I’m taking off this entire week but not flying off anywhere, a “staycation” as some call it.  I need some time to chill out after deal with the stress of Spikey’s passing.  Yesterday I went up to Shenzhen with a friend.  As I hoped, a few days before the official holiday, things were quiet.  No line at immigration at all and able to get into the Laurel restaurant at the Lo Wu shopping mall without having to wait an hour – without having to wait at all.

In the evening, my friend mentioned he’d never been to Shekou.  I’ve only been there a couple of times and the last time was probably 4 years ago so off we went.  The problem was that I don’t even know the name of where in Shekou we wanted to go in English, let along in Putonghua.   I also didn’t know that the Shenzhen Metro now reaches out to there.  So we grabbed a taxi and I told the driver we wanted to go to Shekou and off we went.  He never asked me where in Shekou we wanted to go and I thought, “Okay, looks like a smart guy, sees two white guys going to Shekou, probably figures we want to hit the expat bars there.”  Nope, he took us to the ferry terminal.  So then I’m trying to explain to him that we want to go to the bar area and he has no idea – probably more my fault than his.  I see a sign for the Nan Hai Hotel, the big hotel that’s been there for a long time, and I ask the driver to take us there, guessing (correctly) that they’ll have staff who can direct us.  And yes, they did, they gave us a hotel card with a little bilingual map of the area and we walked over to Sea World.

We’re walking around and everything is so quiet.  I keep thinking, and finally say out loud, “Gee, it’s awfully dead here for a Saturday night.”  And my friend looks at me and says, “Dude, it’s a Monday!”  Oh, right.   Two American women call out to us.  ”Excuse me, we’re trying to get back to Hong Kong and we spoke to a taxi driver and not sure if he understood us, can you help?”   Um, I don’t know, my Cantonese and Mandarin are both pretty basic.  ”That’s better than the no Chinese we’ve got” or something to that extent. So I walk over to a taxi, tell the driver that they want to go back to Lo Wu and Hong Kong and right away he says no problem.  A little weird, no?

We walk around for a bit and choose a place called Tequila Coyote Cantina, “Mexican With Attitude.”  Well, we didn’t get much attitude pro or con from the place but I gotta say it compares quite favorably with the “Mexican” places in Hong Kong.  The food was far better than I expected it to be and of course it was at Shenzhen prices, not Hong Kong prices.  It’s amazing what you can do when you’re not being raped by your landlord.  A “yard” of frozen margarita there was 105 RMB for the first one, 99 RMB for refills.  One could get seriously wasted in this place for very little money.

Then, because things were quiet there everywhere, we decided to just head back early and I was home before 11.  Nice relaxing day.

Anyway, take a look at the picture below.  The gentleman in the photo is Donnie Yen.  I’m a big Donnie Yen fan.  Not the greatest actor in the world but the camera likes him; I think he’s got great screen presence and as near as my uneducated eye can tell, he does the martial arts thing pretty damned well.  He’s not Jet Li but to my mind he’s not that far behind.

(Photo from here.)

That lovely woman on the left hand side of the photo is his wife, Cissy Wang.  The woman on the right hand side of the photo is her sister, actress Wang Yuanyuan.  No wonder he’s smiling, right?

But Donnie, what the fuck is with that outfit?  That shirt and that bowtie?  Green pants, black plaid shirt, red bowtie?  Did you get dressed in the dark?

Then again, he’s fucking Donnie Yen.  Aside from the two hot women surrounding him, that look on his face seems to be saying, “I dare you to make a comment about this tie, I’ll crush your fucking head. For real.”

I can do it because I’ve brought along a secret weapon.  Donnie, meet Jamie Chung.

(Photo from here.)

I hadn’t been up to Shenzhen for several months and was feeling in desperate need of a massage.  Add to that a friend who is relatively new to Hong Kong and had never been across the border.  And so, yesterday, off we went.  Since he’d never been there at all, I figured it made sense to do some of the usual stuff for his first visit.  Which meant, of course, the Luo Hu shopping mall.

First stop lunch.  I always love to eat at Laurel but we were hungry and I knew that at 1 PM on a Saturday afternoon it would be at least a 30 minute wait for a table, so we picked a different spot in the mall (sorry, I’m spacing on the name) with reasonable quality stuff and average price of around Y10 per dish.  Of course I ordered way too much and we were full before the last dish came.  And since it was a long time in coming, I tried to  cancel it but they wouldn’t let me.   Oh well, at Y38 (fried chili peppers stuffed with minced fish, spicy as hell) I didn’t mind too much.

Walking around the shopping mall, it seemed as if every shop had the same two iPad knock-offs, each of which seemed to have both Windows and Android installed.

As you can probably tell, the boxes look the same (the one on the right has the Android logo on top) and these things seemed relatively okay on first glance.  Note that on the bottom there is a connector port (not Apple’s dock connector) as well as USB and a Micro-SD slot.   The interface seemed like Windows and then you’d tap an arrow and another icon menu would launch featuring Android options, Android 1.6.  The smaller iPad also has a front-facing web cam built in.   Some dealers had taped an Apple logo on the back.   I couldn’t figure out what processor was inside but these suckers were pretty freaking slow.  Asking price everywhere was around Y1200; one shop came down to Y700 and they were trying really hard not to let me leave without buying one, literally hanging on to my arm as I tried to get out of the shop.  But I figured, even if I could get them down another hundred or two (which seemed likely), this was something that I wouldn’t actually use more than a couple of times for novelty or show-off value due to that really slow processor.   Perhaps there are better ones available at Huaquiangbei but we didn’t have time to get over there to check it out.

I did buy a different cute gimmicky thing – a key chain with what looked like the usual set of buttons for locking/unlocking a car but actually had a tiny video cam embedded – for Y80!  Takes Micro-SD cards and seemed to work decently in the shop – tested out this one and it seems to work okay so I’ll be dangerous during the week ahead.

The only other photos of possible interest are these two shots taken from the toilet in Luo Hu looking at the border.  I find the graves on the hillside facing Shenzhen to be of particular interest (sorry, couldn’t get rid of the reflection in the glass) – were these placed there merely because it’s on a hillside facing water or was there some political significance that I don’t know about?  I fantasized that these were people born across the border, came to Hong Kong in 1949 and are hoping that some day their spirits will return to a free China?

The next stop was massage, of course.  I asked around in the mall and the name that came up most often was Queens Spa & Dining so we went back to the train station, found the Queens Spa shop and hopped on their free shuttle bus for the 10 minute ride somewhere near Dong Men.  I thought I’d been there before but everything there was new to me so perhaps it was my first time.

There were six people, all dressed in white, lined up outside to welcome people.  Everything in this place seemed shiny new and immaculately clean.  One floor features a “30,000 square foot water park!” but we hadn’t brought appropriate attire.  The shower area featured three huge baths set at different temperatures with those big stone jacuzzi loungers, very relaxing.

On entering the lounge area, we encountered a Caucasian woman in uniform with a big button that read, “I speak ENGLISH!”  Her name was Natalya, Russian, living in Shenzhen for 10 years.  Actually we encountered a lot more English outside of Luo Hu than I’d encountered in the past – many of the Chinese staff members at the sauna spoke at least some English, at least at a similar level to my Mandarin (probably better), and when we went for our massage later on, one of the two massage girls could speak basic English and told us she was studying at a nearby school on her days off.

We settled into huge lounge chairs in the movie area – big projection TV, the day’s film schedule posted (we watched Four Christmases, Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon, better than I expected) while helping ourselves to drinks and fruit – fancier drinks and food available at extra charge and we did spend Y10 for some popcorn.

When we felt ready for the massage, we were brought to a computer screen where we could choose from baseball-card-like displays of each masseuse, her name and specialties (though only in Chinese) – each one photographed in skin tight outfits looking like pop stars, each one more beautiful than the last, although of course no “extras” are to be had in these kinds of places.  90 minute massages start at Y168 and go up depending on which options you want.  ”Hong Kong style” oil massage was Y188, if memory serves.

Note – if you just want to go there and use the facilities without getting a massage – pool tables, movie and karaoke rooms, mah jong room, water park, food, etc. – the cost is Y98 for 24 hours.  That’s really nice, right?   Walk around Shenzhen, get hot and sticky (no pun intended) and come here and pay 98 yuan for locker, shower, pool and some food, that’s a damned good deal IMHO.

From there, jumped in a taxi to my favorite restaurant, the Luo Hu branch of Sichuan chain Ba Shu Feng.  And for the first time, these guys let me down.  I ordered 4 dishes – 3 of them came relatively soon and were as fiery spicy and wonderfully tasty as ever.  But the 4th dish never showed up.  I kept calling waitresses over, the manager kept coming over, they kept getting on their walkie talkies and asking, they kept telling me it was coming, but it never came.  Finally it was getting close to 11 PM and I told them we had to get back to Hong Kong and didn’t want to miss the train.  As opposed to our lunch experience, this time they were very apologetic and didn’t charge us for the dish that never came.  Which was very nice of them except that fish dish is really freaking tasty and I had been looking forward to it but it was not to be.

So we hopped in a taxi back to the train and very soon we were back across the border in Hong Kong.  One thing I find is that people in Shenzhen are consistently friendly, smiling and helpful – and not just when they’re trying to help themselves to some of the money in your wallet.  Then we came across the border to Hong Kong where no one smiles, everyone’s in a rush and grouchy all the time.  Logic would seem to dictate the opposite should be true.  But these days I find people in Shenzhen to be more laid back and welcoming than the people in Hongkie Town.  My friend’s reaction to his first trip?  He wanted to leave Hong Kong and move there.  Next trip I’ll take him around Dong Men and Shekou and see if he still feels the same way.

This is one of those not-uncommon “Spike is an idiot” posts.  I don’t need people to comment and tell me what I already know!

With my gf going out with friends tonight, I decided at the last minute to do a Shenzhen run.   A massage, sitting in a jacuzzi, shopping for a jacket – seemed like a reasonable thing to do.  So off to Lo Wu.

On arrival, shopping first.  As always, I was amused by the attempts of various sales girls to prove to me that jackets that were 3 sizes too small were really a perfect fit.  Eventually I found something I liked in my size … and of course a few other things here and there.

Hungry, went back to, I think it’s Choi Dip Hin?, been there several times before, not gourmet by any means but cheap and tasty enough.  3 dishes, chrysanthemum tea and a coke for 90 bucks, such a deal!

Then outside the mall.  Stood there, smoked a cigarette, looked around.  Realized that all the massage places I know in easy walking distance of the mall I don’t like.  And didn’t want to go into the train station to talk with the sauna touts, as good as many of those saunas were, because I didn’t want to get into a long van ride to spend a long time at the sauna and risk missing the last train back.  (Yes, I know, I can take a taxi to Huanggang, bus across the border, and then taxi back to Sheung Shui to get my car – as big a pain in the rear as it sounds.)

So back into the mall, figured I’d pick one of the massage joints there and get a foot massage and shoulder massage.  Picked on that was large, clean, busy.

One guy goes to work on my feet and of course they look to upsell you while you’re there.  Do I want a manicure?  It’s just 10 bucks, why not?  Scrape the calluses on my feet?  Sure, have a ball.

And even though I’ve lived here a long time and have done Shenzhen runs too many times to count, at this point I think I fell into a scam.

After the guy scrapes my calluses, he calls another guy over.  That guy takes a look at my feet and tells me that I have corns.  He sees 4 corns and says he can remove with Chinese medicine, no pain.  He tells me the price and tells me it would cost three times more in Hong Kong.  I believe him.

So he goes to work, yanks four disgusting things out of my feet, shows them to me, offers to give them to me (I think).  And then he finds two more.  Does those.  Finds four more.  Does those.  Then he looks at the other foot, repeat ad infinitum.  Uses some Chinese medicine, digs around, pulls stuff out.  “Loosey-loosey!” he keeps saying.  (No, I didn’t bother to tell him my name is not Lucy.)  In total he yanks out 20 of these things.  And carefully band-aids up all around my feet.

To be honest, I’m not paying 100% attention.  There’s a lot of cute women in this place.  And a Stephen Chow movie on the TV – Love on Delivery, which features Christy Chung, often wearing little more than a towel.

Actually, they turn the movie off halfway through.  It’s time for the boss to deliver his nightly or weekly pep talk to the staff.  All of them gather around, except the ones working on me.  Some of them take turns saying something.  Silence after each one.  Then the boss starts in.  He sounds kind of stern.  I don’t really care about the freaking pep talk, I want my Chow Sing Chi movie back!  I get them to put it back on, no sound.  I apologize to the boss, who says it’s quite okay.  He continues with his speech and concludes with applause from all the staff.

Then I find out that the price that my guy quoted, that I thought covered 4 or 5 of these things … that was the price for each of them.  Times 20, it was a damned hefty sum.  (No, don’t ask, I don’t feel like telling.)  More than I can comfortably afford.

Now they’re giving me care instructions – how long I should keep the band-aids on, when it’s safe to wash my feet again, a discount card that once I get 5 $30 foot massages, I get the 6th for free.  And one of the women there holds a mirror up to my face and starts pointing to certain blemishes and spots and suggesting that she should go to work and remove them for me.

What was I gonna do at that point?  Try to walk out of a place that had 20 employees, at least half of them male, mostly half my age and presumably stronger than me?  Call the cops, who wouldn’t speak English and I don’t have enough Mandarin or Cantonese to really explain what’s going on?  And to be fair, for all I know, the guy was telling the truth and I really did need this.

But I don’t feel good about it at all.

I headed back to HK.  For what it’s worth, my back and my legs were feeling significantly better on the trip back than on the trip up – perhaps only because my wallet was so much lighter.

Like I said up top, no need to leave a comment telling me I’m an idiot.  If you wanna leave a comment along the lines of, “No, that guy was probably right, you weren’t scammed,” that might help.

Anyway, I’m happy with the jacket, happy with my meal, got a couple of things for my gf for Xmas that I think she’ll like.  So, that’s that.