Tasha's Study Abroad Adventures: Shenzhen, Po Toi, and Lamma Island

On Friday, Cornelia and took the MTR up to Shenzhen. It is so crazy how different it is from Hong Kong being so close. The pollution was much worse—in fact my eyes started to burn halfway through the day. There were a lot more beggars and people trying to sell us things too. I had a little bit of trouble crossing the boarder because when I cam back from Macau, they put the wrong stamp on my passport: instead of giving me the student stamp, they gave me the visitor stamp and I guess they did not believe I was still a student. Right after walking out of the MTR station in Shenzhen, Cornelia and I were immediately approached by this woman wearing a purple shirt saying, “Hey missy, hey missy, come to my store.” We were like no thank you, and she would not leave us alone! I am not kidding, she followed us for about ten minutes and we knew she was right behind us so it was really awkward. We thought we had lost her when we got on the escalator, but right when we looked to our side, she was on the escalator right next to us asked us to come to her store again after she knew we recognized her. She finally left when we ignored her for long enough. Not even a minute later, another person did the same thing. It was kind of unnerving and stressful. This happened for the rest of the day—the funny part was everyone called us missy.

Before we started our shopping we went out to eat because we were both starving. We wandered into the fancy Shangri-La hotel where we had all you can eat dim sum for $98! Everything in mainland is so cheap: we were at the fanciest restaurant we could find and had amazing food for only $12 USD! We ordered so much! My favorites were the vermicelli wrapped barbecued pork with vegetables, barbecued pork bun, of course the sha lum bao (I don’t know what the English name is), and the egg tart.

Next it was off to shop. There was a big mall right where we got off the MTR (big surprise…I literally have been to more malls in this past month than I have in my entire life) so we went there. I had never bargained before so I decided to test out my skills with some women selling sunglasses. I ended up doing pretty well; I talked her down from $100 Yuan for one pair, to $30 Yuan for two pairs. I didn’t really want the sunglasses though so I didn’t buy them even though they were only about $2 USD for each pair. After that, I ended up buy two headbands for $31 Yuan. I bargained with the lady selling them for a long time. She wanted me to pay $120 claiming that the jewels in the head band were real crystal. I of course laughed at her and told her I knew they weren’t, especially since one was missing. When I said I would pay $30 she was like "American money? " and I had to laugh again because that is way more than double of what she initially offered me. She finally gave in though when I handed her the cash.

When we were done shopping accessories, we wanted to find a tailor to get some swim suits made (the biggest bra size here is a C and both Cornelia and I have a lot bigger boobs than that LoL). When we were on the escalator up to the next floor, a young man behind us asked us if we wanted to buy DVDs and we said no of course and said that we were looking for a tailor. He said he knew one and would show us. We decided to be adventurous so we followed him. The tailor didn’t really have what we wanted so we left. The man who showed us there was waiting for us and ready to take us to the next place we wanted to go. His name was Jimmy and he was very friendly. While we were in that mall there started to be a lot of commotion and we thought maybe there was a fight, but Jimmy told us that the police and just came in and busted someone for selling things illegally. Jimmy acted as our guide for the rest of the day—even when we left to go to a different part of Shenzhen he showed us to the MTR and helped us buy our tickets. When we went back to that mall later in the day he found us within minutes and helped us out. I think he was just excited to use his English. He was a nice guy.

We ended our day in Shenzhen with some pedicures and manicures. I got both for $50 Yuan. But let me tell you, that pedicure and manicure was the most stressful one I have ever gotten in my life. The minute we sat down and our hands and feet were occupied people would come up to us and try to sell us massages, eyebrow threading, drinks, and more. It was hard to tell them no especially since we couldn’t use our hands to make gestures. The worse part was that the people doing our nails were trying to sell us things too. For example, they did this weird Chinese medicine where they pulled things out of our feet, like corns or something (which was really scary because we had no idea what they were doing when they pulled out these needle looking things and weird potions because their English sucked), and then they said that there were like eight more in our feet and that if they removed them it would help with back pain and they could do the rest for $180. We were like, “no we don’t want that” and they tried to keep going. Then the woman who was doing my fingernails buffed one of them and made it really shiny and said only $20 more for the rest of your nails. And I told her no I just want them painted and she said but this is much prettier and was arguing with me and being really annoying until I sternly said no. Then she got all sad/angry and didn’t look at me after that. The best part was when she went to paint my toes and I asked her to do the thing where they shave all the dead skin off your feet. She went to pick up my foot her eyes got so big like she was disgusted of my giant feet (which are only a size 8 which is average in the US!). Cornelia could not stop laughing especially because when she was done she put my foot down and shook her hand out like she was in pain. Also during that manicure/pedicure, some random person working there took a picture of us like it was no big deal. I think we might have been the first white people to ever go in there.

Coming back to Hong Kong was so nice. After a day in that pollution, haggling, and stares (we were the only westerners we saw all day) we were worn out and the next day we had to leave at 8:00am for our school excursion.

We started our school excursion off in Po Toi where we had a seafood lunch which was decent…I ate a fish eye too! We did some hiking there which the weather was perfect for. The view of the ocean was beautiful and there were a ton of huge fishing boats. After Po Toi we went to Lamma Island which we only had an hour there so instead of exploring we got ice cream and waited for the boat to leave. We decided it would be a lot more fun to go there for a whole day when the weather was nice because there was a beach and a cave and some nice places to eat on the water.

I forgot to write last time that next weekend I will be gone in Singapore and Malaysia. I am so excited for that. I am going with Lena, Matt, Pat, Trevor, and John. We leave on Thursday after school and come back Monday before school. Today, Matt and I planned out a trip for Chinese New Years. We spent all morning searching for the best deals. Everything during the New Year is pricey so to keep our costs down we are taking a one way flight to Saigon, Vietnam and taking trains, buses, and boats through Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and China to get back to Hong Kong. Going along with us is Lena, Mike, Kiwan, and Koen. It should be a pretty exciting backpacking trip especially since I have never done anything remotely close to this before. I can’t wait!