The flight was at 1:00 am. We left home at 8 right after dinner. My cousin's driver picked us up. The reason why we left incredibly early was that we were trying to avoid the heavy congestion that remains the centre problem of Jakarta's accessibility. Once you're stuck in traffic, you'll be stuck for hours.
Anyway, we rode a CR-V and let me start on how tight the journey began as soon as all 6 of us entered the car. As you know, there are three sections of seatings in the car. Two seaters in front, about 3-4 in the middle and just two vertical-single-seaters behind. With lots of baggages in hand, the most-backseat area was filled with our loads. So, five of us had to cram up in the middle seats. The driver was sitting at the driver seat, of course. My dad sat beside him. The four of us had obviously grown way too much this year. Sideways of course, if you know what I mean. Basically, the technique of sitting alternatively as in one would sit right till the very tip of the seat while the next person should move upfront to allow more space. Because women have wider hip are and narrow towards the knee section, this would allow a better space utilisation. Sorry for not being too blurry in explaining it through words. I hope you all got the picture. In the end, I could not take it anymore and decided to sacrifice for the others by sitting on the car's floor. It was better this way. I totally ignored the dirt I was collecting at that point. But this was just for the sake of everybody. It did not take long till we arrived at the airport.
Upon arrival at Terminal 3, we saw my other cousin who will be joining us throughout the whole trip to Hongkong, Shenzhen and Macau. We checked in and had to wait for several hours for our flight. We hung around at Starbucks because it opened till late. Not to mention there was a credit card promo. Double winner aye? Obviously we had a Starbucks Feast.
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| yummy <3 |
To kill time, I also played Injustice on ipad. My sisters specially downloaded it that very day before we went to the airport. We were so well-prepared.
As soon as we got into the plane, I believe I could not even hold my eyes upright anymore. They were too heavy and were insisting to keep shut. I quickly sat on my flight seat, put my seatbelt on, and just closed my eyes. It was a 4.5 hour journey. I kept on twisting and turning while sleeping. I could not get the right sleeping position that would not hurt my cervical, lumbar, basically my vertebral spine!!! The recliner just reclined about an inch, did not make much of a difference, I presume. Throughout the flight I heard some foreigners taking a language I did not understand. There was an annoying baby cry. I am not a baby-hater or anything but at that instant I was conspiring schemes with myself to just walk up to the baby and complained to the parents. It was that bad I tell you. Moreover, there was a terrible turbulence. We were shaking, going up and down, like riding a ride at a theme park. I was awoken several times. One time, I even saw Vivi drawing Megara from Hercules. She was not sleeping. Man. It also got chilly up in the air. We arrived at 5:30 in the morning. But in Hongkong time, it was 6:30.
When we arrived, we had to find a visa-on-arrival place at the airport as we were continuing our journey to Shenzhen. We had not made the visa before and ours were expired. We could not find any so our plan to use the ferry was changed to catching the bus to Luohu.
We had to recharge the octopus card first.
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| Vivi wanted to take a photo with miranda kerr. |
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| took this bus A43 and used the octopus card |
My mom met a Chinese family. Apparently they were travelling to Shenzhen too. They were kind enough to lead us the way. I wanted to talk to them but the language barrier inhibited us. lol.
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| train |
We arrived at the Chinese visa place thingy, I was foolish enough not to note down the name of the place. It's a good thing, this is not a travel blog or anything. We were there for hours! It was lunch time and we were still waiting for our names to be called. We finished by 1 and then took a taxi to the Crowne Plaza hotel. Each taxi has a limit of 5 passengers. So my mom and Vivi were separated from us. My dad, Cim, Helen and I were in the same taxi. The taxi driver does not know what Crowne Plaza Hotel is. I thought this hotel is supposed to be popular amongst the people there. But apparently he doesn't know. The only thing I could tell the driver was the address which was located at 3018 Nanhu Road. I was repeating NanHu Lu a lot of times. He suddenly knew what I was talking about and I was happy with it and then I started to recite the 3018 in Chinese- san ling yi ba. The most important instruction was the name "Crowne Plaza Hotel". But I had never learnt what crown is in Chinese. I only know what king and prince and princess. I don't know what crown is. Not to mention, I had learnt what hotel is in Chinese. But I forgot. Q_Q. So I started to just speaking words I was familiar with like: na ge dong xi zai wang zi de tou: 那个东西在王子的头: That thing on a prince's head. Not to forget the sign language I was doing with three fingers and putting it on my head. The driver was just laughing. Suddenly, my dad saw a huge sign of Crowne Plaza Hotel, and there we were, we stopped there. The taxi fee costed 13 yuan.
There was free wifi at the hotel and I immediately downloaded a Chinese dictionary app and search what Crowne Plaza Hotel in Chinese. The curiosity inside me was killing me. It was 皇冠假日酒店 (Huángguàn jiàrì jiǔdiàn). We were the first ones to arrive at the hotel. The second was my cousins. And the last was my mom and my sister. When we arrived we exchanged our experiences with the taxi driver. My aunt said that the driver told her that if you were in China you should know what the name of a place was in Chinese regardless it having an English name. My mom got a really temperamental driver. He was scolding her along the way. Whooh. That was just a hustle just trying to get into a hotel.
My family booked three rooms. One of the rooms was not ready as it was being cleaned. Before resting, we decided to look for food. We were literally starving!
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| lots of restaurants along the street |
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| lunch at this noodle shack |
I love the noodle but the thing about the peanuts was each bite tasted like a stinky sensation bursting inside your mouth. My sisters on the other hand loved the nuts. lol.
After a really late lunch, we decided to rest. I also fell asleep after browsing sightseeing places available in Shenzhen from my ipad.
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| Shenzhen at night |
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| dinner at a mall near the hotel |
There was a misunderstanding while ordering the food. The waiters mistook our order for something else. Language in this case is really important. The food was delicious! The Hainam chicken rice (bottom picture) was amazing! I ordered the pork thingy! That was also good. Event the fatty layer tasted so delicate.
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| tea time at night |
It was time for rest. What a tiring day it was! We really hit it off from the beginning of the day (1 am in the morning). I took a nice long bath with rock salts. What a soothing end to a great adventurous day. I hope tomorrow would be as nice as today! :) Thank you Lord for the amazing opportunity of being able to travel.
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