Journey to the West - If it rains, it's not laziness

The second day of the bike tour from Hong Kong to France was rainy. Shenzhen was close to the epicentre of the Ewiniar tropical cyclone when we arrived there. The rain was interrupted only a few times on that day. However, we took advantage of the weather to explore those areas of Shenzhen that did not get us wet.

Starting the day with an amazing breakfast, we went to a hot pot restaurant since the had lots of options for my vegetarian girlfriend. It looked delicious.

The pot came with a vegetarian stock including mushrooms, cucumber, veggies and a taste similar to miso. It took about 5 minutes to get cooked. We put in noodles, Chinese cabbage, tofu and lots of veggies. The sauce was sensational. They had giant pots of ingredients for you to choose from. I mixed peanut sauce with soy sauce, chives, garlic, coriander and peanut pieces. Once you added some of the soup inside, it became the absolutely best sauce for hot pot. You would then dip the cooked food inside the sauce.

You would choose the food you wish to eat from the fridge.

We were so glad that there were nobody in the restaurant except for us. It was unusual for us to eat hot pot as brunch around 12 noon. Chinese people usually don't do it. So, it must have been pretty strange for the waiters to see us there. But they were super nice and helpful. In general, Shenzhen's services in restaurants and hostels were very satisfying.

Well, at the end, the food was delicious and our faces were like this.

Then, we went to a grocery nearby. We bought two apples and lots of lychee. We didn't know then but it turned out that Shenzhen is very famous for producing the finest If lychee in China.

Indeed, even those from the supermarkets were more delicious than any lychee I ate before. The apples were also one of the finest we had in Asia. We had a hard time choosing what we wanted because there were just too many choices. There were food there that even Mathilde, a French cook, did not know. She was jumping around like a kid in excitement to discover new ingredients and raw food for herself.

All of that made the Futian residential district very agreeable to us. I would even consider living here for years if there is a chance. Shenzhen at the point really impressed us a lot. It was a clean and liveable city for young people. The people are super relaxed and lots of young venturous people come here to try out their luck in business and career. I met a few young adults living in the hostel I stayed in for long term to work in Shenzhen.

Later that day we went for a short walk in the park and discovered that there were Jack fruit trees all over the place in the residential area we stayed. When we later cycled the next day, we discovered that they put fruit trees everywhere in Shenzhen such as Mango or Durian trees.

In the late afternoon, I spent my time to repair the front derailleur of both our bikes. The problem was that the derailleur did not put the gears right when we switched. I watched some YouTube videos from Parktool, which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to learn how to fix their own bike by themselves. That channel has extremely high quality content on bike repair so that you don't need to take your bike to repair anymore. Just do it yourself.

It took me one hour to finally figure out how to fix the derailleur and another hour to actually repair them. The feeling of accomplishment after I successfully fixed the bikes could not be understated. It's as though I just passed an important exam. I loved that feeling. It was very motivating and would be beneficial for the future travel.

We ended our day with the Avengers I movie with some self-made eggplant caviar with some chips. The next day turned out to be much more demanding but fun. Stay tuned for the third day of the Journey to the West where we cycle more than 60 km up north to Gongming Residential District and ended up in one of finest hotels we stayed in Asia for just 20 USD per night for two.