In the morning, both of the little girls got up early (around 6 AM?) and played the “let’s see if Ari knows any Chinese” game which was a fail. They were very gregarious though, and kept showing me their picture book with a goat of some sort who always gets in trouble with the wolves. They played with their spinning tops for a while while their mother (?) desperately tried not to wake up. At around 8:30 we pulled in to Shenzhen where we disembarked, all sweaty and smelly and hairy thanks to the last two days of sad guesthouse and Chinese train. We immediately put our bags in storage for a while while we explored Shenzhen. We got food at the Berlin Cafe which was again way too nice a place for the cost of food (110 RMB for the both of us). They also must have thought we were businessmen judging by how polite they were to us. I was wearing my Google shirt, but they must have been really confused by our backpacks and bedraggled looks. We wandered over to the section of town described as the “electronics” section which was pretty true I suppose. Except for one Best Buy-style store, the place was like a many-floored bazaar of ICs and other small computer components sold by many many small companies. Unfortunately, at this point I was still feeling sick and tired and dirty, so all I wanted to do was to go to our hostel, which was in Hong Kong. So we took the subway (minding the gap) to get our stuff and then walked (!) to the border where we first left China and then filled out many forms to enter Hong Kong. Really like a border crossing actually. After swearing again that I had absolutely no symptoms of swine flu (no diarrhea, runny nose, sneeze, OR muscle pains!) we successfully entered Hong Kong. From there we exchanged money (at a rate of 100 RMB = 107.5 HKD…) and took the subway to Tsim Sha Tsui and Nathan Road at the Paris Guesthouse. The ticket cost HK$36.50 which was a jolt back to Western prices after the cheap heaven that is China. We found ourselves in a thriving Indian and Middle Eastern district and so, after showering and resting, had some chicken tikka masala, naan, and cauliflower and potato stuff. We then wandered around to the bayside and took pictures of the skyscrapers. Hong Kong is a much richer and more diverse place than even Shanghai. I saw gay people, African people, Japanese people, Westerners from all over, Indians, Middle Easterners, and of course native Chinese people. After we got tired of the bright lights we wandered around the shopping areas near our hostel for a bit (fake iPhones yay! and the camera I want for HK$2850…too much) and saw many well-dressed people (a bit like Santa Monica). After hitting up a few 7-11s for drinks, we went back to our hostel and went to sleep (after I finished “Life of Pi”).
