Monday, April 1, 2013

Happy Easter, China!

Finally, after more than a year and a half living just minutes from China, Paul and I have crossed the border and made it to the mainland. [disclaimer; we did spend the night in Beijing during a 13 hour layover, but stayed at a random airline hotel and didn't get to see anything]

We got our visas and planned to go for a night or so to Guangzhau or Shenzen.  As luck would have it a Groupon showed up on Thursday that suit our weekend plans.

Paul crossing the river.
For $118 (~$15usd) you can visit the Water House Spa in Shenzen, get a 60 minute foot massage, 90 minute full body massage, enjoy fruits and tea, play billards or ping pong, watch tv, relax, and even spend the night.   We didn't have high expectations that this would all pan out, but we (I) didn't have big expectations for Shenzen in general.  In fact, I was pretty confident the whole place would be a big shit hole.

Luckily, I was wrong.  Shenzen was LOVELY!

We took a quick hour long MTR ride up to the border, walked through customs with very little hassle, borded the Shenzen MTR and were in Shenzen proper.  I expected huge industrial run down shithole, but in fact, it twas lovely.

We were immediately greeted by Dunkin Donuts (at which we bought 2 coffees and a donut for $7usd!), then wandered down the very wide, very new, very commercial streets of Shenzen.  The lovely concierge at the local Sheraton guided us to Coco Plaze and City Walk, two areas with restaurants and shops.  Very commerical, vewry new, very nice.  We settled on a habachi lunch complete with salmon fried rice, sashimi, soft eggs, and grilled beef n onions. 

Seeing as it was pouring rain and we had no plans, we head to our Groupon destination where we braced for a rip off.  Shockingly, the place was gorgeous...and more importantly, clean!  We each went to our designated areas to change into Asian PJs, then head upstairs to the uni-sex area for a foot massage and some TV watching.  There are tons of recliners with personal TVs, self serve fruit bar, billiards, pool, cinema, and I'm sure much more, but seeing as not one person-----I stand corrected, one person did speak English, and he was our personal tranlator for the afternoon.  He arranged our foot massage on our recliner where we enjoyed Chinese tea, watermelon, and The Rock, and then we head upstairs for our full body massage.

Paul loved his full body, ,mine was a bit of a tickle fest. She had tiny little fingers and spent the whole time testing my tickle patience.  I finally freaked out when she went for the inner thighs....my neck had been killing me (I have bad push up form) and she relaxed it a bit.   Post massage it was only 7pm, and we didn't feel like hanging about to get ripped off for god knows what, and there was only one English channel on TV), so we got our bill.  It was exacltly what they said it would be.  WHAT!?  When does that ever happen!?

See?  Not shitty!
Walked through the rain to the MTR.  Through customs.  1.5 hour MTR ride home. And made it home just in time to get to bed by 9:30.  Asa!  We <3 China.

And given our visa status, we're free to go again in 30 days!


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