pajama party. on acid.

Shenzhen. "a city of sub-provincial administrative status in southern China's Guangdong province, situated immediately north of Hong Kong."

Bonnie and I decided to join Liz, Coralie, Alex, and Charles on the short trip to SHanzhen on friday evening. After a long MTR ride, and some time spent at customs, I arrived in China for what would be my first official visit.

We had the craziest, best dinner I've had in Asia yet. It was a restaurant similar to ichiban where the meat was sizzling and the booze just kept on flowing. FOr what was abour $20CDN, we had fish, lamb, steak, scallops, shrimp, sushimi, and the list just keeeep son going; not to mention unlimited alcohol in the form of beer, wine, and sake. Trouble at the very least.

After dinner we headed to Queen Spa, which would end up being our accomodation for the night. The only way I can accurately describe this place is as an effed up slumber party, on acid. Our experience goes something like this:

-Walk in, greeted by people dressed in ridiculous outfits, complete with 7inch popped collars, and are each handed a bracelet that has a number on it, equipped with a computer chip.

-Go into the locker room where you are instructed to get naked, shower, and then are given a pair of pajamas identical to those of every other female in the building, and a pair of disposable underwear (i grabbed a few extra pairs for those of you at home who want to give them a shot, they're not as terrible as they sound). At this point I honestly felt as though I might have been in a prison. Get assigned a number, strip, shower, and get into uniforms. So strange.

What happens next was the weirdest part of all.

-We are ushered into an elevator and find ourselves on the 3rd floor (of 8 in total), that appears somewhat like a casino, somewhat like a dream, and somewhat like an adult slumber party. Let me explain, no windows, no clocks, unlimited fruit, tea, and ICE CREAM (diabetics worst nightmare), hundreds of people sitting in these big chairs with personal TVs attached, getting massages or sleeping. This place is both dark, and filled with lights at the same time.

Sidenote: there are machines with computer screens taht you can go up to, scroll through a series of pictures of the different masseuses, and choose which one you want. lol weird? i've heard poeople say that you often don't get the one you picked, but we're still not sure as to whether this place accomodated "happy endings". We opted out of the "choose your massage girl" thing and just took what we were given... Wouldn't have made any difference. Leave those machines for the pervs.

-Of course I go to the ice cream machine to test this bad boy out. BAD idea, sweetest, WORST ice cream of my life. I immediately throw my cone into the garbage and vow to never near that evil machine again (this says a lot considering I've admitted to being a legit addict). The tea turns out to be good, so we load up. I also mow some watermelon considering the doctor says I'm allowed to have as much as I want, perfect.

-We're a little buzzed from the wine at dinner so all of the girls decide to get a massage. We're lead throw winding hallways (which bonnie said looked like an oriental palace garden lol) to this room with 5 massage beds. Our girls come in, and start calling out our numbers in mandarin (this is when I'm thankful for having taken the LANG 113 course here), and the massages get underway. AT one point I fall asleep so hard that it takes about 3 of them to wake me up, oops.

-At this point, we have zero clue what time it is (people say its comparable to a vegas casino in the way that there are no clocks, and no sense of time), and are trying to find 5 chairs together so we can lie down. No dice. Some chinese employee takes us up to the 5th floor (vip style) and shows us this sleeping area. Essentially you sit in a big recliner, watch tv, chat, drink tea, whatever; and then once you fall asleep, they come turn your tv off, put a duvet over you, and tuck you in. I felt like I was on another planet.

-Before cashing it in for the night, we got another series of massages (full body massage was about $24 for 90 mins, foot massage $8, same with ehad massage). I got a head and foot at the same time and thought I had died and gone to heaven. As long as you spend a total of $168 yuan in a 24 hour period, you can spend the night for free. I really thought there was no way I was going to be able to fall asleep in this oversize recliner in this giant room (especially since there was a fricken freight-train like snorer right behind us), but one pair of earplugs and a couple massages later, I was toast.

-Wake up the next morning to go down to 3F and indulge in some more fruit and tea, before deciding to hit the streets for some serious shopping. One word, INSANE. The streets were ridiculously crowded, nobody spoke english, and everything was DIRT cheap. The only downside in these crazy markets is that you can't try anything on, so you end up eyeballing both for size, and style. Turns out I returned home with a tank top that fit fine other than not being able to fit over my boobs, a dress that was so short it's more of a shirt, and a dress that makes me look amish. awesome.

I made it back to hk at 1230 pm saturday night, and had a nice relaxing night in by myself, considering my roommate decided to head into the city for the weekend. Bonnie stayed in SHenzhen and decided to continue her journey to Guangzhou, which will be followed by Shanghai, and then Beijing (where we may meet up if the school workload isn't too heavy). World traveller much?

Very low-key weekend in all, as I spent the first half of today in bed, followed by lunch, schoolwork, group metting, and entourage sesh in mosis room. Ahhh I think I'm going to miss this place.