So, 4th of July, in Shenzhen with my gf and another friend.

We started off at Lee Yuen restaurant in the Luo Hu Mall for dim sum. We were super hungry after getting through immigration and didn’t want to waste time scouting around – the mall is right there and this place could seat us right away. About 10 plates of reasonably okay stuff (didn’t take pictures) and several cokes came out to Y239. No complaints on that.

Later, from the men’s toilet on the 4th floor of the mall, I noticed that on the Hong Kong side there are these graveyards facing the river and Shenzhen. Shot through a window but you get the drift.

Lots of Chinglish signs around but I didn’t always have the camera handy. And I was shooting in full program mode, no flash, to get the shots and not get noticed, so several are blurrier than I’d prefer. But one time that I did slow down, two guys ran up and asked if one could take a picture of the other with me. I’m a New Yorker at heart and this is Shenzhen and I had this image of handing the camera to one guy and watching the two run off with the camera so I respectfully declined their generous offer …. (and I had my small Canon with me, not my Nikon DSLR of course).

Discount pomotion?

“Full plus one free service charge” I don’t have a clue.

After lunch and a bit of shopping, we headed back to the ground floor of the train station to check out the sauna deals. We chose a place called Gold Coast Sauna, in the Luo Hu district, and after a short wait jumped in the van for a free ride over. (We didn’t opt for the place that we were told had a “30,000 square foot swimming pool” because we didn’t have bathing suits and I’m sure my friend misheard the size of the thing. But maybe next time.)

This place was great. New, clean as a whistle, not too busy, cheap enough. The basic package is a 100 minute “Chinese” massage, no oil, for Y118. If you want oil, which we all did, then you had to opt for the “Turkish” massage, 100 minutes at Y198, getting towards the pricey side. They also offered Thai, Indian and several other international varieties at increasing prices. Their “menu” was bilingual and they had one staff member in the lounge who spoke English.

Their pool had these great jacuzzi chairs to lie in and these little waterfall things to stand under, plus of course steam room, sauna, all the usual bits. In the lounge, the two ladies opted for foot massage while I went for the deep ear cleaning as I always do. Iced tea, plates of fruit, ice cream cones (not for me, sadly) all included. The massage was great. My masseuse had whiter skin than I did! I was convinced she was going to tell me she was from Dalian or Harbin, but she turned out to be from Guilin.

Following the massage, we took advantage of the 1 hour free internet, checked out the ping pong and pool tables and video game room, took a peek at the restaurant and found the “movie theater” – projection TV showing DVDs in a room with huge reclining chairs. Some more coffee and tea, another shower and then off.

So after all this, including the foot massages, ear cleaning, a pack of smokes and tips, it came out to around Y350 per person. Which is what I pay for a 90 minute massage (not including tips) in Wanchai where all you get is a massage (albeit a really good one) and a drink.

A friend had recommended a Sichuan restaurant called Ba Shu Feng, which has 5 branches in Shenzhen, including one in Luo Hu. We hopped into a taxi and he didn’t recognize the street name (Ai Guo Lu), but when we told him the name of the restaurant, he knew exactly where we were going.

Here’s the entrance.

The interior of the restaurant is done to resemble an old-style Chinese house and courtyard, and they even had this huge fake tree off to one side. The restaurant had four floors. We ate on the ground floor which was full and saw people coming and going from the elevator and stairs pretty constantly. The restaurant has a bilingual picture menu.

Pouring the water for the tea. (Yes, I loved the smiley face buttons on all the staffs’ uniforms. Was the owner a big fan of the Watchmen movie?)

And this was some great tea! Just look at all the various things that I have no idea what they were that are sitting in that cup. And even though I’d ordered a Coke, I quickly discovered that this tea did a seriously better job of cooling my mouth down from the spicy food, so the Coke went untouched the rest of the meal. And each time I emptied my cup of tea, okay a little corny, I kept thinking, where is Mr. T? I pity the fool who don’t refill my teacup fast! No, no, I didn’t say it out loud.

A simple yet hearty and spicy soup with tofu, tomato and mushroom. We also had a starter of cold chicken and bamboo shoots in Sichuan oil (starter? there was enough there to feed a family of four!) but I forgot to take a picture of it because I was too busy soaking the bits of chicken in that hot oil and wolfing them down.

Ah, my favorite chicken dish. Spicy as hell but also tasty as fuck and we made pretty quick work of this. Behind it you can see sliced asparagus quick fried in oil.

Ah, the bowl of beef and veggies. This beef was melt-on-your tongue tender.

And some stir fried crab. This was the most expensive dish we ordered at Y62. We also got some dan dan mian (no picture) and I gotta tell you, the noodle itself was nothing special but the sauce was one of the best I’d ever had.

And a quick shot of the table as we were shoving the food into our mouths as fast as we could.

My gf loves spicy food. Sometimes I think she pours an entire bottle of tabasco on a slice of pizza. She’d never had anything approaching real Sichuan food before and she was sweating like crazy after just a few minutes. Oh yes, she wants to go back.

Meanwhile, she thinks that I don’t eat spicy food, so she was amazed to see me packing this stuff away as fast or faster than she was. Yeah, it was pretty spicy, but so many other flavors as well, I kind of got high because I was loving this meal so much. (Which explains my Mr. T remark, okay?)

So …. tofu soup, cold chicken & bamboo shoots, spicy fried chicken, beef, stir fried crab, asparagus, dan dan mian, coke, beer. How much did all this cost? How about Y232? Yep. What’s that, about US$30?

And yes, it cost less than our dim sum lunch – which of course is also because we had the lunch in the Luo Hu Mall and this dinner was in a “normal” location.

Taxi back to the train station and home by midnight. Next time maybe we’ll go up on a Friday night, get dinner first, spend the night in the sauna, and then can spend Saturday shopping till we drop. Next time. Maybe.