Hatched a plan with a friend to head up to Shenzen for a couple of nights.

Decided we would try and avoid the crowds and head up on a Monday. It’s a very easy trip up, only 45 minutes by train up to the mainland border where the fun begins.

You are instantly assaulted by a new way of doing things, starting with the Visa, you have to complete your cards, queue forever to submit your application and be photographed, then queue to pay and finally queue to actually get your visa. Then you do the usual immigration procedures. It was not busy and it took us the best part of an hour, I would hate to have to do this when it was crowded. And no, you cant do this in advance.

One good thing about this process is the discounted cost, we only pay aprox RMB 160, ($20NZ) whereas others including US citizens pay up to 600RMB for the privilege of a one time visa. ( Thanks Phil and Helen, Winston for that!)

Shenzen is a SAR or Special Administrative Region that was set up in 1978, then it was a sleepy fishing village. Now less than 40 years later it is a vast metropolis of nine million people. Imagine that, from nothing to twice the population of New Zealand in 40 years. Staggering!

So we steeled ourselves for the the train station, expecting to be approached by all manner of people for all sorts of things. Apart from the usual taxi and transport calls we got through unscathed. Our anxiety levels were relatively high and we were expecting to be heading into some wild west type of scenario, but it was not like that at all.

By now it was lunch time and we decided to get something to eat and work out our game plan. We decided to look around the area around the train station and then just have a look at the shopping.

We stumbled into a huge mall like complex filled to the brim with small shops selling every conceivable item. Handbags, watches, glasses, tailors fabrics tea you know it. You have to be prepared to fend off approached, on a quiet Monday we had the place pretty much to ourselves. If you are after copies and/or what appear to be “diverted” originals then this is the place to go, I gather that this particular building is a favourite with Hong Kong tourists who just want to “dip in” to the Shenzen markets and bag a better deal than they can get in Hong Kong.

It really is nice to be able to just look, no pressure to buy now because I can always come back, it made the experience quite nice.

I did buy a couple of pairs of sunglasses, one of them were prescription ready in 20 minutes, they set me back about $NZ80, absolute bargain. We also came across a very helpful woman who shared her list of favourite stalls, she clearly shopped there a lot, the list was very, very long.

We then decided to get a cab to the Minsk aircraft carrier in the port. This was about a 30 minute cab ride away so we got to see some of the streetscape. What we did see was really well laid out, wide open roads, wide footpaths and what looked like nice modern apartments, many of which were clearly two stories. The roads were not too busy and after Hong Kong, well, it just seemed a bit empty. Where was everyone?

The Minsk is a Russian aircraft carrier built in the 1970’s that suffered some sort of “accident” in the 1990’s that led to it being sold to a Korean business man who in turn sold it to a Shenzen company that now markets it as a tourist attraction. As my travelling mate said, a ” bit of cold war tourism”.

It’s really bizarre to be on the deck of such a huge ship, it is clearly not being maintained and is basically deteriorating quite quickly. It includes a fighter plane, helicopter and a lot of the torpedo’s and missiles that I can only assume have been disarmed. It was surreal thinking about the lives of the people who may have worked on her over the years, what did they think? I found the remaining pictures of crew onboard to be almost as interesting as the ship itself.

So, after our self guided fossick around an aircraft carrier, we went to Starbucks, who have just opened up down the road.

We then decided we would head to the art district, an area where armies of artists can reproduce anything and everything available. Had a very funny moment where someone was trying to sell me an “original” for $NZ50,000 but when I asked who the painter was, he said he was one of the “pool” painters. The fact his “original” was not attributed to an actual artist seemed to be lost on him. Good luck with that sale mate!

Then it was the spa hotel. Ah, the spa hotel, where does one start on that?

I had heard a few days earlier that you could stay at these spa places where you could also sleep the night. Sounded completely sleazy and dodgy but my source seemed legit, so we started looking around on the net.

We decided to go to the aptly named Queen Spa. This place is five stories high and seems to take up a whole city block. As we entered we were greeted by a row of women in long white, high collar coats set off nicely by a tiara. The men were equally dressed well preened in coats straight out of the matrix.

Details and passports obtained, we were led to the changing rooms. No one spoke English, but it was clear that we were to disrobe, being modest kiwi’s we kept our underwear as we were led to the showers and the pool room. This level was made up of banks of showers, hot pools, warm pools, jet pools, plunge pools, dry sauna’s, hot saunas and an army of attendants. Having no idea of what was to come next, we hung out here for an hour before venturting forth.

Traumatic memories of being provided with hanky sized towels and robes that would go around one of my thighs were relieved when I was provided with a fetching pair of large pyjama’s not dissimilar to what I imagine may be the national costume of an East African nation. And off we went to the mysterious third floor!

This seemed to be the lounge of the spa. And what a lounge it was. There was a huge cinema room, bars, restaurants, gaming room and a rest area with giant fully electric reclining chairs. Think business class seats and then make them 50% bigger. People were resting, having manicures, pedicures eating and drinking from the buffet or just sleeping.

We decided to get a full body massage. When we were presented with a touch screen to choose our masseuse it should have been a warning sign! Off to our private rooms we went. It was probably one of the worst massages i have ever had, and it was 90 minutes long. I just wanted it over, it was clear that more than massage services were on offer.

Thinking we may be able to stay in our rooms and sleep, we were ejected and told to go upstairs. We both tried to sleep on one of the rest chairs, and then noticed that in the dim light there were some other activities going on. Clearly some of the massages that were being offered there involved a great deal of frottaging. It wasn’t overt, but you didn’t have to be Einstein to work out what was going on. There were many others around, women and younger people but no one batted an eyelid.

Thinking that we were going to just have to accept that this was going to be the rest of the night, we asked if there was anywhere quieter we could go to rest. We were led downstairs to another level to the “sleeping quarters”, rows of large, very comfortable semi enclosed single beds, sheets, pillows and blankets. In a word. Heaven! By now it was 3am and we were completely knackered. I woke up, thinking that it was 7am only to find out it was 9:45am……

Day two was about to kick off!