and is from Mankato, small world. So we talk for a bit, she works in Shenzhen for InterSport, one of the largest sporting goods retailers in Europe. She told me to send her my resume, so hopefully this could turn into something!

Later the whole crew heads out to the Coco Park district of Shenzhen where there a several night clubs/bars. It was interesting because these places were mostly outside, granted the weather was perfect but it was just a cool vibe. So after hanging out there until the wee hours with Santi and his friends we head back to his place where I was lucky enough to get a spot on a bed. It was kind of a mess because people just crashed all over the place. Granted it was a good time and having so many people that I hit it off with made it a really fun first CS experience.

So the next morning I'm the first person to wake up... pretty typical so I just wait around for an hour or so playing games on my iPod. As people slowly start to rise one of Santi's friends from Guangzhou says that she's going to the supermarket to buy breakfast. She returns with an assortment of eggs, potatoes and fruit. So for the next half an hour she's cooking in the kitchen and one everyone wakes up we have a large and delicious breakfast.

After breakfast I knew I needed to start heading toward Hong Kong because I knew with the border crossing and a long MTR ride to Hong Kong Island it was gonna take a good three hours to meet my host there. So Santi shows me to the bus and I went off to the border crossing. It was a different border crossing than the one the day before, this one was brand new and quite empty so it was a pretty smooth process. So I clear customs and hop on the MTR towards HK island. After about a 45 minute ride with two transfers I arrived in Central. Waiting for me there was Jack, my CS host in Hong Kong. Jack was a real nice guy, and was really excited to show me around Hong Kong.

The first thing I needed to do was to get some food because I was quite hungry. So we just walking down the road and ended up at a Middle Eastern restaurant. I'm not really sure but it had good cheap food and cheap beers. So after dinner and two beers Jack tells me the our route through the city to see as much as I can in only one night.

After my relatively cheap dinner (still quite expensive by mainland standards) Jack and I depart on a walking tour of Central HK. Jack clearly knew the town quite well because he was able to tell me all the major land marks and the history of some of the buildings in Central. One really interesting thing that I had heard about from Laura about Hong Kong on sundays is that it is the only day of the week that thousands of Philippino women have off. They work typically as house maids and child care providers for the wealthy Hong Kongers. So for their day off they spend all day together in parks and on the street, just playing various games and socializing. They were everywhere, HK closes some streets on Sundays to accommodate all of the women that come out. So we finally reach Victoria Harbor, from there we board the Star Ferry and head over to Kowloon to watch the nightly light and laser show on all the sky scrapers back on HK island. I really wish I had a tripod because I could have taken some really good long exposure pictures of this but I had to settle with a McGyverd set up on the top of a trash can. It worked but with a tripod I could have gone right up to the edge of this balcony we were on, instead there people in front of some of my best shots.

After the light show we continued our walking tour, now in Kowloon. We started off by going through Hong Kong's Avenue of the Stars. Jack kept telling me about all the people that had been given a star but I really had no idea who they were, we also stopped for a few minutes at the statue of Bruce Lee. From there we walk through the main business district of Kowloon and up to Temple Street. Temple street is a MASSIVE street market that stretches for miles, we walked a good portion of it and Jack informed me of the not so good side of temple street. While there are stands in the middle of the road, on the sidewalks is a sort of red-light district. Just a little odd. So after quite a significant walk starting in Central Hong Kong and ending up at the northern end of Kowloon, our walking trip was finished. We next boarded a mini-bus to take to Jack's apartment in the New Territories. Upon arrival Jack cooked some noodles and we pretty much crashed shortly after.

The next morning Jack's mother bought us some lunch/brunch (multi-generational homes, like china are common in HK). Which was pretty typical HK food. After eating this I can now say that most Chinese food in America is Hong Kong style cooking, aka more meat, thicker sauce. So from there Jack walked me to the bus station, to the MTR to Shenzhen, Bullet train to Guangzhou, over night train back to Liuzhou.

Interesting aside, when I was walking through the train station in Guangzhou I saw this western family that had three late elementary to middle school aged boys walking through. So I just say hi to them ask them where they're from and where they're going. Turns out they're from Seattle ongoing on the same train as me, getting off one stop before to go to Guilin. So I told them I have a bunch of pictures that I took in Yangshuo and that I would show them to them once we got on the train. After boarding the train I head over to their car (they got the lux soft sleeper) to show them some pictures. This family seemed really cool. They had pulled their kids out of school for an entire year to travel the world. They started in South America, then went to Australia and New Zealand, South East Asia, India and China. They're next plan was to go to Africa for a few months as well. I was totally jealous of this and wanted to hear their stories of all their experiences. They have a blog at www.5discovertheworld.wordpress.com. I really enjoyed talking to them, we ended up chatting for around 3 hours.

After that I head to my bed to try and sleep. Tonight sleeping was particularly difficult because they didn't turn the lights off until about one and then this big group of people board the train and all have seats near me. I eventually wake up in the middle of the night to the most horrible snoring I have ever heard in my entire life. It was the deepest loudest snore, beyond what I thought was humanly possible. It was all coming from the guy across from me in the middle berth (i was in the top berth). So this was totally preventing me from sleeping so I had to take some sort of action. So I found my water bottle and started flicking water at him just to wake him up for maybe 5 minutes because I knew that would be enough for me to get to sleep. It took a couple of tries but eventually I got him up and I fell asleep, he probably fell asleep and continued to snore but i didn't notice it anymore. So for those who think I'm super mean for doing this I have no words for you other than he probably didn't even remember waking up in the middle of the night, so there.

So for a general recap of my trip to Shenzhen and Hong Kong, I felt that this was one of the most interesting weekends that I have been in china. In Shenzhen I really saw what the future of China is going to be like, Clean well managed cities. I also saw the carrot dangling in front of the horse, in Hong Kong. China wants so badly to be what Hong Kong is. But I think with China's ideological issues, it will never completely reach the level of Hong Kong. I keep thinking of scenarios in my head of what would make the Chinese government fall apart in favor of a modern democracy and I think Hong Kong will play a major role in the transition, most of this is for another discussion so I'll leave it at that.

To close everything off, I probably forgot some things that I'll want to add later so stay tuned. And note that I actually left for HK 4 weeks ago today but this post has been under construction for nearly an entire week, I started on monday…..