Embarked on Shenzhen City tour today. There were only 3 of us as others had opted out of the tour. According to the person from the travel agency, no one went to the Hong Kong city tour the day before. Anyway, we took a train ride to 罗湖 by ourselves and crossed the border into Shenzhen. An interesting thing happened at the immigration counter at Shenzhen. One of the immigration officers, when checking a Western guy’s passport, actually asked that guy to smile. That guy was puzzled, so were we, and turned back to his partner as remarked, “What is she trying to do?”. We all wanted to laugh at the whole incident and I think that the immigration officer, who was a woman, just wanted to see that guy smile at her. Haha…

Met our tour guide, 王小姐, there. Since there were only 3 of us, our transportation around Shenzhen was taxi and the train. The tour guide was disappointed that we did not want to go to 世界之窗 or 小人国 there. She complained to the taxi drivers and her friend on the phone all along the way, saying bringing us was a waste of her time and she had to 赔钱 by bringing us. She had her sulky face on for the whole trip. We went to 莲花山公园, a jade and Chinese medicine selling place and the entrance of世界之窗 where we were forced to take pictures. The lunch provided was quite good, with roasted goose, celery with pork, green vege, fish and soup. Took a train back to the immigration area. The only time when our tour guide smiled was when we wanted to take a picture with her in Shenzhen train station. She was more enthusiastic than us and she even got someone to help us to take. She told us that it was her first time taking a pic in the train station and wanted us to send the pic over to her. After she left us at the immigration area, we went to罗湖 shopping centre which was just beside the immigration area. The shopping centre was just like a huge Pasar Malam, as described by王小姐. It’s all clothes, shoes and bags. It’s very noisy, stuffy, messy and crowded in there and there were just too many shops. The layout of the shopping centre was really bad and it put us off walking around the area. Calista bought a bag at RMB$120, which was initially priced at RMB$220. We found the same bag at the immigration area and the lady there was willing to sell at HK$100 and that was before all the bargaining started.

Back in HK and our hotel at around 6pm and Irene took us to the Harbour Front City to view the Symphony of Lights. Had dinner at one of the restaurants facing the harbour and ate and enjoyed the show at the same time. During the show, the lights of the buildings along the Hong Kong island lit up and changed different colours. There was also laser from some of the buildings. After the dinner which is really good, we went back to Tsim Sha Tsui and walked around, then we went back to our hotel. Calista and Qi Hui then decided to walk back to Mongkok area at around 11 pm. As I was rather tired and thought that the shops were not open at that time, I did not go with them and had a nice long shower instead =)