May 11

May 11, 2017

Last night the group attended the Hong Kong Jockey Club horse races. They run 8 races every Wednesday night. Each race's betting pool was around $25-35 million Hong Kong dollars (around $4 million U.S.). There were large bleachers and several air conditioned boxes, many of us went down and stood right along the track fence, so it was a very up-and-close experience.  

We all took a taxi back to the hotel, everyone in Hong Kong drives very fast, the speed limit is around 80 kph (50 mph). Surprisingly as fast and wild as everyone drives, we never really saw any vehicles that were scratched or dented. Also, there were quite a few exotic cars such as Lamborghini’s.  

Today we ate breakfast at the hotel we stayed at, the breakfast was very good and included a variety of foods like western, Indian, and Chinese. One thing we noticed about the restaurants so far is they all have many mirrors on the walls as well as marble/granite on the floors and walls.  

We checked out of the hotel after breakfast and got on a bus headed for the Hong Kong/ China Mainland border. Once we reached the border we went through a strict customs area, they checked passports and scanned all of our luggage. After that we got on a different bus and headed through the new booming city of Shenzhen, we are officially in China! Many people live in Shenzhen and cross the customs border and work in Hong Kong. Shenzhen is very industrial with many manufacturing plants. The city grew from 15 thousand people to 25 million people in 40 years. Jocelyn, our tour guide, laughed and said, "That when you refer to something fast in China, they now refer it to Shenzhen speed." A 30 story apartment can be built in just a month and a half so the city is constantly changing and growing!  With many hills, and a hole in one of the coolant lines, which was fixed by wrapping a piece of plastic around it, our bus became over heated on our way to the fish farm. We poured several bottles of water into the radiator and eventually it cooled off enough to take off again. After about a half hour, the bus overheated again. We had no water left so the bus driver started walking with a couple empty jugs. While we waited, our tour guide arranged for a different bus to come get us. Mechanic Grant tried to help the bus driver, while Lucas climbed the trees and the rest of us stood and observed. 

The fish farm came and picked us up in another bus and we headed to the South China Sea Research Institution. We then went to a dock, got on a few small boats and went out into the bay where they had 80 round cages that they grew fish in. The main fish were called Pomphrey fish. These fish were used for producing eggs which would be gathered and hatched in a different area. They said these cages were about 15' deep and 25' across. We then went back to the dock and toured the fish farms research buildings. In these buildings, they grew things like shrimp, sea horses, different types of coral, and fish. They research different things like reproduction, salt content, and water temperatures.  

With having the bus break down, we didn't have time to stop at the buffet for dinner, so we stopped at a very small supermarket and got things like ice cream, chips, peanuts, pop and tea for dinner. It took us around 2 hours to get to the Guangzhou Port Nansha Grain and General Cargo Terminal. At the Port we met with Mr. Lee, the operations director of the port. The port was built in 2011 and receives products such as soybeans, corn, barley, distiller’s grains, and coal. The port has a handling capacity of 27 million tons per year. The larger boats that bring in the product can hold up to 58,000 tons and the smaller distributer boats can hold around 5,000 tons. The product must remain at the port for 15 days and then can be distributed to other cities in China by the smaller boats. The port runs 24 hours a day 7 days a week with around 600 workers with both contracted and official workers. After the port tour we rode the bus back to Guangzhou for a buffet supper and then checked into our new hotel.

 HK container

 

 Ocean farm

 

 Port

 

 Research farm

 

 Sea horse

 

 Bus

 

General port

 



 Grain