Guangzhou/Shenzhen

So I am muliple weeks behind in the blog, and I am going to catch up this weekend.

Four weeks ago, I went with a group of exchange students to Shenzhen and Guangzhou in Mainland china. We took the very convenient MTR to Shenzhen on Friday night. In Shenzhen, after getting ripped off getting a bus to take us less than a mile it seemed, we arrived at the spa we were staying at that night. After eating dinner nearby, we went in and started our spa experience.

Cultural KFC and Mcdonalds

After showering and getting into some “fancy” robes we got foot treatments including cutting our toenails with a razor blade, which was cool. Then we arranged for a 2 hour massage.  As far as massages go this one was not the best. My person spent way more time on my right leg than my left, making me feel unbalanced, and talked on her phone for some of it.   It was interesting because we had 3 people in a room. Our massueses spoke very little english and we spoke very little mandarin so there were two separate conversations going. They did call Matt “Beautiful” though.  We then got to sleep on the massage beds for the night. The next morning when we checked out it turned out that the entire total cost was 168 yuan! Awesome deal. Somehow we found out what our masseuses made an hour and it turned out they don’t make enough in a day to afford the MTR ride to Hong Kong, which is a little depressing.

After checking out we went to the rail station where we bought tickets for going to Guangzhou. While we were waiting for the train we went to the Lo Wu shopping center that I had been at before. Although I didn’t really intend on purchasing anything, I ended up getting a fake soccer jersey and fake beats by Dr. Dre. Surprisingly the headphones still work and are of decent quality. I am sure they aren’t US$250 quality (their real price) but they are defintely worth what I paid for them.

After shopping we took the train to Guangzhou, which is the third largest city in China. The train went over 200 km/h so we made it there in about an hour. Upon arrival though we had to take a very long taxi ride from downtown to the hostel we were staying at, and upon arrival we weren’t really in a touristy type of mood. So we walked around the general area of the hostel and found a restaurant that was obsessed with Mao. They had Mao clocks, and posters, and pretty much everything. Kinda creepy. Throughout the trip and especially at meals it was really nice that we had someone who speaks Mandarin with us, because he could order for us and translate. Thanks Alex. After dinner we explored some of Guangzhou’s nightlife along the pearl river and then called it a night.

The next morning we went to see one temple just to do something cultural. I am getting a little tired of Chinese temples and this one wasn’t terribly spectacular. Although a large city Guangzhou doesn’t really have much for sights besides the Pearl river and temples. It also has a very high observation deck, but it was foggy and we weren’t really interested in seeing more tall buildings since there are plenty in Hong Kong.

Temple

Fast Train

After eating at the completely cultural, Papa Murphy’s we took the train back to Guangzhou and the MTR back to Campus.