The luxury sleeper bus for which we had bought tickets a few days before ended up not being all that luxurious. The bus left Yangshuo at 21:45 on Monday night, and we were cramped into seriously small births, that were impossible to lay down op properly. Each bunk was wedged underneath the one in front and there were no space to move at all.

What made things worse was that the road to  Guangzhou & Shenzhen are in a really bad state and we were driving through and around crater sized potholes throughout the night.

Arriving ‘fresh and rejuvenated’ in Shenzhen at 09:20 the next morning we took the first taxi we could find to the Mission Hills golf resort. It’s the world’s biggest, with 12 championship golf courses, each one designed by a different celebrity golfer. Jan didn’t want to loose out on the chance to play here, and so after much research and decision making the Nick Faldo course was chosen as the one to go for.

Having arrived at around 10:30 we had lots of time to relax and get ready for the 14:00 tee-off time we had booked a few days prior. The place is so massive that it took about 30 minutes with two shuttle buses to get from our hotel to the course. After signing in and getting rental clubs organised we found out that Marizanne would not be allowed on the course unless she was playing as well.

As a consolation Marizanne checked into the resort’s spa for a mid-afternoon full-body ‘Hawaii Lomi-lomi’ massage. She admits that it was much more enjoyable than riding around on a golf cart for 4 hours would have been. Jan actually carded a tidy 83 after not having played at all for months, so he was extremely happy with the afternoon’s performance.

We treated ourselves to a lovely dinner in one of the many restaurants and then went back to enjoy what was easily the biggest hotel room that we’ve had during our entire trip. A nice extra was the fact that we had breakfast included in the price, and we made sure we got maximum mileage out of it.

Having spent huge amount of money already we decided against taking any of the hotel’s transfer options, but instead Jan ventured outside the confines of the massive resort to flag down a taxi, go pick up Marizanne and the luggage and then head to the Hong Kong border at Shenzhen.

This whole outing was of course way over our budget, so we’ll be living on dry noodles and water for a few weeks now.

If you can’t see the slideshow above click here.