Day Trip to Shenzhen - Maid to Manila to kena Murder

We awoke as usual to a freezing morning with Lil and CT all moaning about their bad hair and grumbling incessantly about my snoring and my collapsing airways during the night ... Today we would make a short hop on the KCR line to Shenzhen ... After our breakfast, we started from Causeway Bay to Tsim Sha Tsui station , and walked a looooong tunnel ( the same one we walked when we arrived from the airport ) to the Tsim Sha Tsui East KCR station. The KCR is a special line to access the New Territories which is the 'ulu' areas of Hong Kong so to speak , north of Kowloon. It was at the very northern point of New Territories , Lo Wu that we were supposed to walk into Shenzhen. I liken it to Woodlands into Johor Bahru.

There was some apprehension as we did hear a lot of bad stuff about China and particularly the crime-infestation in Shenzhen. Our Cantonese service manager Lil' was nervous about tracing her southern Chinese roots , and likened herself to a Filipina maid returning to Manila to get robbed. Anyway, we all anticipated that it would be very different from Hong Kong.

The first impression we got was from Shenzhen metro station, which was obviously brand new from its inaugural opening 1 year ago. Thinking that the central station would be the place for good shopping and eating, we headed blindly into the heart of the city to come out to this massive , stadium-like communist grey building with self-flattering red banners declaring modernity and blah. The surrounding buildings seemed all grey and so very mainland Chinese era , not unlike some Soviet buildings.

We asked some police officers, who said Lao Jie Station was a better site to head for shopping. Alas by the time of the afternoon, most restaurants had closed their lunch sessions and hence we had to settle for some simple Chinese food at some ubiquitous Chinese food joint.