My trip to China

I mentioned a few posts back that when I don't have time to write in my blog that I ought to at least share photos. That is what I am doing today. These are some of the photos I have from my quick trip to China last October. I went for work, we were there for just 4 days and we had a VERY long travel day to get there due to cancelled flights. My only free time was when it was dark, so my photo ops were either from car/train/boat/plane windows (yes, I rode all of those in one day!) or at night. Either way, here's a small look into the window on Shenzhen, Dongguan and Zhongshan, China...and a couple of Hong Kong where I didn't stay but just passed through.

This is my first view of China. That is Shenzhen across the river and we are standing on an elevated walkway in Hong Kong right near the border crossing.

This is a sidewalk in Shenzhen right outside the building that houses customs (at the border crossing). The weather was gorgeous and the air was MUCH cleaner than I expected.

Delivery guy on a bike taking a smoke break.

Billboards line the streets of Shenzhen.

This building (like many in China) was totally covered in scaffolding. There was lots of construction going on. All this scaffolding is made of bamboo!

We drove from Shenzhen to Dongguan. This is part of Dongguan right outside where our hotel was located.

This was the view from my hotel room window (we luckily had time to clean up before meeting our customers - we'd been traveling for more than 24 hours at this point!)

This was the pool in our hotel. I didn't get to use it, but it was beautiful!

This was dinner one night in Dongguan. In this restaurant, you pick out your food while it's still swimming in a tank and then they prepare it for you...

We had MANY dishes, but only a few of the photos are post-worthy. This was octopus.

And lobster. Delicious!

That night, we walked around Dongguan a little near the hotel with one of our customers as a guide. This is a huge mall right across the street from where we stayed. There is actually a Wal-Mart on the other side of this mall (we visited it...just to see). If everything in a US Wal-mart is made in China, was everything in a Chinese Wal-mart made in the US? What do YOU think? ;-)

After a few days in Dongguan, we traveled by car to Zhongshan for a night. One of our customers took us out on the town that night and we visited a part of town called Old Zhongshan. It was very cool - old buildings renovated to be current shops and bars. It reminded me a bit of Ybor City in Tampa.

Me riding/posing in a bronzed rikshaw.

Zhongshan at night.

The next day, we took a car, then a ferry, then a train and then two planes to get back to the US. This was taken from the ferry on the way into Hong Kong. Those are apartments. Can you say 'population density'?

This was taken from the train that took us from the ferry to the airport. It's hard to see, but it's like a bit of OLD Hong Kong tucked admist speeding trains and skyscrapers.

Finally, a shot of Hong Kong (also taken from the train) showing how lush the country is when you step away from the city.