The traffic in Shenzhen can be a nightmare and getting in and out of the city can easily take an hour. There’s buses and trains but good luck getting around in those.  Taxi’s are cheap but you’ll need your destinations in Chinese or you’re likely to end up in Guangzhou. We once spent two and a half hours driving to a golf course in a taxi that should have taken about 30 minutes.  Never before have I seen such incompetence from a taxi driver and I’ve encountered my share living in Asia for the past 20 years.

Shenzhen is home to the world famous (if you play golf) Mission Golf Club, the largest golf club in the world.  It’s like being in a massive factory, everything is systematic and seems to work sometimes, until you have a question or request that is the slightest bit out of the ordinary.  Then everything breaks down and chaos ensues.  There’s some okay golf courses here, the Norman and Nicklaus courses are okay, but the others are nothing spectacular.

I don’t know why you’d want to play golf here or in China over Thailand. The weather isn’t as good, the food isn’t as good, the golf isn’t as good, the caddies aren’t as good.  Basically it’s got nothing over Thailand in terms of golf.  It’s also a lot more expensive and crowded, and a tee time doesn’t really mean much here.  I once showed up 10 minutes before my tee time and had a wait of 45 minutes.  The Chinese also don’t quite grasp the concept of pace of play.  There are marshalls, yes, but they essentially just drive around the golf course doing sweet f all and if there is a backup, which there is on most holes, they won’t do anything to even attempt to fix it.

I’ve played golf in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore and other Asian countries and I’d rate playing golf in China as dead last by a long, long way.  I’ve had a few good experiences but if you wanting to play Mission Hills just because it’s the largest golf club in the world, don’t get too excited because it’s like the rest of Shenzhen, extremely disappointing.

I have an APEC card and don’t have any issues getting across the border but I’ve seen massive lines waiting at the Hong Kong-Immigration border.  There’s two checkpoints, Huanggang, and Futian.  Huanggang is the older one, Futian used to be way less busy but now it seems they’re equally bad.  To be fair, I’ve gone across a few times an it’s been fine but if you happen to catch it when 10 busloads of Mainland Chinese are crossing over, good luck to you.  If you take a private car this is a much less stressful experience.

If you have come across the idea of the century to sell something and make millions, then Shenzhen is the place to go. There’s factories galore and it’s not just textiles, clothing and electronics. Pretty much anything you can think of, you can get it made here for a fraction of the cost.  Of course, the challenge is finding the factory.  Don’t think you need to deal in thousands and thousands of minimum order quantities. Yes, there are some factories where you will need to order large numbers to get prices down, but there’s also a growing number of factories that are doing much smaller quantities these days.

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