28 may - Dapeng Fortress and Xichong beach

Today we had a car with a driver to take us anywhere we wanted. I decided upforehand to travel to Dapeng Fortress (Dapeng Old Town), and I heard from someone living in Shenzhen that Xichong beach should be a very nice place to visit. So  we headed for those destinations on this thursday.

We left at 9.30 after I booked our transfer to the Hong Kong airport for tomorrow. We are picked up at 5 PM from our hotel, so we can do whatever we want during the day tomorrow. Today was a holiday in China, and everyone is off from work so it was quite busy on the streets. Travel to Dapeng took about one hour. The old town dates from 1394, it was build as a fortress to defend China against enemies. There are still people living in this small town, and some houses are created as kind of museum. I liked it a lot. Walking around took about 1 hour, and then we drove to Xichong beach, another half hour. We took Shen's Nintendo for the car ride, so he had something to do. The weather was really nice, dry and a very nice temperature (not too hot, I guess around 27/28 degrees). The beach is very long, about 5 km's, and there were lot'sof people (because of the holiday), normally it is very peaceful, but not on this day. Shen started running around and playing in the sand. After a while we wanted to have lunch, and Xichong is famous for it's seafood, so that was an easy choice. We had shrimp and a fish, with some  rice. It was very nice, especially the shrimps with the herbs, great!

After lunch Shen went into the South Chinese sea. I stayed with him because there was some wind and the sea was not so safe for children (I wasn't in the water, but  on the beach). So I had to call him every now and then to come back to me. He had great fun playing in the water. It was warm and he loved it. At about half past four we left for Shenzhen again, the ride was 1 hour 15 minutes with not much traffic. When we came near Shenzhen it started raining. We have had so much luck today that it was dry and nice weather!

Tomorrow we're going to the Window of the World, rain or sunshine after I packed our suitcase. Then we will head for the Hong Kong airport and fly home. It's possible I will send a short update by email from my cellphone. The next real post will be from the Netherlands!