Shenzhen, China- May 3rd & 4th

Flying out of Beijing International Airport, I saw the most beautiful site in the whole world - a Kenny Roger's Roasters. Be sure to tell Uncle Spencer that Kenny's is alive and well in China!!

A huge new real estate development. In the 1970s, Shenzhen was a small fishing village that was targeted by the Chinese government to be a capitalist economic experiment, wherein the area would be open to free trade with the outside world. Result: Shenzhen is now home to over 17 million Chinese residents. That's larger than the greater city of Los Angeles in only 40 years!!

Me and a good buddy, Dan Myers, got up early one day to check out the Shenzhen beaches. No surf mind you, but, a whole lot of people doing Yoga. It was very muggy that day, too!!

Shenzhen skyline in the background!!

The guy that helped bring about the economic renaissance of Shenzhen.

Beautiful Gardens overlooking all of downtown Shenzhen.

A ton of kite flyers that day. The speck in the distance is someone's kite. They had some serious reels going on, too.

Sponsored by Wal-Mart. How funny is that?

Outdoor grocery market where common Shenzhen citizens go to shop

Little geckos crawling around

Sea of humanity shopping. There were four floors of this outdoor market.

Delicious Pomegranate Fruit

More chicken - did you say you wanted the head with that?!!

A scrumptious meal seated next to my Brazilian friend, Caio Correa. We are in MBA school together and also happened to graduate from undergrad at the same time.

A long lost dinosaur here in Shenzhen China.

Another indoor mall with little retail shops run by the locals. This thing was 5 stories tall and packed with store people and shoppers wall to wall!

Kelsey and I ventured out solo to see if we could order dinner on our own. Success!

So after dinner, our whole group went around looking for massages. We found this salon that gave us each a head and back massage. They were incredible. They also shampooed and conditioned our hair. It was just a few bucks!

And yes, they still do the straight razor on the neck. I guess I should have been more specific and asked for shaving cream in addition to the straight razor.

So this place is a story in and of itself. It was a massage place in the mall that for one hour of back and foot massage, it was all of $10. The thing is they kept trying to push different products, features and services on you to rack the bill up. I kindly said no to all of it. On one particular service, they even brought this very beautiful Chinese lady in to persuade me to get a mole removed. She was so nice and friendly until I told her no for the last time. Then her whole demeanor changed and she stormed off. But, the story of the day was that I was leaving the mall after having gotten a delightful massage and I was heading for the subway. A few stops into the ride I realized I did not have our digital camera!! I started freaking out as it had all of our family photos on it and all our memories would have been lost. I quickly got off the subway and headed back towards the super mall. I ran as fast as I could since I new that it was closing soon. I sprinted up to the doors of the massage placed - doors were locked!! NOOOOOO! We were leaving the next day for our next destination. I had to come back the next day and wait for the mall to open and then get back to our group in time. I get there and tell them I had lost my camera and they say they found it last night (I thought for sure it was long gone and had been pawned off). They had kept my camera and gave it to me. Memories safe once again. It helped me believe in the goodness of people all over the world!!