Given the fact we didn’t get to bed until 6am, we didn’t get out of the apartment until 4pm today. The main aim today was to find how to get to the Bus Station in the Elements shopping mall. The ChinaLink service provides a direct bus to Hong Kong to Shenzhen Airport in Mainland China. Their terminus is located in this shopping mall. In fact their service is so efficient you can also check into your flight at the mall. Reading some blogs beforehand suggested the service wasn’t running or takes too long. Rather then chance anything; we wanted to get to the mall to find out for ourselves. There are other ways of getting to Shenzhen Airport, but this ChinaLink service appears to be the best. Unfortunately their website is not in English.
The Elements mall is located close to our apartment, so we decided to walk over to it via Kowloon Park. This park is really a community resource. It contains all weather footballs pitches, ponds, an aviary, shops including an icecream only McDonalds to both indoor and outdoor swimming pools! Perfect for weather like today when it’s 34c outside, with a feel like 40c.
The Elements mall is operated by the metro company, so as such contains the main Kowloon subway station and Airport Express. Free shuttle buses link the station to most local hotels, very handy if you are travelling by the Airport Express to Hong Kong International Airport. The mall is divided into 5 areas or elements (water, fire, wood, earth and metal) with each area designed to reflect their own element. We passed by Austin Road and Station en-route, which gave me some amusement as this is my brothers name. It was warm, too warm, so we were very pleased to be greeted by an Ice Rink as soon as we entered the shopping mall!
The ChinaLink sales office is located on the first floor. The English speaking staff in bright pink uniforms were very friendly and provided us all the information we required. As our flight from Shenzhen was at 11am, we’d need to be on a 7:45am bus at the latest. So an early start for us tomorrow. The total cost for a return journey is only €14, amazing value when you take into account the €200 saving per person on flying from Shenzhen domestically as opposed to International from Hong Kong Airport. I’ll blog separately about our experiences and details on how to use the ChinaLink service to connect to Shenzhen again.
After purchasing our tickets, we headed straight for food. Being brave again, we opted for a rather busy local restaurant were we order Dim Sum, pork and shredded chicken noodles. Chinese food here is NOTHING like at home. There was too much food, we ate what we could and the bill was around €16 including tip for both meals. Amazing value.
Some more wandering around the mall followed before we headed back to the apartment with food supplies before heading up to the Night Temple Market.
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