Crossing the Chinese border sounds hard, isn’t it?
Well it’s an easy thing to do! We did it, apply for our visa in Hong Kong, take the subway to the Chinese border, cross it and take another subway, this time on the Chinese side into town… Many warned us that the control is severe, the border should be closed at certain times,… Well we didn’t see anything of it.
We crossed the Chinese border at 11pm in just 15’… We’re in Shenzhen, in the Guangdong province.

And then we know it for sure… We are in China! Gone English, gone cleanness from HK.
We search and finally find the subway to our hotel (luckily these terminals speak a little English), but after that, it is a small adventure to find someone who speaks English and can tell you how and where to walk. One hour later we check in in the hotel…
But MasterCard terminals do not work here in Shenzhen… We have to pay cash… Therefore we need to find an English-speaking, MasterCard-accepting bank terminal… Some three banks and twelve trials further we got the money. Check into the room, looks great – just funny that they place a number of (new) condoms on our desk. We get the impression that this is some kind of rendez-vous hotel, however we don’t see anything about it. (Later we find this in many hotels around the country, most of them even offer to hire rooms for only a couple of hours).

To end our day and celebrate the crossing, we head to a small barbecue restaurant near the hotel. As two happy children we choose all kind of dishes to be grilled, look in awe to the live noodle making (some Chinese people even order them on the right thickness), are taken aback by the fact they drop all their garbage on the floor and spit out some bones…
But the food tastes delicious and the locals enjoy our eating with sticks…
So much they even pay our entire meal.
Exhausted, but happy we arrive in our room and fall suddenly asleep!

The next day adventure is limited to find a laundry, taking the bus to the right railway station, order a train ticket from Shenzhen to Shanghai for the next day and return to our hotel…
The laundry cannot be found and finding/ understanding the railway ticket costs us 4 hours! We were then only able to find standing places for an 18 hour train trip…
Nothing else is available for the next couple of days.
So let’s try our luck…
For now, just one option… Noodles and barbecue in our currently famous restaurant!

The next morning we start food-hunting for our long railroad trip…
Upon arrival in the station, we find our train easily but no one informs us about the 5 hour delay of the train. We wait like all the others for our train to arrive, nervous about the fact if we will catch the right train out of time upon arrival.
All goes smooth, but slow… And then boarding. Luckily we find some seats after the first 15 minutes. Because some friendly Chinese people wants to share their seats with us!
What a relief.

The next 18h45 minutes we’ll spend in this small train carriage…
We got some books, food and nice company. So lots can be done.