77 Days in China: Day 72: Shenzhen and Taipei

Morning ride to the border
We couldn't get out of the country without Charlotte yelling at one more person. We decided to hire a car through our hotel to get to the border, would have taken a cab, but the cabs in this town do not run meters and it is a real pain to try to negotiate a price when you don't know how much it should be. The driver then proceeded to take the longest possible route to get to the border, not going on the freeway and waiting in traffic for what seemed like ages. After 45 minutes we seemed to have not moved at all and the border is only 20 km away. I called to hotel to make sure it was supposed to take this long, but no one spoke English again so Charlotte got on the phone and started yelling at the person on the other end. They then called the driver who seemed to change his route and we were there within 10 minutes.

Post office and bank
Part of our purpose of going to the border was to stop by the post office to send out our souvenir knife that we had mailed to Charlottes friend in Shenzhen. The post office wouldnt mail it internationally or domestically to Charlotte's friend in Beijing, so we were stuck holding a large knife and having to cross the boarder. Our original plan was to pick it up from her friend and fly to the US where it is legal to bring a knife, however now that we were going to Taipei we could not do that as any weapon is considered illegal here. Frustrated Charlotte then went to the bank. Even when she first entered the bank the clerk she opened her bank account with recognized her and was amazed she was back already from her trip! As she was taking money out of her account she mentioned the problem with the knife. The bank clerk told her that if she gives him the knife, he will go to Hong Kong next week and he can mail it from there as they have different laws. Like a lot of days in China when we run into someone trying to scam us we also run into someone who is very helpful.

Charlotte also realized we probably got scammed a lot more than we thought when she was exchanging money and someone came in and asked the exchange rate, when they told him, he responded by asking "can't it be higher?" and they asked what he thought and they worked out a new price, so even the exchange rate can be bargained in China!

Shopping at the border and heading to Hong Kong airport
We spent the rest of the morning shopping for last minute cheap items and then headed across the border. Once on the subway in Hong Kong we realized it was going to take longer than we thought to get to the airport and we might miss our flight. After about 6 subway stops we got off and found a cab who got us there fast. The cab also ended up being only about $6 more than the subway would be for both of us. At the airport things remained to be longer than we thought. We arrived just over an hour before our flight, but it took about 25 minutes to check us in. The woman was having a lot of problems then just as we were walking away she said that she just realized that our original flight was on a weekday and now its a weekend (Friday is the weekend in aviation) and we would have to pay the difference in price. This got us pretty mad and Charlotte still in China mode starting raising her voice and I had to remind her that while Hong Kong is part of China, it is not China. I convinced her to step away and let me deal with it, finally people understand English! She eventually let us go without paying and we finally made our flight and left China!

Taiwan
We arrived at Taiwan around 6:00 and got to Taipei by around 8. Charlotte's mother was not at the apartment so we did the next best thing to relaxing and went out to the street, got the length of some pants that I bought in China fixed and got some food! Food that we could trust, we knew what animals we were eating and we also could get shaved ice and trust the ice! Around 10pm Charlotte went to an optometrist and got her eyes checked and ordered a new pair of glasses. We finally got back to the apartment around 11pm where Charlotte's mom had some Taiwan Beer waiting for me, finally got some tasty beer.

We also weighed ourselves once getting back to the apartment. In 2.5 months in China, I lost almost 20 pounds, now Charlotte said if I get a big belly again she will have to threaten to send me back to China!