We left Hong Kong on Sunday around 11:00 and caught the Metro all the way back to Shenzhen on the Chinese border. At the Chinese passport control point, we got held back because they did not believe it was Jan on the photo (it must be his long hair). They even called another official to investigate and he only let us through when an alarm went off somewhere and he had to run. A few steps further we got stopped again and they searched our hand luggage (which was just a plastic bag with the new camera and computer boxes). They discovered some bananas and apples in this bag and took us to a little room. Very seriously they filled in different forms and we expected to be charged with some kind of fine for smuggling fresh fruit into China. But after dramatically discarding the fruit in a big blue plastic bin, we were sent away again. Of course no one could speak any English so we just smiled and walked away at this stage.

It was fairly easy to get on a train to Guangzhou in order to get connections to the rest of the country. The high speed train only took 1 hour and was very luxurious compared to other Chinese trains. In Guangzhou we went straight to the ticket hall to try our luck with train tickets for the same day (near impossible in China!). We had planned to go to Sichuan Province, however all the tickets for the 30 hour train journey were sold out for the next 3 days. After spending more than 2 hours at the train station trying different routes (having to queue up every time we wanted to ask a further question), we decided to do something completely different and bought tickets for the island Province of Hainan. This still meant we had to spend the night in Guangzhou, so we took the Metro to a small river-based island in the city and checked into a hostel, The Guangdong Youth Hostel, for the night. The hostel is actually a hotel with a communal lounge area with computers and a TV and after the dodgy, dirty accommodation in Hong Kong, it was very refreshing and felt like a 5 star haven to us.

We spent a while relaxing and recovering from the Chinese heat before we found a very nice little restaurant on the waterfront for dinner.

This morning we managed to fill another 10kg box with goodies we bought as well as stuff we don’t need anymore and posted it to Australia. The women at the counter very kindly charged us for every piece of tape that was used to close the box as well as the time it took her to check the contents (a full hour of unpacking and looking at everything in the box!).

After a proper Western burger for lunch, we visited the Qing Ping Market in Guangzhou - the most famous and bizarre in China, full of strange foods, animals, and animal parts for sale. There is a saying: “the Cantonese will eat anything with four legs, except the table”. The market is full of all kinds of strange Chinese herbs and everything you can imagine is sold in a dried form - from dozens of different kinds of mushrooms, to seahorses, snakes, tongues (we couldn’t figure out from what animal though) and worms. Then there is also the live animal section. The Lonely Planet warned that the likes of dogs and cats are on sale for human consumption, but we did not see any of this (only in pet shops). We only found live scorpions, water turtles, frogs and snakes in plastic buckets on the streets.

We had to hang around the hostel for the rest of the day as our overnight train to Hainan Island only leaves at 21:25. We are not really looking forward to this hard-sleeper journey, but we are planning on just relaxing on a beach in the town of Sanya for the next few days.

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

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.