Blogs from Hainan, China, Asia - page 10

So,I’v finally got that blog up, I actually wrote it on the monster plane journey home for a couple of weeks to see everyone. It was really nice to be back, got to have a couple of weekends at home and had a week up in Newcastle, though theres no denying it, england is bloody freezing!!! Had a fun night out on Wednesday and some lovely home food cooked by momma and Clare, and was kinda sad to go back to Hainan at the end of it... The flight did, however give me plenty of opportunity to plan my new years holiday plans, and considering that I have around 2 months of travelling, I intend to see lots and lots!!! Have already planned out some travelling with Clare until the 10th of Jan, but then. I ... read more

The photo captions should say it all. Just flick through!... read more

If you watch the video you will get a summary of exactly what we see in all areas of the campus, from dawn till dusk, every day since we arrived, and you will probably be as curious as we were as to who these guys are and why they are training like this. You would assume that it's the army, but after approaching many of them we gradually found out that these are actually the new students, and not just a select few: every single Chinese fresher in every university in China has to take part in 17 days of military training in their first few weeks at uni. Mad. It's their almost completely opposite, communist equivalent of Fresher's Week. They start at 5.40 every day and carry on until 9pm, with short breaks. Many, including ... read more

I went down on the back of a friend's motorbike to meet the surfers at a bay a few hours away, called Riyuewan. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of that place, but it looked amazing because there was hardly anything, except a couple of 'restaurants' which are pretty much made of bamboo and are run by a family who also raise pigs and other animals there, so on your way to the toilet you hear grunting coming from by your feet. We were under orders not to stroke the pigs, because one cheeky one had attacked someone a few days before! On the journey down, we got lost in some farmland, and there was a herd of cows covering the road, that we had to dodge. This was a proper local, quiet surf spot where ... read more

We went to a tropical beach paradise tourist town called Sanya for three days. Sanya is everything you'd expect of a tropical beach paradise resort, with a weird twist. In comparison to our non-westernised university town, where we get fascinated stares and cheery shouts of 'HERRO! hehehe' everywhere, in Sanya we were barely granted eye contact from miserable fruit sellers as they overcharged us for unripe bananas. When they did talk to us, it would be in Russian. The place is full of rich Russian holiday makers who act a lot like the English in Ibiza, and chinese couples posing in wedding outfits on the beach for photographs a few years before they actually get married. The Chinese hate to be exposed to sunlight, so the whole concept of going to the beach to lie there ... read more