The best weekend yet

This weekend has been without doubt, the best one so far in China.

On Monday, myself, Claire and Tristan (a couple from the UK) decided to head down to Shenzhen for the day. It's about 90minutes by bus, and pretty cheap, so really easy to pop down for the day. We didn't really have an agenda, just decided to go see what all the fuss was about.

Now I'll tell you, over here, Shenzhen gets a really bad rap. It's supposedly dirty, and noisy, and amazingly busy, with absolutely no greenery. Just a futuristic post-holocaust movie made by some second rate director kind of place. I beg to differ though. And fair enough, we didn't get to see the whole city, and I wouldn't really want to live there, but for what it is, it was awesome. The city is actually amazingly clean. I'm talking, like, freshly washed clean. Everything there is pretty new, remembering that it was little more than a fishing village 20 years ago. The people were all amazingly friendly (ok, that's a constant in China, so perhaps a moot point), and the vibe was actually amazing.

I bought a really nice bone chess set, in a wooden box, for 540Yuan. This was bargained down from a starting price of 1600Yuan, so I felt like I got a pretty good deal. In truth though, I probably could have gone more - no worries though. We did some other random shopping (Tristan got a watch, Claire got some boots, and I got a price on the smallest digital projector you've ever seen), and then went for lunch.

Lunch was at a proper pizza parlour, with actual pizza, that tasted like pizza. Hen hou! (Very good!)

You know, it's funny, writing it all down now it doesn't sound so great. But the day just flowed, there was no pressure, no tension, not even so much as a moment of boredom or.... glitch.

We got back to Huizhou around 7, and then headed with Polly, Axel, and Loretta, off to the revolving restaurant. This is one of the prime restaurants in Huizhou, and I can see why.

The meal consisted of a buffet, stocked with truly amazing dishes. I'm not a fan of buffet's, because they tend to focus on bulk rather than quality, but that simply wasn't the case here. Each station had fresh, amazingly good food. There were oysters on ice (I got stuck in), brilliant salads, and, best of all, steak. The chef did have a bit of a desire to overcook it, but I managed to argue with her until I got about 400g of steak that tasted like happiness.

A good bottle of wine, some pretty magic coffee, and a whole lot of great company later, and I was a very contented man last night.

It's funny, but reading this post, it sounds like an amazingly random day.

Obviously I will need to post more often, and hone my "craft" to the point where I can actually try to describe pure joy.