Things have been hectic as hell in the office. Lots of out of town visitors the next couple of weeks as we proceed to do yet another round of reviews of the 2008 budget.

So it seemed natural for myself and a co-worker to start the long weekend early and relax in Shenzhen. The events of the day ….

12:30 off the train and through immigration. I had to go to the foreigner line, of course, my friend didn’t, and coming out on the other side, the usual crap of some guy offering to be my guide. No thanks.

Off to the Luo Hu shopping mall for some dim sum. The place we wanted to go to, Laurel, had a 40 minute wait for a table, so we chose another spot on the top floor – not great but as always, the cost of the food there more than makes up for it. We had a Singapore-style fried noodle, a rice noodle roll with char siu, char siu bau, har gau, some veggies, tea and a coke and the bill came out to RMB 140. A sign on the wall advertised an entire crispy fried chicken with vegetables for 45.

Some quick browsing through the mall after lunch. My friend couldn’t resist getting a pirate Tag Heuer watch though he was subsequently quite surprised to find out that it relied on being wound rather than having a battery.

Heading into town, walking past the Shang, fighting through the usual crowd offering cheap hotel rooms, funky massages and worse. Over to the hidden pirate DVD shop. I wasn’t really looking for current movies and I know they always have an astonishingly eclectic selection. Stuff I picked up included Agnes’ Varda’s Cleo From 5 to 7, Herzog’s Aguirre The Wrath of God, Bad Lieutenant, a 3 disc collection of 7 Jean Renoir films and some Ayumi Hamasaki because she’s so easy on the eyes.

We tried a new (to me) sauna called Peninsula, near the Dongmen area. Huge and clean, two hour massage with tips worked out to around 150 RMB each (actually I went for an oil massage and tipped a bit higher, so my bill was probably around 180 – but how could I not give a good tip after both girls lied so well and said I was so handsome?). We finished at 6 and they offered us dinner at the free buffet but we skipped that and took advantage of their free car service back to the train station since we had a dinner reservation there.

The car dropped us off in a section of the station that I’d never been to before. It’s a pick-up drop-off spot for all the saunas in town. They have girls standing there with brochures (only in Chinese of course) and one or two of them even have small store fronts. Some place called Queens Spa seems to be the most deluxe – I was told you pay them a flat rate and that includes massage, dinner and assorted other activities – game room, movie lounge, etc. Anyway, the point is, you get off the train and if you want a sauna, no need to go walking through town, no need to take a taxi anywhere, get free car service to the sauna of your choice.

Back to the top floor of Luo Hu, where this time we only needed to wait 10 minutes for a table at Laurel, the most popular restaurant there. The food is quite nice and the prices are almost silly – an entire Peking duck with all the trimmings for 140 RMB? Well, it didn’t make sense for just two people to order that, but everyone around us seemed to be getting it. I watched the server carve up a duck for the table next to us, one of the waitresses saw me watching and happily exclaimed, “Crispy Peking Duck!” Oh, that skin was just glistening and I might have been drooling a little. And there were stacks of pumpkins everywhere – they were doing special Autumn-themed dishes with pumpkin.

We had a plate of steamed prawns. A huge bowl of spicy bean curd. A third dish reminded me of a cowboy/campfire sort of thing – some kind of beans fried up with very fatty chunks of pork and some other vegetables. Some xiao long bao (not great but cheap!), some rice and bean curd dessert. The bill was way under 200.

So many of the staff at that restaurant could speak at least some English, and walking around the mall after dinner we were taking notice of how many of the people in shops could now really talk and joke with me. Yeah, there were still a few of the “DVD! Watch! Bag! DVD Pussy!”

One thing that I never really took note of until today …. there are certain items that I tend to only shop for in Bangkok, usually at MBK. I saw all of those items at Luo Hu and all at cheaper prices – because most of it comes from China, right?

Tons of knock-off ipods everywhere you look (mostly the 2G nano), bushels of cheap memory sticks, of course every sort of designer jean and top. Actually I probably could have spent a few more hours there, covering each floor in more detail, but I didn’t want to try my friend’s patience too much and my backpack was getting full anyway.

Home by 10 PM. Had every intention of going back out tonight but it’s 1:30 and I haven’t made it out so far and I think I’m gonna call it a night soon.