mainland
okay so my trip to mainland got cut short. we only ended up taking the train up for the day, and for saftey issues, im not allowed to go into china by myself, and im not altogether sure that that is a bad idea, in fact im thinking that it is a good one. plus going into another country that i dont know at all wouldnt be something that i would want to do anyways.
so we took the train up into shen zhen. so i was just over the border of hong kong, but i can now offically say that i have been to china. granted all we did was shop, but it was the most unusual shopping that i have ever done. firstly you go into the mall, and once you are there you figure out what you want to get, so we decided that our first adventure would be to look at some copy purses.... yes i know stereotypical, but i can say that they have everything..... and and i mean everything. so you go into the store and you look around, and then they say when you have an idea that youwant to get a purse from them that they have your brand, they take you back to the "wearhouse." which translates to a tiny room filled with stuff off of a back alley somewhere. and let me tell you that was wierd. but they have just about a hundered different bags in these little rooms. okay so once the group had what they wanted, we started to barter with the lady. that is another thing, you can always get it for less. and since we were buying more they were more willing to let the price down. and when you aren't getting the deal you want let me tell you if you start to walk away, 90% of the time they will give you the price that you wanted to begin with, so our purses were only about 19 dollars..... great deal. we went trough the same bartering process with a strand of pearls, although there weren't any ware houses involved which is good, cause those alleys are kinda creepy.
another thing that was different, was that when we got to customs, we had to check out of hong kong, before we checked into china, so it was like going through customs twice, but my chinese visa is now officailly stamped, i have been into china.
ciao ciao
~Steph
so we took the train up into shen zhen. so i was just over the border of hong kong, but i can now offically say that i have been to china. granted all we did was shop, but it was the most unusual shopping that i have ever done. firstly you go into the mall, and once you are there you figure out what you want to get, so we decided that our first adventure would be to look at some copy purses.... yes i know stereotypical, but i can say that they have everything..... and and i mean everything. so you go into the store and you look around, and then they say when you have an idea that youwant to get a purse from them that they have your brand, they take you back to the "wearhouse." which translates to a tiny room filled with stuff off of a back alley somewhere. and let me tell you that was wierd. but they have just about a hundered different bags in these little rooms. okay so once the group had what they wanted, we started to barter with the lady. that is another thing, you can always get it for less. and since we were buying more they were more willing to let the price down. and when you aren't getting the deal you want let me tell you if you start to walk away, 90% of the time they will give you the price that you wanted to begin with, so our purses were only about 19 dollars..... great deal. we went trough the same bartering process with a strand of pearls, although there weren't any ware houses involved which is good, cause those alleys are kinda creepy.
another thing that was different, was that when we got to customs, we had to check out of hong kong, before we checked into china, so it was like going through customs twice, but my chinese visa is now officailly stamped, i have been into china.
ciao ciao
~Steph