Shenzhen

I went to Shenzhen for the first time the other night. The picture at left is the Shenzhen River, which separates HK from SZ.

Thought it was a pretty sweet place to visit. It only takes about an hour to get into the city, and passing through customs is easy. Shenzhen is full of very new modern development due to the international capital investment that has been flowing into the pearl river delta in the past 25 years. Large freeways crisscross across town, with bow-tie junctions that have palm tree and scrub landscaping that is eerily similar to that in Los Angeles.

I traveled there on a whim with my friend Xu Zui, who knows the city well. We first went to an awesome pan-Chinese restaurant and got about 8 dishes of food from different regions of China. Pig femur marrow is surprisingly tasty, but chicken stomach is too tough and chewy for me! Most of the dishes were extremely tasty. Afterwards, we went to a giant spa. Ultimate treatment for about 5 hours for only USD 12! Holy crap! We went into an awesome jet pool, sauna, showered, and sat in couches and were fed fruits, ice cream, and other snacks. Then we went for 1.5 hours of awesome massage, where the masseuses even hung form ceiling bars and walked on our backs! Afterwards, we enjoyed some more food and drink, watched part of a movie at the in-spa theatre, and took off to go to a club called Le Nest.




Le Nest seemed to be a pretty hip club. The decor was very luxurious, and the main dance room was filled with people. Zui ordered me my first Lamborghini, an awesome chocolaty drink that is prepared by stacking cocktail glasses in a pyramid, pouring alcohol over the top, and lighting the cascading liquid on fire. A second bartender then throws some unknown material at the fire to create showers of sparks. It was extremely awesome.

After getting hit on by some prostitutes and playing some Liar's dice , we decided we needed to get back to Hong Kong; it was about 330am. We went back to the border and got through customs, but we wanted take a pee before boarding our bus, which was waiting there. But when we came back out of the bathroom, the bus was driving away! Crap! The attendants told us the next bus would be coming in an hour! However, all was not lost; Zui knew that the bus would have to cross the "no-man's land" between the China and Hong Kong borders, then wait for the passengers to go though HK's customs. If we grabbed a cheap bus that drives us to the HK border, we may be able to catch up and re-board our bus! We barely made it onto the bus at the HK border, thank god! We headed home and made it back to Simon Lee Hall by 5am.