When my passport finally arrived, I headed out for China. I took a bus to the main metro line that leads to Shenzhen, China. As I crossed the river to China, it was what I pictured entering a Communist country would be like. Dark grey sky's, light rain, and large buildings. Once I got to the boarder crossing, it was not as hectic as I thought. Everything was in an orderly fashion, with officials going out of there way to help me because I couldn't read anything... Not much was written in English and I was the only non-Asian crossing the border. While I was waiting in line, I could hear a mass of children's voices across the building. From what I could gather, up until the age of 11 Chinese kids in Shenzhen have the opportunity to go to school in Hong Kong. I am sure they can go to school after the age of 11, but there were signs for students who are under the age of 11 to line up on the other side of the building.
The public transportation was extremely nice and easy to use. All I had to do was go up to an electronic map, press my destination and pay according to my distance, similar to Hong Kong. Once I got on the train, they had TVs lined up on the wall in the subway line so you got a continuously picture the entire ride, pretty cool.
Trying to find the hostel in the rain when you can't even read the road signs was a hassle. The directions that the hostel gave me were not easy. They said, take a left out of the train station and we are in the large Mansion Building on the left. First off, every building in Shenzhen is huge, second I don't know what Mansion Building is in mandarin, third I didn't have a phone. After about an hour of paseing up and down the road, getting angry that I am getting soaking wet and can't follow these directions, I finally came across someone that spoke reasonable English and let me use her cell phone to call the hostel. Wow, the directions could have been so much easier, I was one block from the station on the back side of the building on the corner...
The hostel was not really a hostel. It was on the 28th floor of an apartment complex with bunk beds in the bedrooms; however, the people we really nice. They helped me arrange my bus ride from Kunming to Dali tomorrow and wrote everything down in Mandarin so I could show it to a local and they didn't have to be able to speak English. Afterwards, the guy that was left to watch over the hostel and I hung out and ordered Chinese takeout. He was so interested in me and my previous travels, he was glued to my photos.
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