12/10 Going to Shenzhen from HK Airport
If your chosen airline doesn’t fly to Shenzhen directly, don’t fret, there’s a couple of ways to go there from HK – and if your airline doesn’t go to HK either, they’re in the wrong business!
The first way is to get on the SkyPier ferry, which has a counter *before* immigration. That’s right, you won’t even have to go through HK immigration and customs. When you get off the plane, follow the masses towards immigration, but right before the quarantine and fever check point, look around: the counter is located just there, in a corner. There are actually two booths, one crowded with people, and one mostly empty. That’s the latter one you are aiming for, the line for Shekou – and please note that this will be the last time until you go back to civilisation that you’ll see an empty booth of any kind…
There you show your passport and your luggage tag – if you have any checked luggage, which these days is bound to happen, thanks to terror and all that crap… They get your lugagge tag in order to pick up your luggage and move it onto the boat. That’s right, it’s organized well enough so that your luggage gets rerouted to Shekou on its own. They need an hour to do that, so your earliest departure date is one hour after you check in with SkyPier. Then they look at your passport for a visa. If you already have one, goody gumdrops, you’re good to go. If not, there’s a little snag. If your ferry will arrive before 5pm, you’re also good to go. The visa office, where you can get a 5-day visa in 15 minutes, closes there at 5.40pm or so. Tough luck if you are scheduled to take the 5.30 ferry – which takes 40 minutes to go to Shekou. You’ll be told to go to Lowu, or however they want to pronounce it – more about that later. This service is maybe the more expensive, as far as Chinese prices go, HK$150 if memory serves. That’s still just 15€. It’s very easy after a few days in Shenzhen to think of anything above 100 yuan/HK$ as expensive, but two hours in HK will bring you back to your senses…
When you arrive in Shekou, ignore the illegal cab drivers trying to hawk their services in the exit lobby. The SkyPier is used mainly by wealthy, foreign people – after all they came on an international flight, and paid the equivalent of a good meal for four people just to get from HKIA to Shekou. A real cab will take 40 minutes and cost around 150 yuan.
The second choice is located after immigration and customs, but still within the restricted area: just after customs, you arrive in a sort of small lobby with a few services, including money exchange – the rates there are so-so, by the way. Next to this you’ll find the hotel reservation service, skip and ignore, and then, in the next booth, a cross-border bus service that’ll take you to Shenzhen and other places like Canton, via Huanggang 黃岡/Lok Ma Chau 落馬洲,, but again after 5pm you’re out of luck. Never tried this service, and it seems like a lame solution – they don’t accept much luggage either – compared either to the SkyPier or the next solution. Prices were in the neighbourhood of HK$80, I think.
The third, and, failing an open visa bureau in Shekou and thus the possibility to get onto the SkyPier ferry, the next best solution is the bus+train route. It is actually much more convenient and efficient than it sounds at first. Exit into arrival lobby, go find the 7-Eleven, and get yourself a Peoples IDD Talk Stored Value SIM Card, HK$60 or 98. Best deal in town, as far as visitors are concerned. Cheap calls in HK, IDD calls for free in many countries, and quite cheap for the rest, roaming in China, whatcha askin’ for next? Now go towards the express train to Central but before you arrive there, take a hard right down to the bus terminal. The booth for bus A43 [list of stops] will be on your left. HK$28 for 上水火車站, XX train station, where XX will be anything from shan shui to sheung shui, Mandarin being, really, shang shui, and Cantonese, seung sui. Anyway the station where almost everybody will get off. Takes around 30 minutes if traffic complies. Get off the bus, follow the masses up the stairs to the ticket booth, on your left when you enter the main lobby, and fork over HK$20 for a ticket to Lowu - which from now on you’ll be better off calling Luohu, since that’s what it’ll be called as soon as your mobile phone displays CCMC instead of PEOPLES.
KCR trains are comfy and fast, they come from and go to Tsim Sha Tsui, and have dropped off quite a bit of the populace by then, Seung Sui being the station before last. They even have a “quiet carriage”, #9. Unfortunately, most Chinese don’t know the meaning of quiet, so all bets are off. Anyway, you won’t have long to suffer and/or enjoy the train, as within 5 minutes you’re at Lowu, and the most interesting part commences. Again, and this is the one nice bit about having a billion people inhabiting a country, follow the masses, which basically means move when they do, or get crushed and trampled upon – not mentioning getting instantly passed by a hundred people per second too. You’ll either get into the habit very fast, or lose a lot of time while in China… Now keep your head up, because once you get off the platform, the station will fork into many lanes, some for mainlanders, some for Hong Kongers, and some for the rest of us. They are indicated by neon-lit, coloured signs, with the tackiest colours possible if I may add, but they have the merit to be unmistakable. You’ll shoot for the green pink [how quaint] lanes, if memory serves – that’s the ones on the left. And follow the other white dudes in case of doubt.
There are usually fewer people there, since 90% of the passengers fall in the other two categories. Count your blessings, because the segregation is about to end, and after that you’ll have to deal with being surrounded by millions of busy people not too mindful of details like lanes, waiting lines and the like. You are now leaving HK, handing over the second half of the immigration form you filled out an hour ago. Second stamp within 60 minutes, your passport is getting some mileage. Next walk towards China. But before you do, set your PEOPLES SIM card to roaming, or you won’t be able to use that phone when in the People’s Rep of China, which would be sad, wouldn’t it now? You have 30+ minutes to read the manual of your newly acquired SIM card on bus A43, go for it Buster!
Keep your head up again while walking across the border. There’s a sign not to miss, on the left and high up, that says Visa something something – I wish I had taken pics, but that wasn’t exactly an option. Anyway when you see that sign make a U-Turn into the stairs it is pointing to, and go up to the Visa office. Bleak place if I have seen any. Grab a form, and stand in line while filling it out. Takes 30 seconds tops. Hand over passport and form to the unsmiling dude. When he gestures his hand and meows, yips or barks, look up in the small Logitech webcam, he needs to take a souvenir picture of youse. He hands you a bit of plastic with a number. Go sit yer ass and wait a bit. Prepare your fee too, because, while, as you may have noticed, not a single word has yet been exchanged between you and the Dark Side, they expect you to know how much you will have to pay. If you were good enough to find this small nook, you know the rest, I suppose. The 10/15 minutes minutes you will wait for yet another dude to call your number should be spent examining the big sign outside the office that lists the countries that get super-duper-butt-fucked and have a special fee – which can be as mucho as four times what I ended paying. All other countries pay HK$150, or the supposedly equivalent thereof in yuan, except that the exchange rate applied seems a wee little bit on the ass-reaming side of things. Serves you for trying to look local.
Now you have your 5-day visa, which occupies one full page of your passport, what a waste, get down back to immigration, grab yet another form, and stand in line while you fill it out. Can take a bit longer, but it’s again segregated, so there are fewer people, and that’s the last time, so enjoy while it lasts… You get a stamp, and get sent on your way. Ignore completely the customs officers and the sign that says that you have to put your luggage through X-Rays, and roll down the lane to the exit. If you have someone waiting for you, good on ya, if not, you’ll have to find the taxi line, which is below the esplanade – follow the masses, because that’s again where the million Chinese who passed immigration before you went. And will make a show of piling up and up and ignore the line totally while you wait. Good luck!
As a side note, if you need more than five days, you can get a six-month, multiple entry visa in the arrival lobby of HK airport, takes around three hours, but the HK Travel Bureau or whatever it is called closes early too. So if you want to go this route, plan to arrive early, and go play in downtown HK while they process it. A friend of mine living in Shenzhen did it, and it seems to work fine so far… Also, it is apparently possible to get the same 6-month visa in Lowu – ie on the HK side. There is apparently a Hong Kong Travel Service bureau there too. But I’d hate to have to wait in Lowu for hours… Better get drunk in the Irish pub at HK International Airport!