Day trip to Shenzhen China

Here's a few Hong Kong island skyline pictures for fun. The tallest building on the right side is the IFC building and that's near where Mark's office is. My office is far to the left, not in this picture.




However, you can see my office and our apartment in this other picture. Look to the top right corner of the picture and the 3 buildings with red lights on top are right near my office and also where our apartment is. That body of water in the middle is Victoria Harbor.

Christmas plans
It's Dec 23rd and we're staying in Hong Kong for the Christmas and New Year holidays. Most of the westerners have left town, but there's still a handful of us staying and it'll be a peaceful and relaxing holiday. I haven't done any shopping and with the warm weather, it's hard to believe it's really Christmas. (sorry family, as you can guess, presents will be late)

As always, it's been a busy 2 weeks with lots of work and lots of play too. I'm still taking my Mandarin lessons and Mark is learning Cantonese on his own, but plans to start real classes next year. So far, he's learned conversational Cantonese really well and knows how to amuse taxi drivers and locals alike. My Mandarin is much more functional and I feel like I know enough to get by, but my listening and understanding is wayyyyy better than my speaking.

Dana's day in Shenzhen
Last weekend, I took a one-day trip to Shenzhen China which is right across the border of mainland China. I go for work sometimes, but that's usually just a trip on the train, to the office and back again. This time I went with 4 girlfriends and we hit the famous Lo Wu shopping plaza which is 5 floors of shopping where you can get all the knock-off clothes, watches, purses, videos etc you could imagine. After 2 hours on our feet, Nicki, Leone and I took a long rest in this little tea shop trying everything they put in front of us. Another interesting part of the day was this guy who showed up with a bag full of sugar cane sticks and all the locals swarmed him as he used a machete to peel off the outer layer and then sold the sticks for the equivalent of 25 cents. Nicki and I got one and stood around with the locals biting off pieces, sucking out the sugar water and then spitting the cane into the garbage can. Odd, yet strangely good.

After a long day of shopping we went to the Queen's Spa and I am going to have to go back again and again, and also bring any friends who come to visit. It was amazing. (Here's one of the santa hat wearing workers leading us in) It's this huge building all dedicated to pampering. We were there for 5 hours and I could spend a whole day there (actually you could because they rent sleeping capsules for overnight rests). Anyway, we started off with hour long foot massages in a private room while they served us dinner, and then we got hour long head and neck massages and then we went for 90 minute back massages. Heaven. Total cost-$50 US. There's so much more we could have done, but it was almost midnight and I was getting the flu, so me and Alexis went home while our other friends stayed for manicures and pedicures.