I have always wanted to learn Golf and since I decided to try as many new things as possible this year, I signed up on a one-day golfing course in Shenzhen, China. Shenzhen is less than an hour away from Hong Kong and known for cheap shopping. So like Macau, it's sort of a must-see place if you're staying in Hong Kong.
There was 5 of us HKU exchange students on the trip: me, Juho and Kirsi from Finland, Philipp (Germany/Switzerland) and Asher (Australia) . The course was going to take place on Monday, so the plan was to go to Shenzhen early on Sunday, do some shopping, stay the night, golf on Monday and get back to HK Monday evening. It seems that things never go according to plans here; in the end golfing was cancelled due to rain but we had sooo much fun anyway!
The trip started off funny even before we entered China: we found the formalities and paper filling on the border quite hilarious. Also, the innocent girl that Kirsi is (or at least that's what we thought of her in the beginning of the trip...), she mentioned about her sore throat in the health questionnaire. In a country where a lot people wear surgical masks and are hysterically afraid of SARS and bird flu, that was not a good idea: she was taken away to another room to be interviewed... she survived, but lesson of the day clearly was: WHEN IN CHINA, DENY EVERYTHING.
I have to spare a few lines here describing the hotel. I had booked it online: it was cheap, decent looking and in great location - in other words, perfect for us. The place revealed its darker (and I have to say more interesting) side soon after we arrived... in addition to shampoo and soap, the bathroom was equipped with complimentary condoms, disposable underwear and something called 'woman lotion' and 'man lotion'... we figured that the hotel is quite popular amongst local businessmen and their 'lady guests'...
Sunday did indeed include some shopping, as planned. I maganed to bargain in Mandarin, that was great fun! In China, it seems that: limited vocabulary + some creativity + a lot of hand gestures = good deals. Me and Kirsi did most of the shopping, while the boys went for a full body massage. The massage was apparently extremely enjoyable... not quite a 'happy ending' but Asher later figured out that those sorts of services would have been available as well...
In the evening, instead of going out we stayed in the hotel, drinking Weird Stuff (dead cheap local alchol, also known as Strawberry Vomit) and playing poker (which I think is illegal in China... ooops!). It was fun despite the fact that I kept losing a lot, Shenzhen was clearly not as lucky for me as Macau! We also played I Have Never which is always a wondeful way to get to know people better and that evening indeed led to some interesting stories but those shall remain a secret between the five of us :P
Monday morning we found out that golfing was cancelled due to rain. The day before I heard about a cyclone warning but none of us really knew what a cyclone is. Turns out it's just a lot of rain. Why not just call it 'rain warning', I do wonder... Anyways, no golfing for us so we had to figure out a plan B. Without much information available in English, in the end we just decided to pick a random metro stop and get off there. As a lucky consequence, we found a go-carting place and decided to go for it. It was only 60 HKD per person for 10 minutes which is dead cheap. And it was a lot of fun! Since it had just rained, we were all dirty and muddy after the race but that only made it more fun! Also, turns out I'm crap at go-carting but I'm crap at so many things and still do them, doesn't really matter :P
Later we all went for a foot massage which was niiiiice! According to boys not as nice as the full body massage though ;)
So a lot of stuff happened in just a couple of days! I'm sure I've forgotten lots of funny incidents already, and most of them probably wouldn't make any sense now anyway! A couple of things are worth mentioning here though.
-Singing of national anthems in order to annoy the taxi driver. Well he was overcharging us anyway.
-Me eating the 'Do Not Eat' -stuff. You know the stuff that comes with for example electrical equipment and keeps moist away from things or something.... well it came with a mooncake so I figured it was something to do with the cake and hence edible. I wonder if my travel insurance covers Plain Stupidity...
ps. I just red through what I've written here and may I just say thank Goodness my granma does not understand English.
pps. It's my birthday tomorrow... we're partying tonight because tomorrow is a national holiday, hence a day off from Uni. Yay!
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
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