Day 7 (Welcome to the PRC)

The day started off at 8am. The sun wasn’t shining as brightly as usual. Looks like a cloudy day. After washing up, I looked out the window and saw how bad it was. The clouds were low and it looked like it was gonna rain. Weird thing in HK is that when it’s cloudy, a kinda haze hangs over the whole region. Anyway, it didn’t rain in the end.

I met up with my room-mate’s friends, a total of 5 of us headed for Shenzhen. A train ride there costs HK31.50. Same price back. It took only about 40mins max. Customs was quite a drag. The whole place reminded me of how ppl go back n forth from JB over the weekend. Shenzhen, like JB has cheap stuff n many ppl from there go back home over the weekend. The whole crowd in the morning was like an exodus from HK. Similar but opposite happened the same night when we came back.

Entering Shenzhen, it was really like entering China. HK was so much diff. It you though HK was crowded, Shenzhen is a mess. It’s not as clean as HK is and the ppl n traffic really go about their own way. In hokkien, it’s “no government”. In HK, ppl are moving from one place to another, you don’t really see anyone standing still for a moment. In Shenzhen, there are like so many ppl just loitering around that they look like they are just waiting for the right moment to pick you pocket. Ok, maybe I’m just prejudiced, but they really gave me vibe. So through customs, we took a taxi to Dong Men, or direct translation is East Gate. It’s gotta be one of the shopping districts, cos there’s like a million ppl there.

We found the restaurant we wanted to go. It had steamboat and served goat’s meat. The food was nice and ate our fill. Their spicy was really spicy, which I underestimated them. Had thought the Chinese weren’t into hot stuff. Next headed to the KTV. We couldn’t really find our way at first, but after a while, we manage to get a taxi who knew how to go. All this time, I didn’t really understood what was said and just followed them around. Half the time I was really trying to figure out what they were saying. Over lunch, one of them discussed about having gals along. Bad idea…

So we reached the KTV and spent around 4 hours there. I didn’t really sing much, just one or two songs. They weren’t really embarrassed about their singing n just sang their lungs out. Their choice of songs was predominantly sung by males. Anyway, I figured the game of dice played in Pirates 2. They had dice there and we tried round after round. Kinda fun and like a game of bluff. Anyway, listening to some of the songs really jolted my memory. I come back to that later.

After that, we headed to down to shopping centre district and had KFC. My room mate mentioned that KFC was more popular with the ppl than Mac in China. Interesting fact. Had a simple meal before heading to Park n Shop. The supermarket there was like Carrefour here. They had everything, literally, and they were freaking cheap. Hey was in RMB and they even sell 1.5 litre (about there) bottles of shampoo. I swear you can use it for a year. The stuff there was amazing, stuff I hadn’t seen before. They even had live frogs waiting on death row, dried starfish and many types of fish. And so my room mate n friends bought some of the groceries here. I realized it was stuff which I had already bought. Kinda felt cheated, but then again, IKEA was already cheap, this place was just cheaper.

Anyway, at the end of the day, we took a train back home. Almost had a problem at customs entering back into HK, but it was nothing in the end. Learnt that in HK, ppl walk on the left, but in China, it on the right. So does the driving, it’s opposite. While we were walking to the train platform, it was like an exodus from Shenzhen into HK. There were hordes n hordes of ppl. We decided to take the next train while the train waiting was filling up. As we waited for the gate to the platform to open, a horde had gathered behind us. These ppl are more kiasu than Singaporeans loh. Once the gate opened, everyone rushed to reach the platform n be the first in the queue. The train hasn’t even arrived yet. When the train arrived, the doors opposite opened first to let all the passengers alight first, closing it before opening on our side. All of us were like F1 cars just waiting on the grid for the door to open. When the opposite doors closed, everyone just inched closer to ready themselves to get into the train. It was really funny, as I don’t think such kiasuism can be seen in Singapore. So we rushed for the seats and slept through the journey.

A similar incident happened a few days back. I was at Yau Ma Tei MTR and it was the last stop for the green line. Gaik Chin n I was going back and we took the green line. On the way down to the platform, we saw ppl gathering on one side of the platform. No train was visible, so I assumed that was the usual side. We slowly walked to a door and waited when the announcement said that the train would arrive on the other side of the platform. Immediately, everyone rushed to the other side, even though no train had arrived yet. Some were even running across. Both of us were stunned as we slowly moved across the platform. It took us a moment before laughing at the whole matter. Again, I’ve seen ppl run across City Hall to catch the next train when the train is over the other side, but never when the train is not even here yet. Amazing. Will try to record this one day.

Felt I learnt a lot today. Tomorrow, the ball will start rolling.

Day 8 (First Day of School)

It’s always a rush on the first day of school. People running everywhere, catching up with classmates and chatting about what they did over the holidays, etc. My first lesson was at 1.30pm. But I got up early to enroll into the Uni. Couldn’t do so until I entered HK as a student, before this I was just a tourist visitor.

Long story short, I did my visa late and couldn’t collect it until I got here in HK. When I got here, they told me that I had to leave HK n re-enter using the visa. I tried asking if I could just go to the immigration office but it seemed that everyone was telling to go Shenzhen or Macau. So I tried Shenzhen. It was nervous re-entering back to HK. For a moment the customs officer looked suspiciously at me, but in the end, everything went well.

So anyway, that was why I couldn’t get internet or do anything in school for the whole week. Now finally with my student ID, it could allow you to go anyway in the Uni. It’s like a universal card.