Shenzhen, China

Took a small trip to Shenzhen, which is an hour bus ride out of Hong Kong. Since it's close, many Hong Kongers go there since the HKD goes further. We didn't go there for sight seeing, but to kick back and relax and visit a family member from Toronto. He's an Expat there currently. We did go to a family spa called 678 International Club. Sorry folks, pictures weren't allowed for obvious reasons). There are massages, saunas and lounge chairs where you can watch TV, while eating the endless fruit buffet--that's served to you. If you feel active there's ping pong and the billiards tables. If you're hungry you can order at the restaurants there as well. As for choosing your masseuse, that was an interesting experience. They have a touch screen computer where you scroll through profiles of the various trained masseuses, all of which are female. The best way I could describe the profile photos was the comment I made to our relative, "these looked like clothed dirty pictures of women." His response, "yeah, that's how it is here." I had to ask, "this IS a family place, right?" He just smirked and clicked on a girl that, as he said, "she looks like the one that can take care of you."
 
"O...kay."

I asked for a shared room with my wife, since I don't speak Mandarin. No other reason. Really.

After that we went to a mall to have dinner. Didn't take much photos, but did get some geek shots of a DC Comics clothing store.

At first I was wondering if this was a shop that was selling fake stuff.

Apparently it wasn't, as I was told. They had the proper DC logo and the trademarks where they should be. No spelling mistakes etc. So that's a good thing. I would have taken more shots, but was told that I couldn't. Why? Cause they didn't want people counterfeiting the product. Well, that's what I was told anyway.


One of the dishes ordered for dinner was interesting.

 Pork bone soup.

Sounds innocent enough, right?

 

What's this? A plastic glove and a straw?

They're used to suck on bone marrow. That's right, bone marrow.

It tasted like how I thought it would. Liquid meat with the mixed flavours from the ingredients tossed in to make the soup. What you can't hear from the photos are the phlegm like sounds that we were all making, as we tried to suck out the bone marrow. Not as hard as sucking a McDonald's milkshake, but hard enough.

I was told it was easier to do if I added soup, which I did. Did it help? A little. I found that it was more for an alternative means to drink soup.

That's how we spent our Easter holidays. Getting massages and sucking on bone marrow. The kids got their chocolate eggs before all of that (of course one of the chocolates eggs was for me).

Oops! I forgot about the photos from my Blackberry.

We had Peking duck for lunch. I'm not going even think about the cholesterol that I took in with each bite. Man, BBQ duck is wicked tastey.

We took a trip to a place called Book City. Think of the biggest bookstore and times it by five. We were walking around for a couple of hours and still didn't do it all. I did pick up something I've always wanted to read, The Little Prince. Kind of a weird reading list I'm coming up with these days.

Currently I'm reading Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man and plan on getting through Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run, then The Little Prince.