Zhuhai Adventures

Shelley, our housing agent meets us at the East Gate and soon we are ‘flying’ up in the lift to the 19th floor and into our apartment. It is spacious, three bedrooms, bathroom and ensuite and kitchen. The décor is a little bit ‘Hollywood Wives’ leatherette suite, gleaming marble floors and ‘Princess’  padded headboards! But it is clean and fresh and has everything we need, we are lucky to have ‘inherited’ a colleague’s apartment- John returned to Brazil to live and work and didn’t need to take anything domestic with him. 

Shelley is wonderful and soon has organised our service bills and Wi-Fi connection and sim cards, she apologises ‘Sorry as its Saturday I don’t think that I will be able to complete the Wi-Fi until Monday’ – we are bowled over, it would take 2 weeks in the Uk and then they wouldn’t turn up on time! 

We thank Shelley profusely, she is local to us and a real professional, having worked at Horizon Cove for over 20 years she knows exactly how to get things done, and she responds to all our inquiries on Wechat (The Chinese version of Whatsapp)– which we can translate instantly!

Taking a walk through the huge gated community that is Horizon Cove, we guess that there must be well over 5 thousand apartments; ranging from 30 storey towers , one of which is our home, to low-rise 7 and 10 storey blocks of a variety of shapes and sizes. We head into the centre of the complex where a series of paths and roads take you through this green and beautiful development, all lined with trees, bushes and exotic flowering plants. We come across a lake that continues for about half a kilometre, scattered with pagodas and decking for people to enjoy the outdoors. There are butterflies as big as bats and we can hear and see glimpses of many birds hiding in the trees which provide shelter from the fierce sun.

We want to find the pool and suddenly there it is, in a huge complex right in the centre of the ‘Cove’. There is an indoor pool for swimming lengths and a massive lagoon style outdoor pool fringed by palms. A gym is in a subterranean area and there are lots of other social facilities that over the next few days we see are used for music lessons, table tennis , Parent and toddlers’ activities and much more. At the moment it is pretty empty although later we realise that it is a much used resource.