Decided to do a shopping trip to Luohu ( pronounced LoWu) Shenzan, It's about 45 min by train to the boarder once at border you need to get a visa to cross over, as it was later in the morning there wasn't as much crowds, much easier to get a visa , we go up to the customs office ( 5 customs officers sitting behind glass windows) we go to the custom officer 1 give him our money and passports, he takes both gives us a ticket with a number and tells us to sit and wait! Wait for what we were the only ones in the room... So we sit and watch the process officer 1 puts our passports and money into the tray of officer 2, we then get called over and was given a receipt and was told to sit, officer 2 then puts the passports into Officer 3 's tray, then after some conversation officer 3 puts the passports into officer 4's tray, we get called up and given our passports back with fulll typed visas stuck into our passports, with a 5 day entry into China..not sure what Office 5 did he may of been the organiser ! ... Everyone has a job everything is precision.
Last time we went to China we planned it and decided to get visas before we left Australia, I had to take our passports to the Chinese embassy, pay a huge amount of money for 2 day visas, then go back two weeks later to pick up the passports with our visas in them!!
Hong Kong is very busy or should I say a lot busier than normal as its Chinese national holiday celebration of 66 years of Chinese federation, the Chinese come across to holiday in Hongkong. The People from Hong Kong consider themselves as citizens and Chinese, not Chinese as from the Mainland China. Hong Kong issues identity cards to its citizens and has its own immigration policies, it allows them to visit more counties without visas than the mainland passport people from China, they need to obtain a visa before they can enter Hong Kong for a brief visit