A Day in Shenzhen(China)

During our recent trip to India, on our way back we took a real  four day vacation in Hong Kong.

One of the days we visited city of Shenzhen in China. Shenzhen is a major city in the south of Southern China’s Guangdong Province, situated immediately north of  Hong Kong.  City has no natural beauty, but still has lot to offer – Shopping and entertainment.

Due to lack of information we were not able to get visas from USA. Only towards the end of our India trip we found out about ease of Visa and one day tours from Hong Kong.

Manglam Travels(Dadar Mumbai) helped us with all the arrangements. The package included- single entry one-day visa for Shenzhen, pickup from Hong Kong, train tickets to and from Shenzhen, City tour, tickets for Windows of the World, Indian Lunch. They charged us $95 each for adults and children above 3 years and $35 for infant.

Since we did a last minute booking we were not able to make overnite arrangements.

Tour guide picked us up from Kowloon Area in Hong Kong. Then we boarded a train from Hung Hom Station.

It was an hour long train ride to Louhu Station in Shenzhen. Here we did immigration and started the tour.

Initial couple hours were waste of time as they took us around the city, Chinese exhibit center and some Bamboo Industrial Park.  None of this was exciting.

Around noon  we reached Window of The World. It is a is a theme park located in the western part of the city. It has about 130 reproductions of some of the most famous tourist attractions (Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower, Pyramids to name a few) squeezed into 118 acres.

We did a Mini-Train Ride as we had only two hours to complete the park. I would recommend spending atleast 4-5 hours in the park. Also everyday evening there is a cultural show accompanied by light and music show. It seems Cultural show is just spectacular with about 200 performers.

After the park visit, we headed to Downtown to enjoy lovely Indian lunch. Tour operator took us to Spice Circle. We were served hot tasty Indian lunch.

Post lunch we went to Louhu Commercial Center. Shopping here can be as mysterious as possible. There was tremendous bargaining. You can never be sure of a good price. You name it and you have the knock-off for every brand, every item, be it  from purses to shoes to iPhones. It was a fun experience though.

We ended our tour around 7.00 PM and headed back to Hong Kong.

Overall it was a very nice tour. Had we had more time and done better planning we could have stayed overnight and covered Safari Park too.

In case you do not want to take the entire tour package agents can help you get one day single entry group visa(min 3 people required)  for as low as $20 per person. All you need to do is provide your passport information(Name, Passport no,etc) to the agents about 2-3 days in advance of travel date.

Public transport is also convenient for city travel.

Happy New Year!