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Shenzhen is one of Brisbane’s sister cities, and is located just outside the border of Hong Kong and is a part of mainland China.

I’ve been to Tijuana before and thought the hustling there was interesting.  Nothing however, could prepare me for the ferocity and tenacity of a Chinese sales person chasing for a dollar.
I think I need to learn what ‘No thank you’ in Mandarin is, because I’m sure ‘No’ in English must roughly translate to ‘please follow me and continue to harass me’ in Chinese.  The worst case we had was a bunch of Teenagers who I’m sure were eyeing off our bags who were trying to get us to go to certain stores and buy this and that.
After walking 5 levels and continually saying ‘please go away’ we ended up sort of standing in a circle and waited for a while until they cleared.

It’s ok though, Shenzhen police are on the case and give fair warning.

Indeed, I will keep myself well avoid of theitves.

It’s odd spending Christmas overseas. Sure I’m with my immediate family and yes there are carols; I guess being overseas for my first Christmas is a little strange. Still, it is kinda cool when there are sights like this to be seen.

Only problem is, we werent the only people who had this idea. The line-up to see this tree alone was at least 2 million long, and that’s not lincluding the

The MTR is an awesome transport system. Coming back from NY,NY in 2004 I kept telling people how cool the subway is until some stuck up lady, I can’t remember who, said the Paris Metro system or even the MTR were much better systems.
I haven’t been to Paris so I can’t tell you anything about the Metro, but I’m sure it would be full of chain-smoking, manic-depressive, effete snobs. I know this because I’ve been to a Louis Vuitton store before and it was a horrible experience.

I could go and on about simple the system, super clean and fast. Instead I’ll just talk about the Octopus card. If this is the future of smart payments then I welcome it. It’s a Smartcard with an embedded chip that stores credits which you can use to pay your way on the MTR and Buses. It also allows you to buy a coke or even a Slurpee from 7-11, try doing that with your Train ticket.

Only problem with the MTR is that everyone else in Hong Kong loves it, so getting a seat is a rare thing even. Even when a 8 cabin train leaves every 2 minutes it’s packed. Personal space is for the weak.

Merry Christmas to all!

It’s Christmas and I’m in Hong Kong waiting for a plane to Dubai. So far it’s been a weird christmas, but none of that matters now because my shoes have been blessed with engine oil.

Arriving back to my hotel after a nice Christmas lunch I noticed all was not well in the foyer. It seems a Lamborghini Gallardo owner had a little bit too much Christmas cheer and decided to take a direct route to the adjacent shopping centre…

The Gallardo has a 0-100km/h forward acceleration speed of 4.2seconds. So you can assume a drunken man having his foot flat to the floor in reverse is going to cause a bit of damage.

The tow truck company tried to start the car to move it forward, but alas the engine was lifeless. Mainly because roughly 10 litres of engine oil had leaked on the pavement. So with a dozen or so on-lookers the Hong Kong hotel staff waved us on to assist with pushing the vehicle.

That’s right, I had my first experience pushin a car that was worth more then my twice my anual income and it was fun.

The service in Hong Kong is immpeciable, so much so that the hotel staff were kind enough to pick up the various bolts on the ground and hand them over to the disgruntled owner.
For those interested TopGear have a nice review of the Gallardo.