Deciding what to do on any day here, one needs to take into account the weather forecast. The forecast for today says mostly cloudy with some thunder storms later - high of 33 degrees, low of 27 degrees, with a RealFeel temperature (a gauge that takes into account humidity, sunshine, wind etc to give the temperature that it actually feels like) of 46 degrees.
So we decided it might be a good day for a trip to China. The train left from a station about 10 minutes walk from our hotel, and went right through to a station on the border of China, which took about 40 minutes. The process of getting into China took a lot longer, as we had to go through the Hong Kong departure procedure, obtain visas, go through health checks (for swine flu) and then the China immigration and customs.
Once in, not a lot was different, except there was probably even less English spoken (if that is possible). We were swiftly set upon by a hawker who would not leave us alone despite our lack of interest, and followed us for around half an hour. We finally managed to lose him after a few quick moves around some of the narrow alleys of the shopping centre.
Anyway, the reason for our trip was that we had heard that the shopping at this centre was considerably better than the shopping in Hong Kong. It was what could only be described as a mega mall, with several thousand small shops, and each shop owner sitting outside their shop yelling at you to come in as you walked past.
Our search for some real Chinese dim sum was frustrating as the restaurants were all full, with waits of around an hour. Once we finally got in one, sticking to some reasonably safe dishes saw us enjoy a delicious lunch. Safe was what was required when some of the less safe dishes included “Live chicken to fight even jellyfish” and “double boiled turtle and herbal”. Good priced food (for a change) saw our drinks and 6 dim sums coming to a total of NZ$15.
We learnt the Police are cracking down on copied merchandise (particularly DVDs and Handbags) so instead of them being on display, you look through a catalogue, choose what you like, and they call a gopher to bring it to you from nearby storage in unmarked black bags. The Police check the mall twice a day, and if they are caught selling such merchandise, they are “required” to bribe them. The mall got tiring very quickly due to the amount of repetition of shops and frustration of getting hounded so after going through the same immigration process in reverse, we were on our way back to Hong Kong. Passport is starting to fill up with stamps now!
For another very late dinner (almost 10:00pm - how come we can’t last this long before dinner at home), we thought we would test how truly multicultural this city is and have some Italian, which was very enjoyable. Afterwards we just arrived back to the hotel just before the forecast thunder storm hit, which included thunder which was by far the loudest either of us had ever heard.
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